the kinsman as the recompense of his profligacy. When
thus turned out of doors from his paternal estate, he was disabled from
acquiring any other by any industry, donation, or charity; but was
rendered a foreigner in his native land, only because he retained the
religion, along with the property, handed down to him from those who had
been the old inhabitants of that land before him.

Does any one who hears me approve this scheme of things, or think there
is common justice, common sense, or common honesty in any part of it? If
any does, let him say it, and I am ready to discuss the point with
temper and candor. But instead of approving, I perceive a virtuous
indignation beginning to rise in your minds on the mere cold stating of
the statute.

But what will you feel, when you know from history how this statute
passed, and what were the motives, and what the mode of making it? A
party in this nation, enemies to the system of the Revolution, were in
opposition to the government of King William. They knew that our
glorious deliverer was an enemy to all persecution. They knew that he
came to free us from slavery and Popery, out of a country where a third
of the people are contented Catholics under a Protestant government. He
came with a part of his army composed of those very Catholics, to
overset the power of a Popish prince. Such is the effect of a tolerating
spirit; and so much is liberty served in every way, and by all persons,
by a manly adherence to its own principles. Whilst freedom is true to
itself, everything becomes subject to it, and its very adversaries are
an instrument in its hands.

The party I speak of (like some amongst us who would disparage the best
friends of their country) resolved to make the king either violate his
principles of toleration or incur the odium of protecting Papists. They
therefore brought in this bill, and made it purposely wicked and absurd
that it might be rejected. The then court party, discovering their game,
turned the tables on them, and returned their bill to them stuffed with
still greater absurdities, that its loss might lie upon its original
authors. They, finding their own ball thrown back to them, kicked it
back again to their adversaries. And thus this act, loaded with the
double injustice of two parties, neither of whom intended to pass what
they hoped the other would be persuaded to reject, went through the
legislature, contrary to the real wish of all parts of it, and