culty of our question displays itself. Each side has its argument complete. The Quaker urges that the soldier's engagement is immoral; that the soldier's oath to do immoral deeds cannot be binding and ought to be broken; and that he (the Quaker) discerning this truth, is justified in publishing it and in pressing it on the soldier's conscience. The magistrate replies, that the soldier's engagement is not immoral; that his oath is binding; and that to incite him to desert is a grave offence, which it would be perilous to the State not to punish; hence, deeply as he may regret the necessity, the law must be enforced against the offender and ought not to be repealed. The Quaker bears the punishment meekly for righteousness' sake, just as did the Jew when persecuted by Antiochus Epiphanes, or the Christian by Diocletian. Yet it is difficult to see how the civil governor can do otherwise than prosecute (or, as the other party call it, persecute), until he begins to doubt whether the soldier's engagement is moral. The real collision between the parties, is on the question of morality. While they are opposed on this, the stronger party seems to persecute, and (if he is wrong) the imputation becomes just.

If indeed the magistrate attempt to blink the moral question;if he say, that it is no business of inferiors and of private persons to inquire into the morality of the law; that it is their part blindly to obey, and his blindly to enforce; he then assumes the purely Pagan posture, which will justify every enormity and degrade law into brute violence. In this way a Roman magistrate could insist that it was the duty of citizens to sacrifice to the image of the Emperor; that it was neither his duty nor theirs to pry into the right or wrong of it; it was theirs to obey, and his to enforce obedience, at the cost of their lives, if requisite. None of us, I think, will justify the magistrate in such an argument, except as a temporary necessity. He may say in certain cases, that, even if the law be wrong, to violate it is an evil, and perhaps a far greater evil than to submit to it. But to say that its immorality is no consideration for the citizen, is evidently a horrible doctrine, which we may well stigmatize as Pagan.

Thus it is only where the laws are habitually called to account before the tribunal of the nation—that is, it is only where a field of debate is afforded, in which the new moral impulses of each age can claim the reform of laws which offend the conscience of citizens that that collision of public law and private conscience which induces religious persecution is avoidable. For whenever

the legislators have unawares enacted something opposed to true morality, or whenever the citizen through ignorance supposes a law to be immoral and believes himself bound to oppose it; conscientious disobedience is liable to be punished as a wanton folly or mischievous contumacy: and where opinions are thus opposed, the punishment of disobedience evidently may be the very highest which the law allows. Considering then how very rare in the history of nations has been the permanent maintenance of free legislative institutions, in which the fresh thought of the nation can debate against the law and keep the laws in harmony with the national conscience; it would seem that every new moral movement must tend to provoke a collision of conscience with the law, except in the most favoured nations. Such new morality generally rises out of, or with, new religion : viewed therefore in this light, religious persecution, in some form and degree, becomes a natural necessity, which, however lamentable, ought not to appal us as indicating fatal and untractable weakness in the human mind.

But it is seldom that the collision between the citizen and the State is so unmanageable as it assuredly is in this case of the Quaker, especially if the latter goes the full length of objecting to all national armies and weapons of war. For the State cannot recede from the duty of the public defence, and is forced to punish those, who, from however pure motives of conscience try to undermine its military resources. But in by far the largest number of instances of religious persecution, the State can recede from its demand and pretensions, without detriment to its legititimate efficacy for every good object. Nothing is commoner than that the ruling power which speaks in the name and authority of the State is wielded by a very few narrow minds and still narrower hearts, either ignorant, or intensely proud and wilful; and so soon as the fact comes to light, that stubborn consciences exist, which dare to resist the established rules, this is regarded as an unpardonable offence, which not only must be put down by violence, but which in itself makes "concession" (as it is called) on the part of the ruler impossible. The principle holds equally, whether the laws resisted are called ecclesiastical or are called civil: the ruling power upholds them the more severely, expressly because they have been resisted. That this should be done by a Church which has committed itself to the dogma of its own infallibility is less surprizing: of course the pride of power is then reinforced by the fear of seeming self-condemned, if they recede

from an assertion once made. But it is from such reasoners as the ecclesiastical abettors of our Elizabeth's measures against the Puritans of her day, that the pretensions are most remarkable. They avow, maintain, and prove to their own satisfaction, that the things which the Queen is commanding are things wholly indifferent; that the Divine Head of the Church has decided nothing about them either way; and thence they infer, that the Queen may command what she pleases about them, and that all good subjects ought to obey. It is not pretended by them that the matters in question intimately concern the well-being of the State, or can be conceived as in any way politically important; as, for instance, the wearing of a surplice, the use of the ring in marriage, or the right to hold free prayer-meetings. On the contrary, the Queen's advocates treat the matters themselves with contempt, and allege that if she were to reverse all her commands, obedience would be equally due. According to them, the Queen is made to argue : "Because I think these things of no importance, and you think it a sacred duty to resist them, therefore I am resolved to break your stiff neck and teach you not to set your conscience against my commands." Such is indeed often the secret logic of Power, which, just in proportion as it is unchecked, nourishes in the heart of man an unreasonable and untractable pride.

If rulers reason thus, even when they have no religious fanaticism, how much more must we expect the same from them when that passion is superadded to the pride of power! This is the unamiable side of authority, and unhappily it is that with which we are all most familiar. But when we look away from the vices and follies of individual rulers, and consider the great ends, which in spite of this, are attained by the enforcement of law, we find the complication of the problem increase upon us. Indeed, precisely because Law is felt to be a sacred thing, religious persecution may by that very fact sometimes recommend itself to a ruler as just, and even as politic. This may need more careful explanation.

Mankind in general learn morality only from the Public Law. It is common to say, that we learn morals from religion; a statement which is but partially true. It has the appearance of truth, because religion has almost everywhere been established by law; and the outline of the moral code which the religion enjoins has been nationally enforced by punishing offences. Hitherto the millions of mankind have been neither philosophers nor saints they have had too little, whether of leisure or of

mental capacity, for abstract thought, and have learned both their morality and their religion chiefly from public institutions. Hence, what the Law does not punish, is, with the ignorant, thought to be right; except indeed so far as the public opinion of each neighbourhood visits certain offences with openly manifested reprobation. This also agrees with the notorious fact that human morality has grown out of forcibly imposed custom; as the very word Morals (Manners) testifies. We know that at no distant period "cattle lifting" was respectable-when it could be done with impunity. More recently, the slave trade was practised without reprobation by English wealthy firms; it is now certain of punishment by law, and is abhorred in England. The trade of the gambling house and the lottery was once about as respectable as commercial gambling now; but since it has been punished by law, it is regarded as an indefensible vice. Three bankers were lately condemned to a degrading punishment for conduct which probably their consciences had but feebly condemned, because no case of legal punishment for it had occurred. The blow fell upon them with unexpected severity; and however we condemn them, we must admit that they had received no visible warning. The pity which we are permitted to feel for them, is overpowered by the conviction that their punishment is very wholesome for the commercial public, and tends to raise commercial morality. For there is nothing which so elevates a nation collectively, as wisely severe law; when punishments fall alike on high and low, and are not so cruel as to hinder their enforcement. Such severity of law does not in itself make us virtuous; but by restraining from wrong deeds it aids to virtuous training, and lays a foundation of character on which national virtue may be happily superadded. And of all this, the heart of mankind has ever been deeply, if dimly, sensible. Out of it has arisen the reverence for Law, as for something sacred; and out of this again the heroic virtue of Patriotism; inasmuch as the sacredness of our country is but a reflection of the other idea, the sacredness of its Law. Indeed the national religion has itself generally been accounted sacred, not so much because it is ascertained to be true, as because it has come down from old times as a national institution. As to its truth-the majority of a nation has seldom thought itself competent, or found itself at leisure, for that inquiry: rather, it has accepted the religion and its morality as sacred, because it is part of the old law, and has next inferred its truth from its sacredness. Thus not only the strict

national life, which is wrapt up into the sentiment of a common patriotism, but even the social morality of nations, has been largely dependent on a sense of the sacredness of law, and on the consequent resolution to uphold the law with the sternest sacrifice of all that is dearest-whether our neighbours' lives or

our own.

Now every ruler is sensitively aware, that his power rests on opinion; and every wise ruler sets a profoundly high estimate on the public reverence for Law. Hence all rulers are naturally and rightly conservative, and dread any sudden breaking loose from the law, lest it lead to a general irreverence, which is equivalent to general immorality. Especially therefore when religious usages are renounced and denounced, which come down from dim antiquity and have entangled themselves with sentiment and habit so deeply that in comparison to them the ordinances of the ruling power are, as it were, common and profane; even strong minded rulers are inwardly terrified lest the preacher of such heresy should (to borrow words from the Book of Acts") "turn the world upside down." Such was the view habitual with Roman statesmen. Gibbon has with great discernment said, that the national religions of the Roman world seemed to the vulgar all equally true, to the philosopher equally false, and to the magistrate equally useful: but, I think, the last words must be interpreted, not, that the magistrate desired the belief of folly for its tendency to blind the vulgar, but, that he recognized veneration for that which was time-honoured, as the great preservative influence among those who had so few uniting and constraining sentiments. Men like the Roman Emperors Trajan and Decius were perhaps sincerely frightened at attacks upon the public religion, lest the whole edifice fall in mass. Such attacks, though made only with the tongue, seemed to them as formidable to the public tranquillity as if it had been threatened by weapons of war; and any persecution, which they authorized, must be referred to the head of erroneous conservative policy.

I have added the epithet erroneous, because it is a policy dictated by an absence of faith in the value of Truth. Perhaps there is no virtue in which statesmen, everywhere and in every time, are more deficient. The mere military statesmen see Force and Habit as the only bonds of a nation, and dread all new Truth, even if truth it be, which would unsettle Habit. Statesmen of the diplomatist and courtierlike cast, seem to live and breathe in falsehood, so that it would be a miracle if they could venerate