PREFACE.

THE introduction to these Commentaries contained a classification of the law under ten divisions, one of which was entitled "The Security of Public Worship," and another was entitled "The Security of Thought, Speech, and Character." It was also pointed out1 that these two divisions might well be treated as substantially one, seeing that the Security of Public Worship was only another name for the Security of Thought and Speech, when applied to one prominent subject-matter. But, nevertheless, it was deemed advisable to treat them as separate divisions, and even to give precedence to that which was specific, over that which was generic. The reason was, that in all countries, ages, and conditions of mankindeven in the savage state-something has always been recognised as Public Religious Worship, which, moreover, has always been a settled and conspicuous practice; whereas, until the invention of printing, the Freedom of Thought and Speech was scarcely dreamt of as a branch of human government, and the minds of legislators had been almost blank with regard to it. Moreover, the degree of toleration accorded in the one case seemed to differ from that accorded in the other, and at least, both

1 1 Pat. Com. (Pers.) 66.

rights have seldom been treated as based on the same fundamental principle. The one had an unknown beginning, and has descended to us incumbered with incidents and involved in details now difficult to reconcile and harmonize; while the other sprang four centuries ago out of chaos, and has more of the simplicity of all modern creations. But now that the convenience of this publication admits of both divisions being treated in one volume, the more scientific classification has been adopted; and while the security of Thought and Speech is the generic right, the Security of Public Worship is here treated as holding the second place, being only one of its species.

While the minds of governors before the invention of printing were blank as to the Security of Thought and Speech, it was otherwise with the Security of Public Worship. With regard to this there was no blank, but on the contrary, there was in its place an active and virulent maxim at work. This maxim led all governments to take up a false position, which, after a long series of uncandid confessions and ill-disguised retreats, has at length been all but finally abandoned. This was the maxim, that there was only one true form of religious worship,' that each governor had already discovered it,

1 "I would only ask why the civil state should be purged and restored by good and wholesome laws made every third or fourth year in Parliament assembled, devising remedies as fast as time breedeth mischief, and contrariwise, the ecclesiastical state should still continue upon the dregs of time and receive no alteration now for these five-and-forty years and more. . . I for my part do confess, that, in revolving the Scriptures, I could never find any such thing as that there should be but one form of discipline in all Churches; but that God had left the like liberty to the Church government as he had done to the civil government, to be varied according to time, and place, and accidents, which nevertheless his

that he was its only prophet, and that as such he felt bound to torture, or in some way to punish the body of any citizen who was suspected to entertain, even in his secret thoughts, the slightest hesitation about believing and obeying. The cries and groans of the victims of this treatment ascended to Heaven, and in due time drew down a deliverance at first tardy and only half understood. The chafing of a monk in his solitary cell against first one and then another of the sore points of so arbitrary a regimen, created sympathy and gave voice and body to the general misgivings, and finally led to the Reformation. This grand rebellion of the huinan intellect against the arrogance of all existing governments in their dealings with the mind and conscience, cleared the air of malignant vapours, and revealed glimpses of a more natural way of regulating the highest functions of man in the social state. And yet so deeply had this accepted maxim of government become engrained in the heart and soul of every governor, that when one tyranny was overthrown, the successor became infected with the same vice as his predecessor. They differed only in this, that the relations of victim and oppressor were sometimes reversed, and it took many generations to unlearn those arts of habitual intolerance which clogged the machinery of legislation.

The art of government nevertheless took a new starting point from the era of the Reformation, or rather, from the time when the smoke and tumult of that upheaving

high and divine Providence doth order and dispose."-Bacon, Pacif. Ch.

1 Philosophers have counted fifty-five distinct sects between the year 264 and 1843, each professing to teach the true doctrine of Christianity, and all with some modifications.-Wikoff, Civiliz.

cleared away. The great thinkers of the world soon taught Kings, Parliaments, Cabinets, Statesmen one by one, and each with gradually abating reluctance, to renounce, and even to reverse, the first principles they had imbibed on taking up their traditionary power. The lingering echoes of these exploded fallacies have, it is true, been heard now and then, even too recently. But we have reached an epoch when the dogmas once gravely avowed and acted upon by the oracles of government, and sometimes also of the law, as living maxims, have become the scoff of schoolboys.

It never occurred to any government prior to the Reformation, and probably for a century or two later, that it was possible that the best form of religious worship, as well as the best form of human government (of which the former is merely a branch), might have been intended by Providence to be discovered by the scrutiny of Reason, each nation following the best guides of the time, yet following without blindly bowing the knee. The dignity of thought

1 "The Reformation was a great undertaking for the enfranchisement of human thought, and to call things by their proper names, a rebellion of the human understanding against power in spiritual matters."-Guizot, Civ. Eur. c. 12. "But while labouring for the destruction of absolute power in spiritual matters, the religious revolution of the sixteenth century was ignorant of the true principles of intellectual liberty. It neither knew nor respected all the rights of human thought; at the moment when it clamoured for them for its own liberty, it violated them with others. Still it caused religious doctrines to re-enter into general circulation and re-opened the field of faith to believers, and banished religion from politics. At the very moment that religion re-entered, so to speak, into the possession of the faithful, it parted from the government of society."-Ibid.

2 "For my part I am certain that God hath given us our reason to discover between truth and falsehood, and he that makes not 'this use of it, but believes things he knows not why, I say it is by chance that he believes the truth, and not by choice, and