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    sen the authority of the writer , but to remove what appears to us a blemish in a piece of reasoning , otherwise very masterly . The passage to which we refer is as follows : —

    < We begin with a perfect admission of the right of the legislature to exclude any description of men fr > m civil offices in consequence of their religious opinions —provided they are satisfied that such an exclusion is essential to

    the general well-being of the com . munity . The government has a right to do any thing ( hat is for the good of the governed ; and it is possible that a particular religious sect may be so notorious f > r dangerous political opinions , that

    their Faith maybe taken as a test , or mark , of their doctrines up 6 n government . ' In the changes and chances of the world , Socinian doctrines may be . firmly united to republican habits , —as dependence on the See of Rome may be combined with the love of despotism ; and then it does riot seem very unreasonable , that religious creeds , in themselves inrrbcent and not the subject of punishment , should become so , from their accidental alliance with dangerous

    opinions upon subjects purely secular . Cases might be put , where it would be insanity in any government not to distinguish its enemies by any mark , religious , physical or moral , that chancet } to present itself . It is quite idle , then , to argue this question as a question of general right / ' p . 154 . Now upon this weYerhafk , ^? r . s £ , that the broad admission with

    which the paragraph sets out , will justify any religious tyranny whateyer . Persecutors have nev ^ r perhaps been actuated by mere blood .

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    thirstiness ; but , for the most part , by a regard to truth , according to their own conceptions of it ; on the prevalence of which they have placed , in their imaginations , the welfare of-the community .

    Allow governors to persecute only in the mildest way , i . e . by exclusion from civil offices , at the cat ! of expediency , and the perpetuation of , intolerance js secured : for a man musi have more philosophy than is the usual lot of such as

    sit in the seat of government , not to believe that the opinions which he himself rejects are pernicious to society , and ought , by all possible means , to be discountenanced and repressed .

    We object , secondly , to the un . qualified doctrine of government having " a right to do any thing that is for the good of the governed ; " it wpuid , as appears to us , be nearer to tfie truth and more

    congenial to the spirit ot . the English constitution , to say that governors have a right to do any thing which the people , by whom they are made , have constituted and appointed them to do ; though this latter proposition would still

    require some abatement , in order to its being strictly true ; for there are powers which no sovereign authority can possess or confer , and amongst therri we reckon first of all , that of hindering the AK mighty from receiving the worship of his creatures - Government

    has not a right to waste the strength of tht * community upon the impracticable attempt to change the religious opinions of a part of it by force : in a word , no individual and no mass of individuals has a

    right to do whfU is morally wrong ; which is undeniably don <* 3 in punishing a man ibr tha * to which he

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    On a Passage in the c < Edinburgh Review . ' 33

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    V # I ,. Vtl , F

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1812, page 33, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1744/page/33/