t would be a strange thing if two hundred
peers should have it in their power to defeat by their negative what
had been done by the people of England. I have taken my part in
political connections and political quarrels for the purpose of
advancing justice and the dominion of reason, and I hope I shall never
prefer the means, or any feelings growing out of the use of those
means, to the great and substantial end itself. Legislators can do
what lawyers can not, for they have no other rules to bind them but
the great principles of reason and equity and the general sense of
mankind. All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they
may alter the mode and application, but have no power over the
substance, of original justice. A conservation and secure enjoyment of
our natural rights is the great and ultimate purpose of civil society.

"The great inlet by which a colour for oppression has entered into the
world is by one man's pretending to determine concerning the happiness
of another. I would give a full civil protection, in which I include
an immunity from all disturbance of their public religious worship,
and a power of teaching in schools as well as temples, to Jews,
Mahometans, and even Pagans. The Christian religion itself arose
without establishment, it arose even without toleration, and whilst
its own principles were not tolerated, it conquered all the powers of
darkness, it conquered all the powers of the world. The moment it
began to depart from these principles, it converted the establishment
into tyranny, it subverted its foundation from that very hour. It is
the power of government to prevent much evil; it can do very little
positive good in this, or perhaps in anything else. It is not only so
of the State and statesman, but of all the classes and descriptions of
the rich: they are the pensioners of the poor, and are maintained by
their superfluity. They are under an absolute, hereditary, and
indefeasible dependence on those who labour and are miscalled the
poor. That class of dependent pensioners called the rich is so
extremely small, that if all their throats were cut, and a
distribution made of all they consume in a year, it would not give a
bit of bread and cheese for one night's supper to those who labour,
and who in reality feed both the pensioners and themselves. It is not
in breaking the laws of commerce, which are the laws of nature and
consequently the laws of God, that we are to place our