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Untitled Article
with Mr . Fox , whether the restraints and disabilities originally set on foot for her protection , and which are now insensibly wearing away under the
indulgent administration of our government , may not have been the nurses , if not the parents of sectaries in every part of the kingdom , —Their founda * - tions were laid when there was much
lees toleration than at present , and if the Church feels any serious alarm from their expansion , she should lend her hand to the discouragement of their communities , by inviting the Legislature to let the law pass over them without the very knowledge of their existence . —So little of restraint
is now left , that even if it were the sound principle of support to our ecclesiastical system , it would be utterly useless 5 whilst the exclusion from civil incorporations bestows a kind of corporate character and perpetuity upon religious dissents , which would otherwise have a tendency to
dissolution . These observations are * however * addressed only to the ministers of the church , and not to those of the state ^^ the great body of Dissenters are , I believe , fully sensible of the liberal disposition of the governtnent towards them ; , as enlightened men , they know how to appreciate the difficulties which have attended the best
wishes for them ; and speaking , of course , of the great and well known bodies of Dissenting Protestants , I am happy in this occasion of expressing my perfect conviction of the fidelity of their civil allegiance , and the sincerity of their religious persuasions .
Mr . Fox ' s principle receives , however , a still more striking illustration from those who differ from me regarding them , and who falsely impute to them republican principles . —They undoubtedly cherish the doctrines of civil liberty with peculiar warmth of
feeling * the inevitable consequence of any species of jealous disability or restraint ; and on this account-there are . some who would be sorry to see that spirit destroyed , by breaking up their exclusions , and thrbwing them without distinction into the oblivious mass
of the people . The moral certainty of this obvious consequence deserves the utmost attention in the consideration of the Roman Catholic question . Educated myself in an almost superstitious repugnance to that religion , ( though I
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have the highest opinion of , and the most sincere regard for very many of its members , ) 1 found it difficult at first to bring up rny mind to the administration of this only specific for iu
gradual dechne and extinction ? but I shall now never hesitate a moment for applying it ; independently of ^ all the other great principles so powerfully insisted upon by Fox in the volumes now before me \ but 1 never can admit that there is any foundation
whatsoever for emancipating their Spiritual Pastors from that dependence upon the civil government which is submitted to by our Protestant Bishops and Clergy , aud even by Catholics themselves in the Catholic states .
In 1793 , we find Mr . Pox equally conspicuous in support of the same principles , when in a season of great alarm , new laws were proposed for the punishment of sedition and of traitor ous correspondence—nothing could be more false or wicked than the
calumnies of that day , which represented him as sheltering the disturbers of the public tranquillity—? his object was quite the reverse—it was to remove th e disturbances by the vigorous administration of our ancient laws ,
which he held to be sufficient for the emergency : it was to put to shame the falsehood of French principles , by holding up those of England in their undefiled , unsullied beauty , and to oppose a spirit of change and revolution , by changing nothing , without urgent cause , in our own venerable
constitution . This principle even strikingly distinguishes his speech , when in 1703 , he supported a " motion to reform it ; arid nothing certainly which the wit or wisdom of man ever prompted ,
illustrated its value with greater force or truth , than when he said , " thahf by a peculiar interposition of Dwrne Power , all the wisest men of every ^ and every country , could be collected into one assembh / , he did not belief that their united wisdom would be caf
fihie of forming a tolerable constitution . —What rebuke could be greater to the ignorance and presumption iifHcn characterized the time he spoke in-What stronger pledge * that his par pbfce was to preserve our own constitution , not constructed by ' ' sembled theorists , btit grbwing ; Up" £ V natural and often accidental caus ^ j through the lapse of ni « ty a # *>
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3-3 ^ Ltn ~ d Ersf&rie ' $ Chariitter of Mn Fox , as an Orator and Statesman .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1815, page 334, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1761/page/6/
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