of Ireland is quoted, as proving that a persecuted faith has prospered under oppression, and an established creed has dwindled away under protection. But this failure has arisen, not because the policy is self-counteracting, but because it was not carried out with energy and determination; the laws were not sufficiently severe, and were not executed with sufficient severity for their purpose. If the government found that by prohibiting the service of the mass and the practice of the priesthood, by subjecting the laity to civil disabilities, and by offering them bribes to become Protestants, they were unable to convert the Catholics, they ought (if they had been prepared to act resolutely on their own principle) to have imposed a Protestant test, and to have executed or banished every person who refused to take it. Even Cromwell gave the Irish Catholics the alternative of Hell or Connaught. Austria and Bohemia gave no such alternative to their Protestant subjects in the Thirty Years' War; no Connaught was allowed to them, but they were expelled in thousands from the country. If this policy had been followed, and the English government had been strong enough to enforce it, there would not now have been more Catholics in Ireland than there are Moors in Spain*. The persecuting policy, when vigorously carried out, may

* It is most probable that this policy would have been tried with the Irish, if their country had not been an island. The German Protestants, when their rulers put them to the alternative of conforming to Catholicism or leaving the country, took refuge in the neighbouring Protestant states. So the French Protestants, in the reign of Louis XIV., chiefly migrated to Germany and Holland, although a considerable number crossed the sea to England. Even Cromwell, however, was willing to surrender one of the four provinces of Ireland to the Catholics. The difficulty of exterminating the Moors from Spain was much increased by

be unjust and barbarous, but it is at least effectual; but when irresolutely and timidly pursued, and restrained by some sense of justice and mercy, it is a mere gratuitous infliction of pain; it disorganizes society; it debases the oppressed sect; it breeds up a malcontent and disaffected race; it endangers the very existence of government, and, after all, it does not effect its end. To such objections, though in a minor degree, the present policy of this country is liable; it still assumes that the state is the judge of creeds, but rejects all active persecution, and all (or nearly all) civil disability on religious grounds, and only gives positive privileges and advantages to one persuasion. It does not say, "It shall be worse for you, if you dissent from the creed which the state holds to be true;" but it says, "It shall be better for you, if you assent to that creed.” It abstains from punishing dissenters, and contents itself with rewarding the professors of the select faith. But by singling out one persuasion as the object of its favour, even if it does not impose any disabilities on other persuasions, it as much sanctions the principle that the

their being divided by the sea from any other Mahometans. As it was, the providing them with ships cost the king 800,000 ducats; and those who were not wrecked or murdered by the crews, for the most part perished in Africa. It is not every government that is sufficiently resolute, or sufficiently wicked, to spend large sums of money in butchering its subjects by tens of thousands, because they do not profess the right creed. It is moreover to be observed, that the exterminating process is far more likely to be effectual with persons professing a heterodox creed, than with ordinary malefactors, because religious faith is usually a matter of inheritance. If all the thieves were exterminated in any country, the descendants of the present generation are not the less likely to become thieves but if all the Catholics (for example) were driven out of Ireland, it is not likely that many children of Protestants would become Catholics. No Spanish Catholic has become a Mahometan since the expulsion of the Moors; but transportation has not got rid of the English thieves.

majority of the members of the legislative body are to judge of religious truth for the whole nation, as if all dissenters were extirpated by fire and the sword.

No rational and stable legislation in church matters can be adopted till we recognize the principle that the state, as state, is no judge of creeds. Civil government exists solely for the protection of men's temporal interests. It ought not to carry its regards beyond the grave. It views religions solely in their temporal character; with their truth or falsehood, their greater or less tendency to promote man's happiness in a future state, it has no concern. It is the lord, not of the dead, but of the living. "If" (says M. de Tocqueville in his very able work on the United States) "it is of great importance to man as an individual that his religion should be true, such is not the case with the community. The community has nothing to hope or fear from another life; and what is important to it is not so much that all its members should profess the true religion, as that they should profess some religion * ”

In fact, it is only by a metaphor, and that not a very luminous one, that a state can be said to judge, or have opinions, on any subject, whether religious or not. "A community (for instance, a church or a state) is no really existent person; but is considered as such only in respect of its institutions and public acts. Independent of these, it has no conscience, no judgment, no approbation or disapprobation, no opinion or belief. When a state is said to 'judge' such and such a kind of conduct or principle to be faulty, this or that act to be an offence, the meaning is that it has laws against

* La Démocratie en Amerique, vol. ii. p. 221.

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.