rbidden to assemble with
barred doors, but were protected against hostile intrusion by a
clause which made it penal to enter a meeting house for the purpose of
molesting the congregation.

As if the numerous limitations and precautions which have been mentioned
were insufficient, it was emphatically declared that the legislature
did not intend to grant the smallest indulgence to any Papist, or to any
person who denied the doctrine of the Trinity as that doctrine is set
forth in the formularies of the Church of England.

Of all the Acts that have ever been passed by Parliament, the Toleration
Act is perhaps that which most strikingly illustrates the peculiar vices
and the peculiar excellences of English legislation. The science
of Politics bears in one respect a close analogy to the science of
Mechanics. The mathematician can easily demonstrate that a certain
power, applied by means of a certain lever or of a certain system of
pulleys, will suffice to raise a certain weight. But his demonstration
proceeds on the supposition that the machinery is such as no load will
bend or break. If the engineer, who has to lift a great mass of real
granite by the instrumentality of real timber and real hemp, should
absolutely rely on the propositions which he finds in treatises on
Dynamics, and should make no allowance for the imperfection of his
materials, his whole apparatus of beams, wheels, and ropes would soon
come down in ruin, and, with all his geometrical skill, he would be
found a far inferior builder to those painted barbarians who, though
they never heard of the parallelogram of forces, managed to pile up
Stonehenge. What the engineer is to the mathematician, the active
statesman is to the contemplative statesman. It is indeed most important
that legislators and administrators should be versed in the philosophy
of government, as it is most important that the architect, who has to
fix an obelisk on its pedestal, or to hang a tubular bridge over an
estuary, should be versed in the philosophy of equilibrium and motion.
But, as he who has actually to build must bear in mind many things never
noticed by D'Alembert and Euler, so must he who has actually to govern
be perpetually guided by considerations to which no allusion can be
found in the writings of Adam Smith or Jeremy Bentham. The perfect
lawgiver is a just temper between the mere man of theory, who can see
nothing but general principles, and the mere man of business, who