tories who favoured the exiled dynasty have ever been implacable foes to the cause of dissent. But those princes who have been least unfriendly to the people's liberties, have been also most desirous of extending the toleration, and of abolishing the odious restrictions of the test laws; and the most zealous whigs have usually deemed it essential to the appearance of consistency to advocate the cause of dissenters. These opposite tendencies of the two parties into which the governing powers of our country have been divided, are perfectly natural and reasonable. For, as the very existence of churches dissenting from the religion of the state, is an avowal of the duty of thinking for ourselves, and of the right of differing from our rulers, the patriot prince or minister alone can view this indication of a free spirit with a favourable eye, while the lovers of passive submission must regard it with abhorrence.

If the mere political reformer should deny the obligations of our country to the influence of dissenters in the civil state, the Christian patriot must own that religious liberty, the glory of our island, is the offspring of the dissent. The puritans and nonconformists pleaded only for the right of enjoying their own sentiments because they were true; but the dissenters, their successors, have added to the ardour which this selfish feeling inspires, the benevolence that contends for the liberty of every man to profess whatever he thinks to be requisite to his own eternal safety.

Even within the pale of the establishment, dissenters have diffused a portion of religious liberty. So completely has the increase of separatists lowered the haughty tone of the hierarchy, that it now piques

itself on its liberality, and pleads for its own existence on the ground of its being essential to the preservation of religious liberty in the kingdom, as if only the years and experience of the elder could keep the younger and more ardent communions from persecuting each other. While we smile at this plea, so different from her former style, it is highly consoling to observe the influence of dissenters in inducing the establishment to adopt a more gentle rule towards her own sons. It is now nearly half a century since the rise of the evangelical clergy, who have increased till they have formed, what is lamented by the dignitaries, as a formidable schism in the body. But instead of the stern inquisitorial measures which cut off the nonconformists, the ecclesiastical governors have contented themselves with such timid palliatives as have only left the evil to become incurable; for, whatever disposition they show to expel the evangelical party, they dare not give the dissenters the majority, by adding such formidable hosts to their numbers.

INFLUENCE OF DISSENTERS ON NATIONAL
PROSPERITY.

Nations have been too generally supposed to prosper in proportion as they extend their conquests. But as more wealth is produced by the cultivation of a small estate, than by the mere possession of a larger, it is not the extent of its territory, but the numbers of its subjects, their industrious habits, their correct morals, their superior comforts and their intellectual eminence which form the prosperity of a nation. The voice of history attests that these important objects have been promoted in proportion as

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religion has prevailed. But nations cannot expect the advantages of religion unless they afford it the liberty which it at once demands, deserves, and repays. While Spain, which most completely succeeded in extinguishing the free spirit of the reformation, sunk, in spite of its immense advantages, into a poor decrepid state, Holland rose by its more liberal policy to a rank far beyond that which its territory could have claimed. That spirit of religious liberty which dissenters have cherished, has enabled our diminutive island to contend with France for the empire of the world. The mental vigour produced by free discussion of the most important of all subjects-religion, is not only favourable to intellectual eminence in every other department, but is also a stimulus to physical exertion, by which the productions of the soil are multiplied, while the temperance which religious sects confessedly possess, husbands capital, the germ of wealth. The full effects produced by the spirit of dissenters may be seen in the United States of America, that most surprising example of a rising empire. There the men who were driven from this country by the persecuting spirit of a hierarchy, have grown into a mighty empire, which regards religious liberty as its palladium, suffering no exclusive establishment to impede agriculture by tithes, or exclude talents by religious

tests.

Besides exciting a disposition for physical and mental exertion, the dissenters have contributed to national prosperity by the free spirit which has compelled the government to pay some attention to public opinion, for this has frequently prevented despotic measures at home as well as destructive

schemes abroad. The persecutor who decreed the revocation of the edict of Nantz, signed the death warrant of his descendant Louis the sixteenth; for, ceasing to respect the sentiments of the people, the dynasty of the Capets advanced without a check in that course which ended in the revolution that blew up their throne. Had not the efforts of the Stuarts to crush the dissenters been blasted by the revolution which gave birth to the toleration, England might now have been trembling at the ominous calm which precedes, or bleeding under the horrors which follow a violent convulsion of the state. But while the other nations of Europe have fallen an easy prey to revolutionary France, because their inhabitants were benumbed by the torpedo of despotism, and felt no attachment to governments which had shewn no respect for their rights or interests, England stood the shock; because her sons have felt that if they have much to endure, they have something to lose. The religious liberty which France has established in her own and the conquered territories, could be no lure to those who reflected, that on the continent it depends on the will of a ruler, while in Britain it rests. on the broad basis of public sentiment.

Amidst many sources of national prosperity it is as difficult to determine how much we owe to any one of them, as to ascertain what proportion of the light is admitted into an apartment by one of its windows while several others remain open. If, unhappily for France, her bigotted princes discovered that the protestants were more valuable to the state than they had been willing to believe, we have to bless the Governor of the world, that the British empire has not been left to learn how much more.