tenable, it is pleaded, that, admitting them to be trusts, they cannot be of the nature of rights, but that it must be left to the wisdom of the magistrate to judge of the quali fications for these trusts, and to decide of the persons with whom they may be confided. Now it is admitted, that no individual has a right to any special office, and that without injustice he may never be admitted to any office whatever; and it is admitted further, that no particular association of individuals has a right to any particular portion of offices, nor have the Dissenters ever instituted such a claim. But they maintain, that nothing can justify the proscription of any special class of the society from trusts, and offices, and rewards, unless the charge of hostility to the state; a charge which has not been made good against Dissenters, nor we trust ever will, and that this would be the exercise of a power, which belongs to pure and wanton tyranny. Eligibility is the clear and undoubted right of every every innocent and well-affected member of the community*. Some * The most extravagant position, that ever fell from the mouth of a wise man, was opposed to our petition in parliament, and with all the authority as if it were the dictum of a god, viz. that man has no rights antecedent to and independent of civil society, and that the nonsense of rights ought to be expelled from political language. A common mind would have argued, that the natural rights of man are the very elements of political society, that they constitute the indelible principle within him, by which he is enabled to judge of what is best in political society, and by which he is vindicated in every endeavour to correct the ill-devised law of former periods, whatever its sanction is, and reduce government nearer and nearer to a conceived standard of perfection. These pleasing reveries are now consigned by our political dictator to an eternal oblivion, and man must receive the constitution under which he is governed as the only test of what is right to him, whether it be the law of England, or the law of Constantinople. Strange! that such different constitutions of government, originating from such different sources, and directed to such different ends, should be concluded under the same sentence, and be all equally conformed to what is right. But the solemn fiat is now issued, and a tame and thankful submission is to constitute the blessed quiet of the governed. How unfortunate, that this sage politician had not Some of our opponents appear to abandon the question of right, to considér us as entitled to no right beyond that of simple toleration; and as if this were a high grace and favour, to insult us with the tale, that we are fully tolerated, that this is all that it been earlier introduced to the world, that he might have corrected the foolish ideas of the Greeks and Romans, and enlightened the ignorance of the northern nations, who, taught by nature alone, founded on the basis of inherent right all the present states of Europe; that he might have repressed the intemperate zeal of our highspirited ancestors, who extorted from a race of tyrants the great charter of England, and saved to our nation at this day the disgrace of a constitution founded upon such silly principles as originated the declaration of rights! The babblings of Milton, and Sydney, and Locke, and Montesquieu had not then infected the minds of men, nor had he himself been agonized with pity, or exhibited so doleful a spectacle of a wounded heart, if France had but had the timely blessing of being instructed by his divine lessons.-Man has no natural rights! Free governments created out of nothing!O thou wonderful counsellor, thou venerable Lama of this deluded western world, we hail thy appearance, and bow to thy preternatural doctrine with more than a Tartarian reverence! becomes becomes us to aspire to, and that the state has extended its generosity far enough in the indulgence which we enjóy. Now tolera tion is but an invidious term, and springs out of abuses, which do no credit to human nature or to religion. It is a mistaken idea, that toleration is a grace and favour; it is the restoration to a right, which ought never to have been violated; it is on the part of the state the confession of a wrong, which ought never to have been practised. This truth, if it were attended to as it deserves, would recommend a modesty in the language of churchmen to us, and repress that complacency, with which they speak of toleration as a matter of generous indulgence. We know for ourselves, that we are actuated by more manly and generous sentiments, and that if we were in equal circumstances (an event as remote from our wishes as our hopes) we should deserve to be reprobated and abhorred, if we were even to hold the language of toleration, or suppose, that the faith and religion of a churchman stood not on the same equal ground. But even if the language of toleration be admitted, and, as the abuse of ruder times has instituted the term, we make no objection to it; it is asserted, that the toleration is not perfect, nor can be, while civil rights are withheld from us on the very ground of our religion. The toleration, which is extended to us, is the portion of servants, not of sons; and with equal obedience and affection we are discarded by our parent, and cut off from a capacity of succeeding to a decent portion of our common civil inheritance*. To No one has used this insulting language of toleration with less delicacy than our Great Minister. He assumes it as the ultimatum of what the state ought to grant, or what the Dissenter ought to look for, and then employs his mighty talents to prove, that there is a wide difference between the being tolerated and the being established. Why, yes! in truth there is, and it required not the wisdom of the minister of England to make this discovery. The commonest mind would distinguish between the grace which suffers me to live, and the friendship which participates its blessings with me. It would have been as much to the purpose to have observed, |