will remove any such idea. Be it remembered, that the intent of those constitutional arrangements which go to establish genuine freedom, is by no means to narrow the scope and impoverish the functions of government, but the reverse. Their immediate purpose is, to give security to life, person, property, and all private rights. And they imply so much of participation in, and control upon, the political action of the State, as is needful for attaining the highest degree of that security. But they pay regard to each of such rights in its due measure. For example, they will take something from the property of a man in order to secure by an efficient judiciary and police his life and person from harm, as well as to ensure to him the peaceable possession of the remainder of that property. And their general and highest purpose is, by guaranteeing negative and material advantages, to leave room, and likewise to give aid, for the positive and superior development of his nature. No one can reasonably contend that, having thus made this subsidiary provision, free institutions are thereby disqualified from filling up the outline they have drawn, from building on the ground which they have cleared; from operating actively, that is to say, in pursuit of any end, to which a State as such is competent, and which is both advantageous to the people, and practicable with regard to the circumstances of the time.

45. In fact, the constitutional question which has been considered, is one that provides its own solution. The will of the people has a certain sphere

prescribed by our constitutional laws for its action. Within that sphere it works freely and energetically; beyond it, a person pretending to sobriety of judgment will, I think, for ordinary purposes, decline to recognise it at all. If he do not so decline, yet how can he ascertain it? Its sphere of direct action on the State, considered extrinsically, is that of voting, which is the privilege of some, and of petition and reasoning, which are the right of all. Its effect in the working of the State, considered as a part thereof, is represented in the decisions of the House of Commons. With respect to one most important point, it is absolute; namely, the refusing to levy money on the subject. All this harmonises entirely with the argument of these pages; but the objection to the principle of State religion, which is now under consideration, is one which does not contend for, but against, the powers of the popular division of the legislature; which does not stand upon its competency to withhold, but upon its incompetency to grant money to certain purposes of the State. If the majority of the representatives think fit to refuse pecuniary supplies for the maintenance of religion, we have no more to say but to acquiesce in the present decision, and to attempt to work upon their minds and upon those of the people whom they represent, in order to bring them to what we think a juster conclusion. But on the other side, it seems actually to be held that the House of Commons is not politically competent to give an affirmative judgment in the matter; that

the bond of social union ought not to include any question of religion; that, no matter how nearly unanimous the people, the right of the dissentient minority to withhold its support from the religion of the State is sacred; although upon other subjects the minority, or that which in the scales of the constitution weighs as such, is bound to submit to the will of the majority for one general welfare, and the State is admitted to be the judge what those subjects are. Resistance to the law is palliated and even justified in this point, while it is admitted in others to be criminal.

46. The private person, however, is not disregarded by the Constitution. Entering, through his political privilege or interest, into the mind of the State itself, he contributes in effect his voice, with the weight which may constitutionally belong to it, towards the general decision. But then his right to participate in the formation of the sentence, as it is ascertained, so also it is limited by the privileges which the law allows to him. He has acquitted his conscience when he has used his privilege according to its dictates; and having discharged his responsibility, it is plain that he has also exhausted his right. Thereafter the State, deciding as its component parts may preponderate, in this direction or in that, must not be charged with breach of faith, or with tyranny, or with the violation of the rights of conscience. The minority in a State is like the rejected alternative in the deliberative decision of an individual man. If every disease which may

have infected a portion of the people is to be not only felt but indulged and fed, to be represented in public acts and functions, tainting, crippling, and debilitating them one after another, then, indeed, the State falls wholly away from its idea, from sustaining and carrying out that national life whereby we are truly incorporated as a political society.

47. In short, this is, in a political sense, a radically disorganising principle, and it threatens, if recognised, to break up all society from its foundations. It implies the right, on the part of individuals, to establish a separate and contrary action to that of the body politic, in matters not of discretion, but where positive obedience is required. No law can stand if such a principle be allowed, and without law there is no society. There is no limit to the scope of this licence. If a few may do it, an individual may do it; and thus there may be any number of distinct and incontestably valid claims to disobey the law. The State requires, as its essential condition, unity of action; and it requires to be itself the judge upon what subjects unity of action shall be enforced; being content sometimes with passive unity, sometimes even with positive diversity. Now there are matters morally beyond the province of the State; but yet it is difficult to limit its legal competency by any definition, which, if it excluded anything, would not exclude too much. Besides, the question is not now whether the State would be right or would be wrong in the active support of national religion; but whether, in the event of its giving such support, that interpretation which

some have recently placed on the rights of conscience be not wholly incompatible with the maintenance of national unity and order. It is proper that those, who may be inclined to countenance such an interpretation, should have this inevitable consequence fully and clearly before them.

48. In sum, the case stands thus. In all ages and countries where the Christian religion has been professed by the body of the nation, without any exception, until the single case of the United States of America in the end of the last century, it has been held in theory, that the State ought to lend its aid for the maintenance and propagation of that religion; and the theory has been carried out into practice. The State of England still adopts that principle. But now it is held by a considerable body of persons (though a very small minority of the entire nation), that such policy on the part of the State is a violation of the rights of conscience, and therefore wholly unlawful. And many of these persons have actually resisted the law in conformity with this principle; and in the manner in which it is professed, it generally tends towards that consummation. This is no common discrepancy of opinion, but the deepest of all roots of social discord. The State and the State-religion are involved together. The binding power of the decree of the body upon the individual members is denied: and it is denied in respect of that which other ages and nations, and the majority (by supposition) of our age and nation, have deemed an object of the most sacred obligation and of the highest national importance.

SKM