PART II. I cannot conscientiously pay this tax, you have the power of taking it from me; and whatever I may think of the exertion of such a power, I will use no unconstitutional means to escape from its consequences. With regard to the annuity-tax in this city, it is obviously merely a tax on a certain portion of the inhabitants, rated on them according as they live within certain limits, and occupy houses of a particular rental. The man who conscientiously refuses to pay it, does not resist the law;* he merely says, I cannot without sin voluntarily pay this tax: if any of my property goes for such a purpose, it must be taken from me. And no man who chooses to buy property burdened with tithe, or to occupy a house, the rent of which subjects him to the Annuity, in the slightest degree violates his duty as a peaceable subject, when he refuses, voluntarily to pay either, leaving it to the law, or those interested in the execution of it, to see to what they may account their own rights and interests.†

Indeed, this attempt to mystify a plain question, is but a particular exemplification of one leading character of the system,-its tendency to entwist itself with all the arrangements of civil society, so as to make it all but impossible to live in a country where it prevails, without getting entangled and polluted by it. Its prophetic symbol is represented as commanding, that "no man

"There may be a refusal to obey, where there is no resistance."-Ewing on the Duty of Christians to Civil Government, p. 15. + Vide Note XL.

might buy or sell, save he that had its mark," PART II. either in his hand or in his forehead.* The image of buying and selling naturally describes the enjoyment of civil rights in the affairs of this world, and the enjoyment of these, every Establishment seeks more or less to appropriate exclusively to those who receive its mark. It is surely quite enough, while such a system continues, if those who disapprove of it, patiently bear the inconveniences and injustice done them, in their persons and properties. It is rather hard, to be told, that they have no right to hold certain properties or to occupy certain houses; and that they cannot submit peaceably to the penalty of what they account an unjust law, without being calumniated as movers of sedition, and enemies of the public peace.

tation-the

tax.

A second limitation under which the law of Second limitribute must be understood is, that we are not illegality of a morally bound to pay an illegal tax. There are few men now who regard the conduct of Hampden, in refusing to pay ship-money, when illegally demanded by Charles the First, with any other sentiments than those of admiration and gratitude or who contemplate with other feelings than contempt and disapprobation, the faithless monarch, and his still more unprincipled minister, the apostate Strafford, who wished “ Mr Hampden well whipped into his right senses;" and "if the rod," says he, " be so used, that it smart not, I shall be the more sorry." The necessity of

*Rev. xiii. 17.

+ Lord Nugent's Memorials of Hampden, Edin. Rev. vol. liv. p. 525.

PART II. such an interference, we trust, will not soon return; but if it should, Hampden is not likely to want followers. Submission to an illegal tax, as to any other act of oppression, is not necessarily wrong; in particular cases, it may be undoubtedly right, though in no case, where the government is essentially free, should the injustice be submitted to, without protest against it, and the employment of constitutional means for redress.

Third limitation-the object of the

office.

The only other limitation is that, which originmagistrate's ates in the magistrate going entirely out of his sphere, and imposing taxes for purposes with which he, as a magistrate, has nothing to do. All taxes for the support of religion come under this head as well as the first.*-Because they are taxes for a purpose with which the magistrate, in his official character, has nothing to do, we are not morally bound to pay them, as because they are taxes for a purpose we account sinful, we are bound not to pay them.†

"It is not a whit more equitable, though it may be less cruel and absurd, to compel Dissenters to contribute to the revenues of the Established Church, than it would be to compel them to conform to its doctrines, its worship, and its government. The latter is only a greater stretch of usurped authority. The civil power has just as much right to compel the one as to compel the other. If it has no right to coerce a man's religious profession, it has none to tax him for the support of its own. Once admit the right of private judgment; and then the right to choose, and to give effect to that choice, by exclusively voluntary means, follows as a matter of course. Now, as civil government is necessarily distinguished by compulsory authority, and is ordained for civil society only, if it shall presume to employ its coercive powers in religious matters, it transgresses its proper bounds, and becomes unjust and oppressive.”—Dr Russell's Speech at a Meeting in Dundee, p. 10.

+ Vide Note XLI.

tian resist the

tribute in any

To the question, can it ever be the duty of PART II. Christians to resist the payment of tribute, it is May a Chrisenough to reply that it does not appear at all payment of an impossible thing, that a government, by its case? extravagant and wicked expenditure, and unjust and burdensome impositions, may become an intolerable nuisance; and that even a single very unreasonable and oppressive tax, may bring the State into imminent hazard, and make it a question with the wisest and best of the citizens,what is the course which, in such circumstances, they ought to adopt? The tax for the support of the Episcopal Establishment in Scotland, was one cause of the overthrow of the government which enacted it; and I am not prepared to condemn the conduct of our forefathers, at the revolution of 1688, nor, though decidedly disapproving of fighting for religion, even of those of them who fell in the noble attempt to free their enslaved country, at a previous period. The names of Russell, and Sidney, and Argyle, are not less honourable and honoured, than those of their more fortunate successors.*

* The elaborate yet feeble attempt of Mr Plumer Ward, in his "Historical Essay on the Real Character and Amount of the Precedent of the Revolution of 1688," to tarnish the fair fame of these worthies, can produce but little effect; but the mere fact of such a thing having been produced and published, at this time of day, proves the importance of reiterated statements of the principles and their grounds, on which these noble-minded men counted not their lives dear to them. We trust that the Queen's Historiographer for Scotland, in the continuation of his great work, will take an opportunity of exposing the inaccuracies of this calumniator of these martyrs of patriotism,-as well as the still grosser misrepresentations by the author of "Montrose and

PART II.

Our Lord's precept and example.

I am sure the attempt to uphold such an Establishment, as that which is the shame of Ireland's government, and the curse of her inhabitants-an Establishment condemned and hated by a prodigious majority of those for whose benefit it ought to exist, if it exist at all,-by the means through which that Establishment has long been upheld, would, if persisted in but for a few years, in either of the other two departments of the empire, produce revolution. Any attempt to compel a people to support an institution, especially an ecclesiastical institution, which calls into operation the deepest and most powerful springs of human action, conscience and religion, to which even a large proportion of the people, though not a majority, is decidedly opposed, is so obviously hazardous, that we cannot doubt that the growing light, as to the principles of government, will prevent our rulers from carrying such an experiment to the point of danger. The sooner they give up the experiment altogether, they will find it the better for the peace and prosperity of the country.

Our Lord's precept and example have been appealed to as authorizing, and even requiring the unrestricted payment of tribute; and it has been asserted, that no Christian can refuse to pay a tax, even for what he accounts a sinful purpose,

the Covenanters," of the martyrs of religion in that dark period of our history. It is a work for which the historic researchacuteness-and love of liberty, manifested in his writings, preeminently qualify him,—a work worthy of his talents and acquirements, congenial with his principles, and appropriate to his office.