ection of
them, and for the sake of that about which men must dispute forever to
postpone those things about which they have no controversy at all, and
this not in minute and subordinate, but large and principal objects, is
a procedure as preposterous and absurd in argument as it is oppressive
and cruel in its effect. For the Protestant religion, nor (I speak it
with reverence, I am sure) the truth of our common Christianity, is not
so clear as this proposition,--that all men, at least the majority of
men in the society, ought to enjoy the common advantages of it. You
fall, therefore, into a double error: first, you incur a certain
mischief for an advantage which is comparatively problematical, even
though you were sure of obtaining it; secondly, whatever the proposed
advantage may be, were it of a certain nature, the attainment of it is
by no means certain; and such deep gaming for stakes so valuable ought
not to be admitted: the risk is of too much consequence to society. If
no other country furnished examples of this risk, yet our laws and our
country are enough fully to demonstrate the fact: Ireland, after almost
a century of persecution, is at this hour full of penalties and full of
Papists. This is a point which would lead us a great way; but it is only
just touched here, having much to say upon it in its proper place. So
that you have incurred a certain and an immediate inconvenience for a
remote and for a doubly uncertain benefit.--Thus far as to the argument
which would sanctify the injustice of these laws by the benefits which
are proposed to arise from them, and as to that liberty which, by a new
political chemistry, was to be extracted out of a system of oppression.

Now as to the other point, that the objects of these laws suffer
voluntarily: this seems to me to be an insult rather than an argument.
For, besides that it totally annihilates every characteristic and
therefore every faulty idea of persecution, just as the former does, it
supposes, what is false in fact, that it is in a man's moral power to
change his religion whenever his convenience requires it. If he be
beforehand satisfied that your opinion is better than his, he will
voluntarily come over to you, and without compulsion, and then your law
would be unnecessary; but if he is not so convinced, he must know that
it is his duty in this point to sacrifice his interest here to his
opinion of his eternal happiness, else he could have in reality no