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Untitled Article
hold the author deserving of civil punishment . The wriier , might however , go further , and put his theory into practice : in that case , we should d . em him a fit object of the magistrate ' s care , and should feel satisfaction in his suffering the sentence of the law ; but the criminal would suffer , in law and equity , not as the author of a book in favour of a plurality of wives , but as a convicted bigamist . These remarks have scarcely left us room , fourthly , to notice the strange powers which the Reviewer requires government to
exercise in some cases , over religious sects , under pain of being reputed insane . He allows a
government to assume that some classes of society are , from their opinions , its enemies ; and then they are , of necessity , to be distin - guished by any mark , religious ,
physical , or moral , that chances to present itself . What is hereby intended , we realiy know not , except ( what we can scarcely think , ) that the holders of certain opinions are to be excommunicated as
heretics [ the religious mark ] , branded on the forehead ? or deprived of an ear [ the physical mark ] , and represented as wholly
unfit for social faith , complaisance and charity [ the moral mark ] . We are inclined to impute to the reviewer rather no meaning than this : he appears to us betrayed
into a want of sense , by a momentary condescension to intolerance , with which we have been long persuaded that the friends of liberty should stand in no other relation than that of antagonists : and « o far from being persuaded by his reasoning , we rise from tbe examination of it with' a renewed
Untitled Article
conviction , that ( altering a little his own statement , ) it is quite idle to argue this question in any other way , than as a question of general , imprescriptable , inalienable right .
That we may not , however , dismiss the reader with a different sentiment towards the reviewer from that which we ourselves feel , which is , upon the whole , one of high respect , we shall conclude this article with a further extract from the
Review under consideration , in which the merits of the Protestant Dissenters are candidly allowed and liberally extolled . u Last year , Lord Sidmouth made a light scratch in the
epidermis of the Dissenting church . Of the extraordinary consequences , we were- all witnesses ; and yet there are persons who may think it possible to revive the execution of the Test Acts ! If there are no
such extravagant persons , why may not those laws be repealed ? And never let it be forgotten , against what species of men they have been enacted—against men whp have run greater risks , and with greater unanimity , to preserve the free government and
constitution of this country , than any other set of men whatever . During the reign of Charles II . the smali remains of liberty were chiefly preserved and cherished by them * They resisted with effect , the arbitrary designs of Charles and . James II . when their own
immediate interest , would have led them to an unconditional submission . They joined cordially in the Revolution , and exposed themselves to the resentment of a bigoted princess and an infatuated-people , to secure the succession of the House of Hanover .
Untitled Article
On a Passage in the Edinburgh Review . " 3 ?
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1812, page 37, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1744/page/37/
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