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Untitled Article
Cfi Personalities // Sir , that is all crimination of persons not al * ready before the public , and all charges against individuals , not capable of being substantiated by proof , I shall avoid in my cor * fesppndence with you , not because 1 am convinced that hypo * erisy and intolerance can always be sufficiently exposed without unmasking the hypocrite and the bigot , but because it does not
square with my notions of justice to attack individuals , under a fictitious name , to fire from behind an ambush upon my adver- * $ ary who occupies the open plain . You require m $ also to abstain from " politics ; " I have no objection to engage to obey your injunction in this particular likewise * but let us first uia >* derstand one another *
By politics you mean , I take it , not the history of nations or the science of government , but the contentions of aspiring fac * tions , the squabbles of «« inp and outs , " and such politics are I acknowledge odious , and far below the notice of a Theological and Literary Magazine ; they are to true political philosophy , what astrology has been said to b ^ to astronomy , " the foolish be
offspring ^ f a wise parent / ' Bui you mutt aware that the term itself is very ambiguous , and that it has been used of late by religious people in that large sense in which I have said I conceive you do not vjse it , as including whatever relates to modern history , legislation , and government , and that in this sense the same odium has been attached to it , that belongs to it only in the sense of a factious struggle for power . A politician \ zs > bsen considered as great a troumer of society , as an unsound
| i $ rs 0 n is of the church , and in many cases , both * the one and the
other character have been identified . One of the churches I Tetoember , through which I passed , had it inserted in the 4 phi | rch-book , a book the opening of which every month in * 'sfnrpd me then with as much dread as the annual opening $ | trhe finance-minister ' s budget now does , that no member
Should belong to any political society , that is , should not subscribe a guinea a year for supporting legal petitions for a Reform | n Parliament , under pain of exclusion . The same rule I un- » ^ erstand has obtained among the Wesl eian Methodists . By this means much has been done to rob Englishmen of their iHFth-rright ; the enquiring into the conduct of their
representatives , and the controling of the public purse . A Machifivelian attempt has been made to enslave them by means of their consciei > ces . A young minister of my acquaintance happening to £$ pr $$ st during th ^ late revolutionary war , in company with $ oaie Pis ^ sentmg divines , his indignation at the in ad , unprincipled crusade tl > en carrying on against Republican France , was adiponishcd by a letter fiGin one of them a short tLme after that , ? ' with suGh sentiments , whatever might be his talents , natural
Untitled Article
J 24 On the Study of PoUtics .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1806, page 124, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1722/page/12/
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