e children
and adults are instructed, and information disseminated on the subject of
Parliamentary Reform. And if this is all that is meant, there is an end
of this part of the indictment; for it cannot be libelous to recommend in
a writing the people to do that, which it is perfectly legal to do.

With regard to reform itself, I cannot know, whether any of you are
advocates for it or opposed to it, nor is it requisite that I should; I
do not ask you to think or say with me, and others, that reform in
Parliament is necessary, and that nothing but reform can save the country
from ruin; all that I ask of you is to allow me and others credit for the
conscientiousness of our opinions, and charitably admit, if yours are
opposite, that though we may be mistaken in our judgments, we must not of
necessity be criminal in our intentions. I leave you and every man to
the free exercise of your thoughts, and the free enjoyment of the
conclusions to which they lead you. Let this liberality be reciprocal,
and concede the same freedom to others which you demand for yourselves. I
have always thought that a difference in religious and political matters
need not and ought not to create hostility of feeling, and sever those,
who would otherwise be friends. I myself enjoy the friendship of
several, who entertain very different opinions from mine upon those
subjects; and yet that difference has not, and never shall, on my part,
at least, disturb our friendship. In all questions in which you cannot
have mathematical demonstration, there may be fair, honest, conscientious
difference of opinion; and you cannot have geometrical proof in questions
of religion, politics, and morals. The very nature of the subjects
altogether excludes it. To expect it, as Bishop Sanderson says, would be
as absurd as to expect to see with the ear and to hear with the eye. So
various are our opinions upon these subjects, that we not only differ
from one another upon them, but at different times we find we differ from
ourselves; and, as another learned churchman, in more recent times, has
said, what could be more unjust than to quarrel with other men for
differing in opinion from him, when no two men ever differed more from
one another than he at different times differed on the very same subject
from himself. Under this state of uncertainty in human judgment, I call
upon you, and I am sure I shall not call in vain, to be slow to condemn
the opinions of others