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    at Nisraes , for otherwise the idea would not have been started of banishing Protestant worship out of the city . By whom this spirit was excited , to whom the long existence of the evil is to be attributed , may be a matter of doubt . They who

    -would make it a merely civil question will have to account for the singularity of the circumstance , that during the Revolution and throughout the whole despotism of Buonaparte the Protestants enjoyed equal liberty of worship with the Catholics . Many have been the civil dissensions * but

    they never took this turn , till the Bourbons were re-established , and not till the Duke of Anguouleme had made his appearance in the South of France . It is now asserted , and no one can feel a pleasure in its being otherwise , that the cabinet of France are

    entirely disposed to grant religious liberty to the Protestants . Happy shall we be to learn , that this is the case : but the exertions in England will be found to have been very useful . The strong and decisive manner in which London , Exeter , Glasgow , Hull ,

    Newcastle , Plymouth and other places have declared their sentiments , do honour to this country . Even if they had merely met to express their abhorrence of persecution in general their meetings would have been beneficial : for even in a country , Protestant like our own , this sentiment

    is not , we fear , as yet , universal . It cannot be too often impressed upon Christians , that persecution is alien to their reli gion : they are under the law of love ; and no one , who taketh upon himself the name of Christ , must dare to condemn his neighbour or insult and revile him for a difference of

    religious opinion . To his own master he standeth or falleth , and in religion no one upon earth has a right to call himself lord or master . This says the Saviour , is the case in other communities ; but it shall uot be so

    in mine . The n # me of the Duke of Wellington has been brought forward upon this occasion , in consequence of a letter written by his Grace to the Protestant Society . In this much is attributed to the state of parties in the South of France , and the disposition of the French government to religious liberty is strongly maintained . But

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    as to the facts themselves they are not attempted to be denied , and it does not by any means appear , that the Duke of Wellington had better means of information than might be had fn London . In the circles , in which

    his Grace moves , it cannot be expected that the situation of Protestants would be the subject of much attention ; and the state of France is such , that their complaints would be very much stifled , before they reached the capital .

    The Protestant ministers have also lately appeared with addresses to the court , from different places , and letters to the societies in England . But besides that the representation of the quiet state of Protestants in one place is no argument against persecution in

    another , these addresses seem to have been got together as in England sometimes , when compliments agreeable to the court are procured from various places , and the little dependence to be placed upon them is proverbial .

    It was not to be expected * that an attack upon the Protestants would begin in Paris . The attempt to excite such ajmeasure might be attended with dangerous consequences ; for , if the Protestants are few in number , the Catholics themselves are far from

    being a considerable body ; and they , who have no religion at all , might involve in common ruin both the parties . The horrors that have taken place are to be traced up to a remote source , to the revocation of the edict of Nantz ,

    by the infamous Louis the XIV . ; whose name we are glad to see not quoted , when an attempt is made to cast a lustre upon that of Bourbon . Henry the IV ., Louis the XII ., and

    St . Louis are spoken of , but the great hero is Henry the IV ., who was a Protestant , and for political purposes having changed his religion , his name is tarnished in one of his descendants ,

    who became a faithless persecutor . The conduct of Louis the XIV . has been beyond measure ruinous to France . In the first instance it banished from the country a very great proportion of its arts , sciences and literature . At the time of the

    revocation of the edict 8 , the Protestants possessed a very learned clergy , and several schools and universities . There was great emulation between the learned of thfc two eects , and the Ck *

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    & 2 State of Public Affairs .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1816, page 62, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2448/page/62/