tion may remain as it is; but laws are but cobwebs to a sectarian community.

Courts, that are to explain them, partake of the influence, and the people sustain them in it. At present, the most certain reliance for the preservation of liberty of conscience in this country, is in the antagonist principles of the different sects. It might seem to be a sad thing that caused religious sects to quarrel as they do, but thence arises safety to honest and enlightened men. Let them combine upon the subject of Sunday police, or upon any other point whatever, and the liberties of the country are in danger.

Se

Those who are disposed to multiply penal enactments, seem not to understand their nature. verities against doctrines, have so much augmented the evil, that persecutions have been called the seed. of the church. And it is probable that penal laws have often increased rather than lessened crime. In the reign of Henry VIII., there were hanged in England seventy-two thousand thieves and rogues, besides other malefactors, being about two thousand a year.* Executions have been gradually decreasing, until they have become of rare occurrence. Laws have been softened, and the morals of the people have improved; it is probable that

* See Hume's History of England, vol. V. note, (MM.) p. 533.

this improvement is to be ascribed in no inconsiderable degree, to the public being rendered less familiar with crime, through the amenity of the civil code.

Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, makes it a question, whether no law at all, or too much law, is the greater evil. He pronounces the latter to be the case; he founds his opinion on the Indian nations on one side, (amongst whom, he says, governed as they are by the moral sense of right and wrong, crimes are of very rare occurrence,) and the civilized nations of Europe on the other.*

Ordinances are of no avail unless supported by public opinion. The laws of Pennsylvania, so far as respects the abstaining from labour on the first day of the week, are effectual. Society universally assents to them; but of what avail are the provisions respecting tippling on Sunday. Constables are required to search public houses, and other authority is given to them, but it avails so little, that it is supposed there is double the amount of licentiousness on that as on any other day. And if we multiply the statutes upon this subject, it is more likely to increase than to decrease crime.

Our canals and rail-roads are used by persons who believe they are enjoined to keep the seventh

* Jefferson's Notes, p. 138.

day of the week as a Sabbath, and by others who are conscientious in keeping every day as a day of holiness. These persons are all taxed to support them, and they can never be placed on a footing with other men, if their conscientious rights are not equally attended to.

Our canals have been designed for public highways, under regulations necessary for their preservation, and the legislature has no more right to put any other restrictions upon them, than it has to interfere with our state or turnpike roads. Travelling on the first of the week is expressly permitted by the laws of the state, and I am not aware of any difference in principle between travelling by water and by land. Sunday has been considered a lucky day for seamen to leave port, and raftsmen travel on the river by hundreds when the water suits them. I believe no idea was ever expressed that this was wrong. Why then should not the farmer take in his grain with equal propriety? The grain is ripe in the fields but a few days in the year. The raftsman who depends upon accidental freshets is equally limited as to time; they stand upon the same footing. The law makes a distinction, which has no foundation in reason or common sense. There are usually more days suitable for the raftsman than for the husbandman to take in his grain.

The edict of Constantine, and the old English

laws, heretofore referred to, allowed all kinds of work in the harvest field.

If our government is, as is pretended, a civil compact, the propriety of any laws of this character may be questioned; they are, in fact, an incongruous mixture of church and state, warranted in some degree by old usages, but inconsistent with the nature of our institutions. They have one origin, a want of reliance on the power of truth. Having full and entire confidence in the influence of religion on the human mind—in its universality -in its sufficiency to sustain itself without the aid of the civil power, I should fear no evil from abolishing every law upon the subject, and leaving such things to the discipline of particular sects.

The Sabbatarians would object to such a course, because they imagine that religion depends upon the observance of one day as the Sabbath. Not many years since, it was thought needful that religion should be supported by the power of the

state.

Ex

The opinion has prevailed still more gene rally that an established clergy is necessary. perience has demonstrated that these ideas are unfounded, and that such institutions are not required.

The toleration act in England, was only obtained after a desperate struggle with the power of the clergy; and yet that act was fraught with unnumbered blessings, and enlarged, in every direction, the

sphere of the human mind. At a later day, the corporation and test acts fell before the same liberal spirit, and in despite of the same opposition; in our own country, established church governments in Virginia and in New England, have been successively overthrown after every effort on the part of the clergy to sustain them.

While we have to lament the continued existence of so much bigotry and intolerance, it is pleasing to record these examples of progress. The day is not, we may hope, far distant, when all men will acknowledge the insufficiency of form and ceremony to illustrate a spiritual religion.

Sabbath conventions will then assume their place in history with other sectarian movements, which have attempted to repress the spirit of enquiry, and which, after brief success, have become a mockery and a warning to succeeding generations.

Enactments on this subject are but a species of sectarianism upon a broader scale, the evils of which have been shown in many ways in this country.

A few years since, in the neighbourhood of Boston, a Catholic seminary was burnt to the ground by a combination of zealous Protestants. The same thing has occurred in Philadelphia during the present season. Catholic seminaries have been destroyed, and the community was so corrupted by sectarian influence, as to be unwilling to arrest the