rror
than I do, will grow and flourish, in spite, I am afraid, of anything
which can be done to prevent the evil. Lawful enjoyment is the surest
method to prevent unlawful gratification. Where there is property, there
will be less theft; where there is marriage, there will always be less
fornication.

I have said enough of the question of state, _as it affects the people
merely as such_. But it is complicated with a political question
relative to religion, to which it is very necessary I should say
something,--because the term _Protestant_, which you apply, is too
general for the conclusions which one of your accurate understanding
would wish to draw from it, and because a great deal of argument will
depend on the use that is made of that term.

It is _not_ a fundamental part of the settlement at the Revolution that
the state should be Protestant _without any qualification of the term_.
With a qualification it is unquestionably true; not in all its latitude.
With the qualification, it was true before the Revolution. Our
predecessors in legislation were not so irrational (not to say impious)
as to form an operose ecclesiastical establishment, and even to render
the state itself in some degree subservient to it, when their religion
(if such it might be called) was nothing but a mere _negation_ of some
other,--without any positive idea, either of doctrine, discipline,
worship, or morals, in the scheme which they professed themselves, and
which they imposed upon others, even under penalties and incapacities.
No! No! This never could have been done, even by reasonable atheists.
They who think religion of no importance to the state have abandoned it
to the conscience or caprice of the individual; they make no provision
for it whatsoever, but leave every club to make, or not, a voluntary
contribution towards its support, according to their fancies. This would
be consistent. The other always appeared to me to be a monster of
contradiction and absurdity. It was for that reason, that, some years
ago, I strenuously opposed the clergy who petitioned, to the number of
about three hundred, to be freed from the subscription to the
Thirty-Nine Articles, without proposing to substitute any other in their
place. There never has been a religion of the state (the few years of
the Parliament only excepted) but that of _the Episcopal Church of
England_: the Episcopal Church of England, before the Reformation,
connected with the see of Rome