Sweden is far behind England in regard to liberty of conscience.  Is it that religious convictions are weaker in England than in Sweden?  Has the religious liberty which Great Britain practises sprung from indifference?  Is it not rather that that land produces an energetic race, and that it has been so often drenched with the blood of the followers of different forms of worship, that that blood cried at length to heaven, and that the conscience of the people heard it?  There is more religious liberty in France than in Spain.  Is it the case that the true cause of the intolerance of the Spanish people is a more lively and more general faith than that of the French?  That is not so certain.

Switzerland is one of the countries in which is enjoyed the greatest liberty of opinion.  Is Switzerland a land of indifference?  Was not the comparative firmness of its citizens’ convictions remarked during the conflicts of the last century?  Do not the United States bear in large characters upon their banner this inscription:  LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE?  America is not distinguished as a country without religion; on the contrary, it is blamed for the excursiveness of its faith, for the multiplicity and sometimes for the extravagance of its sects.  Was it a sceptic that taught the inhabitants of the New World to respect religious convictions?  Assuredly not!  William Penn was shut up in the Tower of London for the crime of free thought.  Set free from prison, he crossed the ocean.  While intolerance was reigning still on both shores of the Atlantic, he founded in Pennsylvania a place of refuge for all proscribed opinions; and the germ has been fruitful.  In vain I pass from old Europe to young America; I look, I observe, and I do not see that liberty is developed in proportion to the scepticism and the incredulity of nations.  I seem, on the contrary, to see that there is perhaps most liberty where there is most real faith.

Some may dispute the validity of these conclusions by remarking that the condition of communities is a complex phenomenon depending upon divers causes.  Let us simplify the question.  Is it not, it will be said, the literary representatives of the spirit of doubt who have demanded and founded toleration?  Is it not....  But it is not necessary for my supposed questioner to go on.  If he is a Frenchman, he will name Voltaire.  No doubt, freedom of opinion has been claimed by sceptics.  They have served a good cause; let us know how to rejoice in the fact, and not to be unmindful of what there may have been in their work of noble impulses and generous inspirations.  Let us remark however that every proscribed opinion puts forth a natural claim to the liberty of which it is deprived.  But it is one thing to claim for one’s-self a liberty one would gladly make use of to oppress others, and it is another thing to demand liberty seriously and for all.  There was, as I am glad to believe, a certain natural generosity in the motives which led Voltaire to consecrate to noble causes a pen so often sold to evil.  Still it is impossible not to suspect that if that apostle of toleration had had a principality under his own sway, the fact of thinking differently from the master would very soon have figured among the number of delinquencies.