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political . Protest as some of them may against the word , ' it will belong to them whilst the State takes any notice of them and shews any partiality towards another class of believers and worshipers , and whilst there is any civil right withheld or abridged on account of Nonconformity , and privileges are granted to other religionists which are denied to them on the sole ground
of religion . They assume , in fact , a political character whenever they petition Parliament or address the Throne . This dread of being regarded as a political party may have sprung either from an apprehension of being maltreated if they looked to the bettering of their condition , just as the slaves in the West Indies keep the word freedom under their breath , lest its utterance should bring down upon them the whip ; or from a fanatical notion that the spirituality which it behoves true Chris r tians to aim after is inconsistent with an anxious regard to national measures and a serious attention to the duties of patriotism . The sentiment is alike mischievous in either case , and in both cases it is contemptible .
Whatever ground there may have been for the silence of fear in the reigns of the Stuarts , there has been certainly none for the last hundred and forty years , and it is our fixed opinion that the pusillanimity of the Nonconformists at the Restoration , and from that era to the Revolution , so far from disarming a persecuting government , only provoked its hostility : a weak enemy is crushed , a strong one is respected . Since the accession of the House of Brunswick to the British Throne , the state of the Dissenters appears to us to have depended wholly upon their own temper and conduct . Every
enlargement of their liberties has been the result of their united and firm but
temperate application for their rights . When they have slept , they have been forgotten . It is not . to be supposed that government will do any thing for a people who do nothing for themselves , or remove grievances which are not galling , or confer benefits which are not valued . There have
been feverish moments within the period which we have described , when it
might have been inexpedient for the Dissenters to put themselves before the country ; but with these exceptions , what man amongst them does not see and lament that numberless opportunities of improving their condition and that of their children have been lost ? Instead of rising , they have sunk in political importance ; for time gives to a wrong the colour of a right , and
intolerance is riveted by prescription and usage . Many of their best families ( in a worldly point of view ) have slidden into the Establishment to escape from civil proscription . Their parliamentary friends have been disheartened , and their enemies encouraged , by their supineness . A generation has grown up without hearing a complaint from their lips . A few years' more folding of the hands to sleep and their case will be hopeless ; for a party may brave hate and struggle through oppression , but never yet did it live long under
contempt . It may seem paradoxical that so numerous , wealthy , intelligent and active a people as we have described the Dissenters , should be regardless of their civil condition and acquiesce in the denial of their political rights ; but the
second cause that we have assigned of their fear of being accounted a political body will explain the mystery . A large proportion of them have been unnerved by the apprehension that they should lose their spirituality
if they stepped out into the world and manifested any zeal but that which has reli g ion for its object . This state of mind has been encouraged by certain ministers that have aspired to the distinction of being peculiarly heavenlyminded , and of enjoying a more than common share of Divine influence . When rights and liberties and parties have been spoken of , these lofty spi- ^
Untitled Article
252 State of Religious Parties in England .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1827, page 252, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1795/page/20/
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