aware that the worst consequences might happen to the
public in accomplishing this double ruin of Church and State; but they
are so heated with their theories, that they give more than hints that
this ruin, with all the mischiefs that must lead to it and attend it,
and which to themselves appear quite certain, would not be unacceptable
to them, or very remote from their wishes. A man amongst them of great
authority, and certainly of great talents, speaking of a supposed
alliance between Church and State, says, "Perhaps _we must wait for the
fall of the civil powers_, before this most unnatural alliance be
broken. Calamitous, no doubt, will that time be. But what convulsion in
the political world ought to be a subject of lamentation, if it be
attended with so desirable an effect?" You see with what a steady eye
these gentlemen are prepared to view the greatest calamities which can
befall their country!

It is no wonder, therefore, that, with these ideas of everything in
their Constitution and government at home, either in Church or State, as
illegitimate and usurped, or at best as a vain mockery, they look abroad
with an eager and passionate enthusiasm. Whilst they are possessed by
these notions, it is vain to talk to them of the practice of their
ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed form of a
Constitution whose merits are confirmed by the solid test of long
experience and an increasing public strength and national prosperity.
They despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; and as for the
rest, they have wrought under ground a mine that will blow up, at one
grand explosion, all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters,
and acts of Parliament. They have "the rights of men." Against these
there can be no prescription; against these no argument is binding:
these admit no temperament and no compromise: anything withheld from
their full demand is so much of fraud and injustice. Against these their
rights of men let no government look for security in the length of its
continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration. The
objections of these speculatists, if its forms do not quadrate with
their theories, are as valid against such an old and beneficent
government as against the most violent tyranny or the greenest
usurpation. They are always at issue with governments, not on a question
of abuse, but a question of competency and a question of title. I have
nothing to say to th