this-whether the peaceful subject of a government, who conscientiously believes the religious sentiments and the religious worship of the established sect more or less unscriptural, ought to be compelled to support and diffuse them, and then punished, either by direct penalty or by exclusion from equal privileges, for his conscientious belief?

If any insist that compulsory taxes for the support of another's faith, or injustice, and inequality of privilege for conscience-sake, or persecution, and government aid, are not included in their notion of a national church, we can only reply, that when national churches are found without them our objections cease.

CHAPTER III.

OF THE INJUSTICE OF A STATE CHURCH.

"Reason is never inconvenient but when it comes to be applied. Mere general truths interfere very little with the passions. They can, until they are roused by a troublesome application, rest in great tranquillity, side by side, with tempers and proceedings the most directly opposite to them. Men want to be reminded, who do not want to be taught; because those original ideas of rectitude to which the mind is compelled to assent when they are proposed, are not always as present to it as they ought to be. When people are gone, if not into a denial, at least into a sort of oblivion of those ideas, when they know them only as barren speculations, and not as practical motives of conduct, it will be proper to press, as well as to offer them to the understanding; and when one is attacked by prejudices, which aim to intrude themselves into the place of law, what is left for us but to vouch and call to warranty those principles of original justice from whence alone our title to every thing valuable in society is derived?"

BURKE, Tracts on the Popery Laws, chap. iii. part i. "Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things."- Gal. vi. 6.

1. THE first objection which it is now intended to urge against national ecclesiastical establishments, as they have just been defined, is, that they compel one subject of a government to contribute to the faith of another, and are, therefore, essentially unjust. This objection may be best proved and illustrated by an explanation of the doctrines of free trade.

More than sixty years have elapsed since the author of the "Inquiry into the Causes of the Wealth of Nations" first published his theory of free tradea theory which has at length found its way into the councils of our government, and is now adopted by the most enlightened statesmen of Europe. In this theory it is held that all establishments for supplying a nation with the ordinary articles of merchandize are injurious, and that demand and supply should be left alone to find their own proper adjustment. To its limitations there is at present no occasion to allude ; we merely state its prominent principle, and the persuasion of most economists, that the more generally it is adopted, the more largely will the exertions of labour and the employment of capital prove conducive to the increase of the national wealth.

2. The facts and reasonings on which this system is founded are these:-that bounties and restrictions impose a double tax, or inflict a double injury, without any adequate remuneration to the individuals who suffer from them; and that therefore they involve more or less of injustice. In export bounties, for example, (that is, in bounties given to the merchant for the encouragement of exportation,) there is, first, the tax which the public must pay directly towards the bounty itself; and, secondly, the tax paid indirectly in the excess of the home-price of the article beyond

what it would have brought had this unnatural, forced exportation been disallowed. In import bounties, this second tax is taken off the buyer and laid upon the shipowner or merchant, who is, of course, ill able to compete with the chartered company. In restrictions, again, that is, in taxes on the importation of articles of commerce, there is a double injury-to the trader and to the public: his foreign market is narrowed, and they are taxed by the exclusion of foreign manufactured articles, and by the higher remunerating price of their own.

3. Now, in this system, it will be seen, there are two important facts which it is important should be remembered. The first is, that its doctrines are intended to apply only to the conduct of governments, or of corporate bodies entrusted with public money for the public good, and not to private persons; the second, that its doctrines are founded on justice, and not merely on considerations of policy or finance. Some who, to use the language of Hooker, "talk of truth without having sounded the depths from whence it springs," have hastily overlooked this first distinction, and have taunted the advocates of voluntaryism with forgetfulness of their own creed. "To be consistent," say they, "you ought to recall your missionaries; withdraw the grants with which your societies eke out the salaries of your ministers; sit

still and wait till the cry of the heathen become loud and urgent, Come over and help us;' proportion demand and supply, or you violate your favourite principle."

This charge of inconsistency, we repeat, is altogether unfounded; and to assert that the voluntary efforts of Christians imply a violation of the rules of free trade, bespeaks an utter forgetfulness or a gross misconception of the very principles from which these rules are taken. Government-bounties are unjust, because they involve a needless sacrifice of natural right; they take from the many for the advantage of the few; they impose taxes from which neither the public nor the government, and but seldom "the chartered," derive profit; they are founded in wrong, and productive generally of unmixed evil. Private endowments, on the other hand, are voluntary, just, and often useful; they impose no tax, inflict no injury, and, therefore, to compare them with state bounties is to confound "things that differ," and to condemn, under a common name, practices that have scarcely one feature of resemblance. Free trade says not to the church, that it should leave alone the world; but only to the government, that it should leave alone the church.

4. To illustrate this distinction, let it be supposed that the English, like the Chinese, were eaters of