and agitate the American body politic. But, although for a time religion appeared to give a cast of national character to the original pilgrims, and their immediate descendants, yet those distinguishing features gradually disappeared, and religion in the United States has gradually settled down into the level of a mere personal, portable secret, instead of continuing to be what it yet remains in England -- a kindred fire, flaming with electrical diffusion, from heart to heart, and lighting up the glow of general enthusiasm among the people. In the United States all the various religious sects seem to co-exist in a calm, unruffled atmosphere. It is not very uncommon for the father, mother, and children of the same family, each to follow, without opposition, their respective modes of worship; a spectacle that seldom occurs in Europe, where religion, when it operates at all, actuates not only individuals, but masses of men, in their joint views and combined exertions.

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Hence, no leader of any religious persuasion in the United States, however ardent may be his own zeal, and however vigorous and incessant his own efforts, can induce his followers to labour to aggrandize that sect, with as much effectual exertion as he could, under the same circumstances, induce a similar body in Europe to co-operate with him. On the days of public worship, in this country, the individuals of the same family set out together; each goes to hear the minister of his own sect, and they afterward return home to employ themselves, in common, in their domestic concerns. This diversity of religious opinion does not seem to produce any contradiction or discordance in their sentiments as to other things. Whence, if there happens to arrive here, from Europe, an ambitious sectary, eager to afford a triumph to his own particular tenets, by inflaming the passions of men, so far from finding, as in other countries, multitudes disposed to enlist under his banners, and ready to second his violence, his very existence is scarcely perceived by his nearest neighbours; his individual enthusiasm is neither attractive, nor interesting, nor contagious; he inspires neither love, nor hatred, nor

curiosity; but is suffered to die away.into nothing, beneath the frozen pole of universal indifference.

This was peculiarly exemplified in Dr. Priestley. This heresiarch, and veteran trumpeter of sedition, had openly menaced the hierarchy of England and the British constitution with speedy destruction. His partisans followed him, eagerly and blindly, throughout all the numberless changes of his ever-shifting religious and political creeds; they poured out at his feet their time, their property, their obedience, their acclamation; they enabled him to publish, and circulate widely, his pestilent heresies, and malignant invectives against the church and government of England. He sate, like a demi-god, snuffing up the incense of adulation from the Socinian democrats of Great Britain. But how reversed the picture, when he exchanged an English for an American home! A meagre deputation of obscure clergymen in our city of New-York welcomed him to the United States with an absurd speech, full of jacobin bombast and fustian. He afterward repaired to Philadelphia, where he preached a few frigorific sermons to thin and drowsy audiences; he then retired to Northumberland, in Pennsylvania, where he passed the remainder of his life in making small experiments amidst his alembics, crucibles, and retorts, for the result of which no one expressed the least interest; and he also occasionally ushered from the press religious and political pamphlets, which no one ever read. His death excited little, if any more sensation among the Pennsylvanian patriots than they are wont to exhibit at the dissolution of a German farmer, or a German farmer's horse.

In the United States every one follows, pretty much according to his own inclination, his religious opinions, and pursues with undivided eagerness his temporal concerns. This apparent apathy perhaps arises partly from the universal equality of all religious denominations. In America no form of worship is prescribed, no religious ordinances are established by law; whence,

every individual is left at liberty to follow his own will; to neglect or cultivate religion as he sees fit. Almost all the ardour of the moment that is passing is employed in devising the means of acquiring wealth, and promoting the success of the political party, in which the active individuals are enrolled. Hence result a general calmness and composure in the American community, with regard to the personal feelings and universal diffusion of religion; and it sometimes happens that Jehovah himself is shouldered from the altar peculiarly dedicated to his solemn services, by the devotedness of the whole heart to the shrine of mammon, or to the pursuits and calculations of political intrigue.

In the United States there is no national church established, no lay-patronage, no system of tithes. The people call and support their minister; few churches having sufficient funds to dispense with the necessity of contribution by the congregation. The law enforces the contract between the pastor and his flock, and requires the people to pay the stipulated salary so long as the clergyman preaches and performs his parochial duty, according to the agreement between him and his parishioners. In Massachusetts, Vermont, New-Hampshire, and Connecticut, the law requires each town to provide, by taxation, for the support of religious worship; but leaves it optional with every individual to choose his own sect. The general government has no power to interfere with or regulate the religion of the Union, and the states, generally, have not legislated farther than to incorporate, with certain restrictions, such religious bodies as have applied for charters. In consequence of this entire indifference on the part of the state governments, full one-third of our whole population are destitute of all religious ordinances, and a much greater proportion in our southern and western districts. It is quite just and proper that no one sect should have any preference, either religious or political, over the others; but the state-governments ought, at least, to interfere so far as New England has done, and

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enforce by law the maintenance of religious worship in every town, leaving the choice of his denomination to each individual.

The not interfering at all is a culpable extreme one way, as the English system of an exclusive national church, shutting out the other sects from equal political privileges, is a mischievous extreme the other. In the United Netherlands, in Prussia, in Russia, and even in France, all the religious denominations stand on equal political ground; and cannot Britain learn to augment her intellectual and moral power, by repealing her test and corporation acts, and permitting all her people to serve her to the full extent of their capacity, in her civil and military functions? During the time when Russia broke down the military strength of revolutionary France, the commander-in-chief of all her armies belonged to the Greek Church, her minister of finance was a Protestant, and her premier was a Papist. Her affairs were not the worse conducted because she disfranchises none of her sects of their political rights, on account of their religious opinions. The prominent evils of the English Church system are the ministerial and lay patronage, and the tithes. Suppose, for example (as was actually the fact when Lord Bolingbroke served Queen Anne,) the British prime minister is an avowed infidel, what kind of clergy would he be apt to place in the crown livings? Evangelical men, or careless irreligious clerks? The lay patrons, also, whether noble or gentle, put into the livings, in their gift, pastors, in whose call the people have no voice, but are, nevertheless, required to sit under their ministration. Now, if the lay patron be not religious, the probability is that his clergyman shall not be too well acquainted with the stupendous scheme of revelation. And, perhaps, few things are better calculated to foster the growth of infidelity in a country than putting into any church men who dole out only a little thin, diluted Sabbatical morality once in seven days, instead of expounding the great statute book of Christianity, and inculcating the characteristic, distinguishing doctrines of the Bible.

"Meanwhile, the hungry sheep look up, and are not fed," and yet grave personages profess to marvel at the rapid growth of other denominations, whose pastors, on moderate stipends, perform faithfully the duties of the highest, the holiest, the most important, and the most interesting vocation that can be accorded to man.

The system of tithes is perhaps the very worst possible mode of providing for the clergy that could be devised. They impede the progress of agriculture, and create perpetual dissensions between the pastor and his own people; and keep in a state of incessant exasperation all those other sects, who dissent from the doctrines and government of episcopacy. The tithes take a tenth part of the gross produce of the land, and consequently operate as a tax, oppressive in proportion to the amount expended in cultivating, and not to the net profits of the land produce; whence, they grow more and more intolerable, as a country expends more and more capital in agriculture; and are a much greater grievance in England now, when so vast an aggregate of farming capital is employed, than when agriculture consisted chiefly in pasture, and very little money was expended in culture, or tillage. Unless the British government shall commute the tithe system for some other mode of maintaining the national clergy, it will continue an evil, as pernicious as the poor laws, the public debt, or the game laws, all of which are, in their nature and amount, singularly oppressive, and two of them tend directly to produce immorality and vice. The tithes amount to nearly onefourth of the rental of England and Ireland; to at least ten millions sterling a year; to which add church lands, and other property, five millions more, and it gives-anannual expenditure of fifteen millions sterling, or sixtyseven millions of dollars, for the maintenance of the established church; to which add ten millions for poor rates, forty-four millions for the interest of the national debt, and twenty-one millions for government expenditure, amounting in all to ninety millions sterling, or four hundred and five millions of dollars a-year; an awful burden of expenditure on twenty millions of people;