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    Untitled Article

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    They are not for persons of all classes and opinions ; but , from the manner in which they are constituted , they are for a particular class , and ( I use not the term invidiously ) for a particular sect amongst all others . A gentleman , a friend of mine , who has travelled much on the continent , and who has been in habits of intercoljrse ~ Tv iTh ^^ ^ learning and science in the various universities

    abroad , has told me that amongst these men . nothing excited their astonishment so greatly as to find that in England , which is generally considered the most enlightened country on the face of the earth , and in the 19 th century , places of avowedly national education were not open for the instruction of all . What

    can be a more gross anomaly than that a man shall be required to make a declaration of opinions ^ which it ought to be one of the last results of the whole of his studies through life to form , to fix , and to ascertain ? Yet this actually is done at our uni versities ; and though I am perfectly well aware that there are those who

    call themselves dissenters , and are so , who nevertheless do not hesitate to make that declaration and to subscribe those forms , yet I do not consider that subscription consistent with the integrity or with the reverence to be attached to making a solemn declaration upon oath . Suppose sen enlightened individual were

    to found a chair for the teaching geology or astronomy , or , for instance , political economy , and were to tell the person appointed to it , 1 You are to teach political economy , ( or whatever may be the science , ) but you are not to avail yourself of the new lights . which have broken , in

    upon it , you are not to comprise in your inculcations any new discoveries , or any recent facts ; you are only to teach what Dr . Adam Smith taught seventy years ago ; and if you teach one syllable less or more than that , on that very instant you forfeit your chair . I ask , is not that

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    paralleled by the proceedings of our universities ? We actually take the barbarous remnants of the superstitious theology , the dark and monkish ignorance of the 14 th and 15 th centuries , and we make this the test and measure of moral and religious opinions in the 19 th century . When

    ! Lyo ^ geo&Mi , J ^ Xarj ^^ education , there was no one subject excited such deep and painful regrets in my mind as to feel , that because I was a protestant dissenter , because I had been taught by my parents to reverence the principles of protestant dissent , and still more because I was intended for the exercise of

    the ministry amongst protestant dissenters , I was obliged conscientiously to forego all the advantages and benefits of these universities , ( and they are the very highest to a man who seeks to cultivate his mind , ) because institutions which were

    formed for avowedly national purposes were limited to the benefit and advantage of one particular class . As to the fund which is set . apart for the maintenance of the clergy of the national Church , I think that this , like every other part of the property , should be considered as national property , and be completely at the disposal of the national legislature . And I trust that the time

    will come when religion will be entirely severed from the state . In the mean time , for all those truths do not break upon all men ' s minds at once , I for one shall be perfectly content to retain my situation as an unbeneficed , unpatronized teacher of religion , so long as there exists a majority of the people of this nation who think that that connexion

    between the Church and the State ought to exist . So long as the majority of the people of this country demand a national Church , ( though I can have nothing to do with it , ) while I will employ my humble powers to point out the mischief of such a connexion , so long I would not have any portion of its property .

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    CORRESPONDENCE . 123

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 1, 1833, page 123, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2611/page/27/