to oblige men, baptized and educated in popery, to renounce their religion or their property; but are called laws to prevent the growth of popery; as if their purpose was only to prevent conversions to that sect, and not to persecute a million of people already engaged in it. But of all the instances of this sort of legislative artifice, and of the principles that produced it, I never met with any, which made a stronger impression on me, than that of Louis XIV., in the revocation of the edict of Nantz. That monarch had, when he made that revocation, as few measures to keep with public opinion as any man. In the exercise of the most unresisted authority at home, in a career of uninterrupted victory abroad, and in a course of flattery equal to the circumstances of his greatness in both these particulars, he might be supposed to have as little need as disposition to render any sort of account to the world of his procedure towards his subjects. But the persecution of so vast a body of men as the Hugonots was too strong a measure even for the law of pride and power. It was too glaring a contradiction even to those principles, upon which persecution itself is supported. Shocked at the naked attempt, he had recourse, for a palliation of his conduct, to an unkingly denial of the fact, which made against him. In the preamble, therefore, to his act of revocation, he sets forth, that the edict of Nantz was no longer necessary, as the object of it (the protestants of his kingdom) were then reduced to a very small number. The refugees in Holland cried out against this misrepresentation. They asserted, I believe with truth, that this revocation had driven 200,000 of them out of their country; and they could readily demonstrate, there

still remained 600,000 protestants in France. If this were the fact (as it was undoubtedly) no argument of policy could have been strong enough to excuse a measure, by which 800,000 men were despoiled, at one stroke, of so many of their rights and privileges. Louis XIV. confessed, by this sort of apology, that if the number had been large, the revocation had been unjust. But, after all, is it not most evident, that this act of injustice, which let loose on that monarch such a torrent of invective and reproach, and which threw so dark a cloud over all the splendour of a most illustrious reign, falls far short of the case in Ireland? The privileges, which the protestants of that kingdom enjoyed antecedent to this revocation, were far greater than the Roman Catholics of Ireland ever aspired to under a contrary establishment. The number of their sufferers, if considered absolutely, is not half of ours; if considered relatively to the body of each community, it is not perhaps a twentieth part. And then the penalties and incapacities, which grew from that revocation, are not so grievous in their nature, nor so certain in their execution, nor so ruinous by a great deal to the civil prosperity of the state, as those which we have established for a perpetual law in our unhappy country. It cannot be thought to arise from affectation, that I call it so. What other name can be given to a country, which contains so many hundred thousands of human creatures reduced to a state of the most abject servitude ?—Tracts on the Popery laws.

RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION.- -First then I observe, that if the principle of their final and beneficial intention be admitted as a just ground for such pro

ceedings, there never was, in the blamable sense of the word, nor ever can be, such a thing as a religious persecution in the world. Such an intention is pretended by all men; who not only insist, that their religion has the sanction of Heaven, but is likewise, and for that reason, the best and most convenient to human society. All religious persecution, Mr. Bayle well observes, is grounded upon a miserable petitio principii. You are wrong, I am right; you must come over to me, or you must suffer. Let me add, that the great inlet, by which a colour for oppression has entered into the world, is by one man's pretending to determine concerning the happiness of another, and by claiming a right to use what means he thinks proper in order to bring him to a sense of it. It is the ordinary and trite sophism of oppression. there is not yet such a convenient ductility in the human understanding, as to make us capable of being persuaded, that men can possibly mean the ultimate good of the whole society, by rendering miserable for a century together the greater part of it; or that any one has such a reversionary benevolence as seriously to intend the remote good of a late posterity, who can give up the present enjoyment which every honest man must have in the happiness of his contemporaries.-Tracts on the Popery laws.

But

CONDUCT OF THE CATHOLICS DURING THE AMERICAN WAR.-Gentlemen, America-when the English nation seemed to be dangerously, if not irrecoverably, divided; when one, and that the most growing branch, was torn from the parent stock, and ingrafted on the power of France, a great terror fell upon this kingdom. On a sudden we awakened from our dreams of conquest, and saw ourselves threatened

You remember the
In that hour of our

with an immediate invasion; which we were at that time very ill prepared to resist. cloud that gloomed over us all. dismay, from the bottom of the hiding-places into which the indiscriminate rigour of our statutes had driven them, came out the body of the Roman Catholics. They appeared before the steps of a tottering throne, with one of the most sober, measured, steady, and dutiful addresses that was ever presented to the crown. It was no holiday ceremony; no anniversary compliment of parade and show. It was signed by almost every gentleman of that persuasion, of note or property, in England. At such a crisis, nothing but a decided resolution to stand or fall with their country could have dictated such an address; the direct tendency of which was to cut off all retreat; and to render them peculiarly obnoxious to an invader of their own communion. The address showed what I long languished to see, that all the subjects of England had cast off all foreign views and connections, and that every man looked for his relief from every grievance, at the hands only of his own natural government.-Speech at Bristol previous to the Election.

THE PROTESTANT ASSOCIATION IN 1780.-I find with satisfaction and pride, that not above four or five in this city (and I dare say these misled by some gross misrepresentation) have signed that symbol of delusion and bond of sedition, that libel on the national religion and English character, the Protestant Association. It is, therefore, gentlemen, not by way of cure but of prevention, and lest the arts of wicked men may prevail over the integrity of any one amongst us, that I think it necessary to open to

you the merits of this transaction pretty much at large; and I beg your patience upon it; for, although the reasonings that have been used to depreciate the act are of little force, and though the authority of the men concerned in this ill design is not very imposing; yet the audaciousness of these conspirators against the national honour, and the extensive wickedness of their attempts, have raised persons of little importance to a degree of evil eminence, and imparted a sort of sinister dignity to proceedings that had their origin in only the meanest and blindest malice.-Speech at Bristol previous to the Election.

CONDUCT OF THE CATHOLICS DURING THE RIOTS OF 1780.-There was a circumstance (justice will not suffer me to pass it over) which, if anything could enforce the reasons I have given, would fully justify the act of relief, and render a repeal, or anything like a repeal, unnatural, impossible. It was the behaviour of the persecuted Roman Catholics under the acts of violence and brutal insolence, which they suffered. I suppose there are not in London less than four or five thousand of that persuasion from my country, who do a great deal of the most laborious work in the metropolis; and they chiefly inhabit those quarters, which were the principal theatre of the fury of the bigotted multitude. They are known to be men of strong arms, and quick feelings, and more remarkable for a determined resolution, than clear ideas, or much foresight. But though provoked by everything that can stir the blood of men, their houses and chapels in flames, and with the most atrocious profanations of everything which they hold sacred before their eyes, not a hand was moved to retaliate, or even to defend. Had a conflict once begun, the