them denouncing penalties either positive or negative, either fine, imprisonment, &c., or privations and disabilities. For the state never speaks but in its laws, and the law never speaks but to command or to forbid; and that under a penalty*." A state, therefore, cannot properly be said to be of any religion; it cannot be said to be Protestant, or Catholic, or Mahometant. Men do not combine into a civil community for religious purposes, and therefore a civil community, when collectively considered, cannot be said to have any religious character. It is evident that when a ruler, in his civil capacity, undertakes to decide on religious questions, he as much outsteps his proper province as an officer in the army, who, being also the member of a club, should insist on compelling all the other members of it to go through the marching exercise.

It is a remarkable circumstance that Gustavus Adolphus, although the chief of a religious party, in an age when intolerance prevailed among all persuasions, was nevertheless aware of the impropriety of the

* Letters on the Church, by an Episcopalian, p. 158-9.

"No government whatsoever is, properly speaking, either Catholic, Protestant, or Mahometan. It is as incorrect to say that a government belongs to this or that religion, as to affirm that the substance of marriage lies in the sacrament. Both these assertions may be made in an improper sense, and with a view to some particular object; but then the general consequences usually deduced therefrom cannot be inferred."-Dal Pozzo, Catholicism in Austria, p. 202. The doctrine of the law of Austria on this point it thus laid down by Count Dal Pozzo: "The state, considered as the state, is not the subject matter of religion; it is not combined with any religious association or church; for the compact of union and of submission is not grounded on the idea that its subjects should profess any one religion in preference to another. The sovereign of every state, as well as his subjects, is at liberty to enter or not into the society of the church. It is a purely accidental circumstance, considered relatively to the state, whether all its members, or any part of them, belong to the church."-Ib., p. 89.

"In

civil governor interfering in spiritual concerns. the treatment of Protestants and Catholics (says Galeazzo Gualdo, an Italian Catholic) he made no distinction. His principle was, that every man who obeyed the laws was orthodox in his faith. He said that it was the duty, not of princes, but of the clergy, to save men from hell*.”

There are three modes in which the state may deal with different religious persuasions. It may support the clergy and provide for the worship of all, or some, or none. The first of these systems has been followed in France, Belgium, Austria, Prussia, and other German states; the second in England; the third in the United States. In order to compare the merits of these respective plans, as applicable to the case of Ireland, it will be first necessary to determine, with as much pre cision as we may be able, the meaning of the principal terms by which these several systems are designated.

Religious teachers (says Adam Smith), in the same manner as other teachers, may either depend altogether for their subsistence upon the voluntary contributions of their hearers, or they may derive it from some other fund to which the law of their country may entitle them; such as a landed estate, a tithe or land-tax, an established salary or stipend." The former of these two methods is now generally known by the name of the voluntary system: the latter is called the method of endowment; which name seems to be properly applied, whether the fund is derived from the gift of an individual, and settled on the object of his bounty in perpetuity, or is annually paid by the

*Cited in Kohlrausch's Deutsche Geschichte, p. 470.

without hesitation adopt the latter; being convinced that the Irish Roman Catholics will always remain disaffected to the state as long as the Protestant religion is made the object of its undivided favour. It seems to us, however, a far preferable course, instead of abolishing, to extend the bounty of the state, and to endow the Roman Catholic, as well as the Episcopalian Protestant, and Presbyterian clergy.

The objection usually made to this plan is, that it is the duty of rulers to advance the cause of true religion, and that a man cannot conscientiously assent to the endowment of a church, which he believes to teach false doctrine. The reasoning on this head is so important in its consequences, that we are induced to cite a passage from a recent defence of the Established Church, in which the orthodox doctrines are fully stated.

Pleading against the position, that it is the duty of a Christian ruler to provide for the spread of the Gospel among his people, a Dissenting writer says, If the obligation of the monarch to provide a religion for the people rests on his regal relation to them, then it is the duty of all sovereigns to do this; and the Sultan of Turkey must establish Mahomedanism, the Emperor of China Paganism, and the Emperor of Austria Popery.' The objector (continues the defender of an Establishment) has confused himself, partly by forgetting the real point in dispute, but mainly by forgetting his own first principles. He falls into the modern liberal' style of talking, as though there were many religions of various degrees of value; and as though an argument which applied to one must of necessity apply to all. But this mode of speaking on these subjects is most fallacious and mischievous. There is but one true religion, and there never has been, nor ever will be, any other. All the rest are false, ruinous, and opposed to the honour of God.

This cannot be too often or too strongly stated, or too

endowments belonging to the ministers of each persuasion, and when these are not sufficient, the government makes up the deficiency. Both churches are therefore endowed without either being established. On the other hand, the Established Church of England and Ireland has legal rights which a simply endowed church would not possess; such as that its prelates have a seat in one of the Houses of Parliament; that its members have an exclusive right of admission to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, &c. Now it is to endowment, and not to establishment, that the voluntary church system is properly opposed*, and hence it would not be fair to infer that because a person disapproved of establishments, he therefore approved of the voluntary system: he might think it both unjust and inexpedient for the state to single out one persuasion as the object of its favour; he might likewise think it injurious to society that the ministers of religion should be left to depend on the bounty of their congregations, and therefore he might wish that the state should extend the principle of endowment to all.

We have already stated our opinion, that the state should hold itself perfectly impartial with respect to different religious persuasions. This impartiality may be observed either by endowing the clergy of all persuasions, or leaving them all to be maintained on the voluntary principle. We confess that if there were only two alternatives in Ireland, either to maintain the Established Church on its present exclusive system, or to leave all religious worship unprovided for, we should

1

* It has tended much to confuse the reasonings on this question, that an established church and an endowed church have been taken as synonymous. Such, for example, seems to be the use of the two terms in question, in Dr. Chalmers' able work on endowments.-See p. 109, seq.

your duty to tolerate truth; but when I am the stronger I shall persecute you, for it is my duty to persecute error*." In like manner the Protestants of England and Ireland say to the Roman Catholics-"We are the more numerous and stronger body, and therefore we give the church endowment exclusively to our own clergy; and as our form of Christianity is pure, and your form is corrupt, it is your duty to acquiesce, without repining, in this arrangement. But when you propose to us to allot a portion of the public revenue to the payment of your clergy, we tell you that we have a right not to contribute to the diffusion of religious error, and that we should be forcing our consciences if we voted money for the advancement of popery." popery." It is clear that, in using this language, the English Protestants claim the benefit of a principle in their own favour which they will not admit in favour of others; that they hold it wicked in themselves to assist in teaching a religion which they believe to be false; but they do not hold it wicked in others to assist in teaching a religion which those others believe to be false. They compel the Dissenters, as being the minority, to do that which they, being the majority, refuse to do themselves. It is, in fact, an instance of the tyranny of the majority over the minority; a tyranny the more enduring, because it has not only numbers, but also a semblance of justice on its side. Nothing can be more inconsistent than the advocates of the high church principles on this subject. They press to the utmost their advantage of superior numbers, and constantly insist that England and Ireland being united, the Protestants ought to be considered as the majority, and

* On Sir J. Mackintosh's History of the Revolution, No. 124, p. 304.