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Untitled Article
R rocco , and Algier , and , at last , that 4 - an Asiatic Society would be effected . " For the residence of this diet he proposes a City , with its territory , to be given to it , -in full sovereignty , preferring 'Utrecht , am oner other reasons , for
the following : '— " The City of Peace cannot be better placed , than in the midst of the roost peaceable nation in the world . In the midst of a monarchy the congress" might be " dissipated in a
moment , " by " a turbulent and hot-brained monarch . There is no Christian nation wherein is found , among the learned or the vulgar , a greater disposition to tolerate different religions , than in the Dutch nation . "
To this European society , permanently represented by deputies in the City of Peace , the individual members were to refer their differences , Qjyperil of compulsion by the united power of the general confed racy . To the same diet
the governing power of any particular state was lo resort for aid against jmy attempt to alter its ecclesiastical or . political constitution . Thus . was precluded every
iippxovement in a state , not approved by 4 Ke power in possession . The author remarks , tBat ^ Cbarles t . b | ad not been u destroyed by rfie spirit of rebellion , " if this
European society ^ had existed . Xet , in another place , he a $ ks * " *\ i , f at any-time the sovereigns of ? England should endeavour to gain an absolute power over their subjects , where can the subjects find
assistance against such enterprises , UQless it be in the European society ? " He adds , " The English would haye tvva very considerable advantages in the union ; first the delivering themselves from
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the danger of civil wars , which may in ten years , nay in any time happen among them , upon occasion of the difference between
the Episcopal and the Presb yte . rian religion . Second , they might then recal a great many English and Irish Catholics , by giving them the same liberty as in Holland ; no small comfort to those
poor refugees and their protestant relations . " How far St Pierre contemplated religious liberty in his Project does not clearly appear ; Sully , whose account of
Henry s design he so closely foU lows , was quite in . the ^ dark-on that subjecU The King , whose ideas of religion must have been merely political , would preserve as established , the Roman ,
Lutheran , and Reformed , Qa this Sully remarks ( p . 30 ) , thai ^ new sects or opinions should carefully be suppressed on their Jirst ap « pea ? ance " and that " there h nothing in all resoects so
Demiclous as a liberty in belief . " Such was the protestantism of that eg ^ lightened politician * ^ It Is impossible , within the limits which I can allow Tny ^ jL to g ; o into the detail of ^ JPierjpes arguments for his Project ^ ox his
solution of difficulties p d answers to objections . l ^ Iorie of these can be expected to have any effect , unless those ^ v ji p rule over men shoqldjever consider the " Interest of sovereigns in the next world / wKich is the title of a short section
of this work- Till then this Pro . ject must be classed with those Utopian theories , which have only done honour to the hearts , and often to the understandings , of the theorists . There are interspersed , by the author , many valuable passages on those important sub jects ,
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752 SookfVorm . No . XVI .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1814, page 752, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2447/page/24/
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