An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test
Acts.
1790.
1. Gentlemen,
2. Had the question of yesterday been decided in a manner more favourable to our
wishes, which however the previous intimations of your temper in the business left
us little room to expect, we should have addressed our thanks to you on the
occasion. As it is, we address to you our thanks for much casual light thrown upon
the subject, and for many incidental testimonies of your esteem (whether voluntary
or involuntary we will not stop to examine) which in the course of this discussion
you have favoured us with. We thank you for the compliment paid the dissenters, when
you suppose that the moment they are eligible to places of power and profit, all
such places will at once be filled with them. Not content with confounding, by an
artful sophism, the right of eligibility with the right to offices, you again
confound that right with the probable fact, and then argue accordingly. Is the Test
Act, your boasted bulwark, of equal necessity with the dykes in
Holland; and do we wait, like an impetuous sea, to rush in and overwhelm the land?
Our pretensions, gentlemen, are far humbler. We had not the presumption to imagine
that, inconsiderable as we are in numbers, compared to the established church;
inferior too in fortune and influence; labouring, as we do, under the frown of the
court, and the anathema of the orthodox; we should make our way so readily into the
secret recesses of royal favour; and of a sudden, like the frogs of Egypt, swarm
about your barns, and under your canopies, and in your kneading troughs, and in the
chamber of the king. We rather wished this act as the removal of a stigma than the
possession of a certain advantage, and we might have been cheaply pleased with the
acknowledgement of the right, though we had never been fortunate enough to enjoy the
emolument.
3. Another compliment for which we offer our acknowledgments may be extracted from the
great ferment which has been raised by thic business all over the country. What stir
and movement has it occasioned among the different orders of men! How quick the
alarm has been taken, and sounded from the church to the senate, and from the press
to the people; while fears and forebodings were communicated like an electric shock!
The old cry of "The church is in danger" 'has again been made to
vibrate in our ears. Here too, if
we gave way to impressions of vanity,
we might suppose ourselves of much greater importance in the political scale than
our numbers and situation seem to indicate. It shows at least we are feared, which
to some minds would be the next grateful thing to being beloved. We, indeed, should
only wish for the latter; nor should we have ventured to suppose, but from the
information you have given us, that your Church was so weak. What!
fenced and guarded as she is with her exclusive privileges and rich emoluments,
stately with her learned halls and endowed colleges, with all the attraction of her
wealth, and the thunder of her censures; all that the orator calls "the
majesty of the church" about her, -- and does she, resting in security
under the broad buckler of the state, does she tremble at the naked and unarmed
sectary? him, whose early connexions and phrase uncouth, and unpopular opinions, set
him at distance from the means of advancement; him, who in the intercourse of
neighbourhood and common life, like, new settlers, finds it necessary to clear the
ground before him, and is ever obliged to root up a prejudice before he can plant
affection ? He is not of the world, gentlemen; and the world loveth her own. All
that distinguishes him from other men to common observation, operates in his
disfavour. His very advocates, while they plead his cause, are ready to blush for
their client; and in justice to their own character think it necessary
to disclaim all knowledge of his obscure tenets. And is it from his hand you expect
the demolition of so massy an edifice? Does the simple removal of the Test Act
involve its destruction? These were not our thoughts. We had too much reverence for
your establishment to imagine that the structure was so loosely put together, or so
much shaken by years, as that the removal of so slight a pin should endanger the
whole fabric -- or is the Test Act the talisman which holds it together, that, when
it is broken, the whole must fall to pieces like the magic palace of an enchanter?
Surely no species of regular architecture can depend upon so slight a support. --
After all what is it we have asked? -- to share in the rich benefices of the
established church? to have the gates of her schools and universities thrown open to
us? No: let her keep her golden prebends, her scarfs, her lawn, her mitres. Let her
dignitaries be still associated to the honours of legislation; and in our courts of
executive justice, let her inquisitorial tribunals continue to thwart the spirit of
a free constitution by a heterogeneous mixture of priestly jurisdiction. Let her
still gather into barns, though she neither sows nor reaps. We desire not to share
in her good things. We know it is the children's bread, which must not be given to
dogs. But having these good things, we could wish to hear her say with
the generous spirit of Esau, "I have enough, my brother." We could
wish to be considered as children of the state, though we are not so of the church.
She must excuse us if we look upon the alliance between her and the state as an
ill-assorted union and herself as a mother-in-law who, with the too frequent arts of
that relation, is ever endeavouring to prejudice the state, the common father of us
all, against a part of his offspring, for the sake of appropriating a larger portion
to her own children. We claim no share in the dowry of her who is not our mother,
but we may be pardoned for thinking it hard to be deprived of the inheritance of our
father.
4. But it is objected to us that we have sinned in the manner of making our request, we
have brought it forward as a claim instead of asking it as a favour. We should have
sued, and crept, and humbled ourselves. Our preachers and our writers should not
have dared to express the warm glow of honest sentiment, or even in a foreign
country glance at the downfall of a haughty aristocracy. As we were suppliants, we
should have behaved like suppliants, and then perhaps -- No, gentlemen, we wish to
have it understood that we do claim it as a right. It loses otherwise
half its value. We claim it as men, we claim it as citizens, we claim it as good
sub-
jects. We are not conscious of having brought the
disqualification upon ourselves by a failure in any of these characters.
5. But we already enjoy a complete toleration -- It is time, so near the end of the
eighteenth century, it is surely time to speak with precision, and to call things by
their proper names. What you call toleration, we call the exercise of a natural and
inalienable right. We do not conceive it to be toleration, first to strip a man of
all his dearest rights, and then to give him back a part; or even if it were the
whole. You tolerate us in worshiping God according to our consciences -- and why not
tolerate a man in the use of his limbs, in the disposal of his private property, the
contracting his domestic engagements, or any other the most acknowledged privileges
of humanity? It is not to these things that the word toleration is applied with
propriety. It is applied, where from lenity or prudence we forbear doing all which
in justice we might do. It is the bearing with what is confessedly an evil, for the
sake of some good with which it is connected. It is the christian virtue of
long-suffering; it is the political virtue of adapting measures to times and seasons
and situations. Abuses are tolerated, when they are so interwoven with the texture
of the piece, that the operation of removing them becomes too delicate and
hazardous. Unjust claims are tolerated, when
they are complied with for
the sake of peace and conscience. The failings and imperfections of those characters
in which there appears an evident preponderancy of virtue, are tolerated. These are
the proper objects of toleration, these exercise the patience of the christian and
the prudence of the statesman; but if there be a power that advances pretensions
which we think unfounded in reason or scripture, that exercises an empire within an
empire, and claims submission from those naturally her equals; and if we, from a
spirit of brotherly charity, and just deference to public opinion, and a salutary
dread of innovation, acquiesce in these pretensions; let her at least be told that
the virtue of forbearance should be transferred, and that it is we who tolerate her,
not she who tolerates us.
6. But this it is again imputed to us is no contest for religious liberty, but a contest
for power, and place, and influence. We want civil offices -- And why should
citizens not aspire to civil offices? Why should not the fair field of
generous competition be freel opened to every one? A contention for power -- It is
not a contention for power between churchmen and dissenters, nor is it as dissenters
we wish to enter the lists; we wish to bury every name of distinction in the common
appellation of citizen. We wish not the name of dissenter to be pronounced, except
in our
theological researches and religious assemblies. It is you, who
by considering us as aliens, make us so. It is you who force us to make our dissent
a prominent feature in our character. It is you who give relief, and cause to come
out upon the canvass what we modestly wished to have shaded over, and thrown into
the back-ground. If we are a party, remember it is you who force us to be so. We
should have sought places, of trust -- by no unfair, unconstitutional methods should
we have sought them, but in the open and honourable rivalship of virtuous emulation;
by trying to deserve well of our king and our country. Our attachment to both is
well known.
7. Perhaps, however, we have all this while mistaken the matter, and what we have taken
for bigotry and a narrow-minded spirit is after all only an affair of calculation
and arithmetic. Our fellow-subjects remember the homely proverb, "the fewer
the better cheer," and, very naturally, are glad to see the number of
candidates lessened for the advantages they are themselves striving after. If so, we
ask their excuse, their conduct is quite simple; and if, from the number of
concurrents, government were to strike out all above or under five feet high, or all
whose birthdays happened before the summer solstice, or, by any other mode of
distinction equally arbitrary and whimsical, were to reduce the number of their
rivals, they would be equally pleased, and equally unwilling to admit
an alteration. We are a mercantile people, accustomed to consider chances, and we
can easily perceive that in the lottery of life, if a certain proportion are by some
means or other excluded from a prize, the adventure is exactly so much the better
for the remainder. If this indeed be the case, as I suspect it may, we have been
accusing you wrongfully. Your conduct is founded upon principles as sure and
unvarying as mathematical truths; and all further discussion is needless. We drop
the argument at once. Men have now and then been reasoned out of their prejudices,
but it were a hopeless attempt to reason them out of their interest.
8. We likewise beg leave to apologize to those of the clergy whom we have unwillingly
offended by endeavouring to include them as parties in our cause. "Pricked
to it by foolish honesty and love," we thought that what appeared so
grievous to us could not be very pleasant to them: but we are convinced of our
mistake, and sorry for our officiousness. We own it, sirs, it was a fond imagination
that because we should have felt uneasy under the obligation imposed upon you, it
should have the same effect upon yourselves. It was weak to impute to you an idle
delicacy of conscience, which perhaps can only be preserved at a distance from the
splendid scenes which you
have continually in prospect. But you will
pardon us. We did not consider the force of early discipline over the mind. We are
not accustomed to those salvos, and glosses, and accommodating modes of reasoning
with which you have been long familiarized. You have the happy art of making easy to
yourselves greater things than this. You are regularly disciplined troops, and
understand every nice manœuvre and dexterous evolution which the nature of
the ground may require. We are like an unbroken horse; hard-mouthed, and apt to
start at shadows. Our conduct towards you in this particular we acknowledge may
fairly provoke a smile at our simplicity. Besides, upon reflection, what should you
startle at? The mixture of secular and religious concerns cannot to you appear
extraordinary; and in truth nothing is more reasonable than that, as the state has
been drawn in to the aggrandizement of your church, your church should in return
make itself subservient to the convenience of the state. If we are wise, we shall
never again make ourselves uneasy about your share of the grievance.
9. But we were enumerating our obligations to you, gentlemen, who have thwarted our
request; and we must take the liberty to inform you that if it be any object of our
ambition to exist and attract notice as a separate body, you have done us the
greatest service in the world. What we de-
sired, by blending us with
the common mass of citizens, would have sunk our relative importance, and consigned
our discussions to oblivion. You have refused us; and by so doing, you keep us under
the eye of the public, in the interesting point of view of men who suffer under a
deprivation of their rights. You have set a mark of separation upon us, and it is
not in our power to take it off; but it is in our power to determine whether it
shall be a disgraceful stigma or an honourable distinction. If, by the continued
peaceableness of our demeanour, and the superior sobriety of our conversation, -- a
sobriety for which we have not yet quite ceased to be distinguished; if, by our
attention to literature, and that ardent love of liberty which you are pretty ready
to allow us, we deserve esteem, we shall enjoy it. If our rising seminaries should
excel in wholesome discipline and regularity, if they should be schools of morality,
and yours, unhappily, should be corrupted into schools of immorality, you will
entrust us with the education of your youth, when the parent, trembling at the
profligacy of the times, wishes to preserve the blooming and ingenuous child from
the degrading taint of early licentiousness. If our writers are solid, elegant, or
nervous, you will read our books and imbibe our sentiments, and even your preachers
will not disdain, occasionally, to illustrate our morality. If we
en-lighten the world by philosophical discoveries, you will pay the
involuntary homage due to genius, and boast of our names when, amongst foreign
societies, you are inclined to do credit to your country. If your restraints operate
towards keeping us in that middle rank of life where industry and virtue most
abound, we shall have the honour to count ourselves among that class of the
community which has ever been, the source of manners, of population, and of wealth.
If we seek for fortune in that track which you have left most open to us, we shall
increase your commercial importance. If, in short, we render ourselves worthy of
respect, you cannot hinder us from being respected -- you cannot help respecting us
-- and in spite of all names of opprobrious separation, we shall be bound together
by mutual esteem and the mutual reciprocation of good offices.
10. One good office we shall most probably do you is rather an invidious one, and seldom
meets with thanks. By laying us under such a marked disqualification, you have
rendered us -- we hope not uncandid -- we hope not disaffected -- May the God of
love and charity preserve us from all such acrimonious dispositions! But you
certainly have, as far as in you lies, rendered us quick-sighted, to encroachment
and abuses of all kinds. We have the feelings of men; and though we should
be very blameable to suffer ourselves to be biassed by any private
hardships, and hope that, as a body, we never shall, yet this you will consider,
that we have at least no bias on the other side. We have no favours to blind us, no
golden padlock on our tongues, and therefore it is probable enough, that, if cause
is given, we shall cry aloud and spare not. But in this you have done yourselves no
disservice. It is perfectly agreeable to the jealous spirit of a free constitution
that there should be some who will season the mass with the wholesome spirit of
opposition. Without a little of that bitter leaven there is great danger of its
being corrupted.
11. With regard to ourselves, you have by your late determination given perhaps a
salutary, perhaps a seasonable check to that spirit of worldliness, which of late
has gained but too much ground amongst us. Before you -- before the world -- we have
a right to bear the brow erect, to talk of rights and services; but there is a place
and a presence where it will become us to make no boast. We, as well as you, are
infected. We, as well as you, have breathed in the universal contagion: a contagion
more noxious, and more difficult to escape, than that which on the plains of Cherson
has just swept from the world the martyr of humanity. The contagion of selfish
indifference and fashionable manners has seized
us; and our languishing
virtue feels the debilitating influence. If you were more conversant in our
assemblies than your prejudices will permit you to be, you would see indifference,
where you fancy there is an over proportion of zeal: you would see principles giving
way, and families melting into the bosom of the church under the warm influence of
prosperity. You would see that establishments, without calling coercive measures to
their aid, possess attraction enough severely to try the virtue and steadiness of
those who separate from them. You need not strew thorns, or put bars across our
path; your golden apples are sufficient to make us turn out of the way. Believe me,
gentlemen, you do not know us sufficiently to aim your censure where we should be
most vulnerable.
12. Nor need you apprehend from us the slightest danger to your own establishment. If you
will needs have it that it is in danger, we wish you to be aware that the danger
arises from among yourselves. If ever your creeds and formularies become as grievous
to the generality of your clergy as they already are to many delicate and thinking
minds amongst them; if ever any material articles of your professed belief should be
generally disbelieved, or that order which has been accustomed to supply faithful
pastors and learned inquirers after truth should become a burden upon a gene-
rous public, the cry for reformation would then be loud and prevailing.
It would be heard. Doctrines which will not stand the test of argument and reason
will not always be believed; and when they have ceased to be generally believed,
they will not long be articles of belief. If, therefore, there is any weak place in
your system, any thing which you are obliged to gloss over and touch with a tender
hand, any thing which shrinks at investigation -- look ye to it, its extinction is
not far off. Doubts and difficulties, that arise first amongst the learned, will not
stop there; -- they inevitably spread downwards from class to class: and if the
people should ever find that your articles are generally subscribed as articles of
peace, they will be apt to remember that they are articles of expense too. If all
the dissenters in the kingdom, still believing as dissenters do, were this moment,
in order to avoid the reproach of schism, to enter the pale of your church, they
would do you mischief; they would hasten its decline: and if all who in their hearts
dissent from your professions of faith were to cease making them, and throw
themselves amongst the dissenters, you would stand the firmer for it. Your church is
in no danger because we are of a different church; they might stand together to the
end of time without interference: but it will be in great danger whenever it has
within itself many who have thrown aside its doctrines, or even, who do
not embrace them in the simple and obvious sense. All the power and policy of man
cannot continue a system long after its truth has ceased to be acknowledged, or an
establishment long after it has ceased to contribute to utility. It is equally vain
as to expect to preserve a tree whose roots are cut away. It may look as green and
flourishing as before for a short time; but its sentence is passed, its principle of
life is gone, and death is already within it. If then you think the church in
danger, be not backward to preserve the sound part by sacrificing the decayed.
13. To return to ourselves and our feelings on the business lately in agitation -- You
will excuse us if we do not appear with the air of men baffled and disappointed.
Neither do we blush at our defeat; -- we may blush, indeed, but it is for our
country: but we lay hold on the consoling persuasion, that reason, truth and
liberality must finally prevail. We appeal from Philip intoxicated to Philip sober.
We know you will refuse us while you are narrow-minded, but you will not always be
narrow-minded. You have too much light and candour not to have more. We will no more
attempt to pluck the green unripe fruit. We see in you our future friends and
brethren, eager to confound and blend with ours your interests and your affections.
You will grant us all
we ask. The only question between us is, whether
you will do it today; -- tomorrow you certainly will. You will even entreat us, if
need were, to allow you to remove from your country the stigma of illiberality. We
appeal to the certain, sure operation of increasing light and knowledge, which it is
no more in your power to stop, than to repel the tide with your naked hand, or to
wither with your breath the genial influence of vegetation. The spread of that light
is in general gradual and imperceptible; but there are periods when its progress is
accelerated, when it seems with a sudden flash to open the firmament, and pour in
day at once. Can ye not discern the signs of the times? The minds of men are in
movement from the Borysthenes to the Atlantic. Agitated with new and strong
emotions, they swell and heave beneath oppression, as the seas within the polar
circle, when, at the approach of spring, they grow impatient to burst their icy
chains; when what, but an instant before, seemed so firm, -- spread for many a
dreary league like a floor of solid marble, -- at once with a tremendous noise gives
way, long fissures spread in every direction, and the air resounds with the clash of
floating fragments, which every hour are broken from the mass. The genius of
Philosophy is walking abroad, and with the touch of Ithuriel's spear is trying the
establishments of the earth. The various forms of Prejudice,
Superstition, and Servility start up in their true shapes, which had long imposed
upon the world under the revered semblances of Honour, Faith, and Loyalty. Whatever
is loose must be shaken, whatever is corrupted must be lopt away; whatever is not
built on the broad basis of public utility must be thrown to the ground. Obscure
murmurs gather, and swell into a tempest; the spirit of Inquiry, like a severe and
searching wind, penetrates every part of the great body politic; and whatever is
unsound, whatever is infirm, shrinks at the visitation. Liberty, here with the
lifted crosier in her hand, and the crucifix conspicuous on her breast; there, led
by Philosophy, and crowned with the civic wreath, animates men to assert their
long-forgotten rights. With a policy, far more liberal and comprehensive than the
boasted establishments of Greece and Rome, she diffuses her blessings to every class
of men; and even extends a smile of hope and promise to the poor African, the victim
of hard, impenetrable avarice. Man, as man, becomes an object of respect. Tenets are
transferred from theory to practice. The glowing sentiment and the lofty speculation
no longer serve "but to adorn the pages of a book;" they are
brought home to men's business and bosoms; and, what some centuries ago it was
daring but to think, and dangerous to express, is now realized and
carried into effect. Systems are analysed into their first principles, and
principles are fairly pursued to their legitimate consequences. The enemies of
reformation, who palliate what they cannot defend, and defer what they dare not
refuse; who, with Festus, put off to a more convenient season what, only because it
is the present season, is inconvenient, stand aghast, and find they have no power to
put back the important hour, when nature is labouring with the birth of great
events. Can ye not discern -- But you do discern these signs; you discern them well,
and your alarm is apparent. You see a mighty empire breaking from bondage, and
exerting the energies of recovered freedom: and England -- which was used to glory
in being the assertor of liberty and refuge of the oppressed -- England, who with
generous and respectful sympathy, in times not far remote from our own memory,
afforded of an asylum to so many of the subjects of that very empire, when crushed
beneath the iron rod of persecution; and, by so doing, circulated a livelier
abhorrence of tyranny within her own veins -- England, who has long reproached her
with being a slave, now censures her for daring to be free. England, who has held
the torch to her, is mortified to see it blaze brighter in her hands. England, for
whom, and for whose manners and habits of thinking, that empire has, for some time past, felt even an enthusiastic predilection; and to whom, as a model of
laws and government, she looks up with affectionate reverence -- England, nursed at
the breast of liberty, and breathing the purest spirit of enlightened philosophy,
views a sister nation with affected scorn and real jealousy, and presumes to ask
whether she yet exists: -- Yes, all of her exists that is worthy to do so. Her
dungeons indeed exist no longer, the iron doors are forced, the massy walls are
thrown down; and the liberated spectres, trembling between joy and horror, may now
blazon the infernal secrets of their prison-house. Her cloistered monks no longer
exist, nor does the soft heart of sensibility beat behind the grate of a convent;
but the best affections of the human mind, permitted to flow in their natural
channel, diffuse their friendly influence over the brightening prospect of domestic
happiness. Nobles, the creatures of kings, exist there no longer: but man, the
creature of God, exists there. Millions of men exist there, who only now truly begin
to exist, and hail with shouts of grateful acclamation the better birthday of their
country. Go on, generous nation, set the world an example of virtues as you have of
talents. Be our model, as we have been yours. May the spirit of wisdom, the spirit
of moderation, the spirit of firmness, guide and bless your counsels! Overcome our
wayward perverseness by your steadiness and temper. Silence the
scoff of your enemies, and the misgiving fears of your timorous well-wishers. Go on
to destroy the empire of prejudices, that empire of gigantic shadows, which are only
formidable while they are not attacked. Cause to succeed to the mad ambition of
conquest the peaceful industry of commerce, and the simple, useful toils of
agriculture. Instructed by the experience of past centuries, and by many a sad and
sanguine page in your own histories, may you no more attempt to blend what God has
made separate; but may religion and civil polity, like the two necessary but
opposite elements of fire and water, each in its province do service to man-kind,
but never again be forced into discordant union. Let the wandering pilgrims of every
tribe and complexion, who in other lands find only an asylum, find with you a
country; and may you never seek other proof of the purity of your faith than the
largeness of your charity. In your manners, your language, and habits of life, let a
manly simplicity, becoming the intercourse of equals with equals, take the place of
overstrained refinement and adulation. Let public reformation prepare the way for
private. May the abolition of domestic tyranny introduce the modest train of
household virtues, and purer incense be burned upon the hallowed altar of conjugal
fidelity. Ex-hibit to the world the rare phenomenon of a patriot
minister, of a philosophic senate. May a pure and perfect system of legislation
proceed from their forming hands, free from those irregularities and abuses, the
wear and tear of a constitution, which in a course of years are necessarily
accumulated in the best-formed states; -- and like the new creation in its first
gloss and freshness, yet free from any taint of corruption, when its Maker blessed
and called it good. May you never lose sight of the great principle you have held
forth, -- the natural equality of men. May you never forget that without public
spirit there can be no liberty; that without virtue there may be a confederacy, but
cannot be a community. May you, and may we, consigning to oblivion every less
generous competition, only contest who shall set the brightest example to the
nations; and may its healing influence be diffused, till the reign of Peace shall
spread
...............from shore to shore, |
Till wars shall cease, and slavery be no more. |
14. Amidst causes of such mighty operation, what are we and what are our petty, peculiar
interests? Triumph or despondency at the success or failure of our plans, would be
treason to the large, expanded, comprehensive wish which embraces the general
interests of humanity. Here then we fix
our foot with undoubting
confidence, sure that all events are in the hands of Him, who from seeming evil
...............is still educing good; |
And better thence again, and better still, |
In infinite progression. |
15. In this hope we look forward to the period when the name of Dissenter shall no more
be heard of than that of Romanist or Episcopalian; when nothing shall be venerable
but truth, and nothing valued but utility.
16. A DISSENTER.
17. March 3, 1790.
Date: 1825
(revised 02/08/2005) Author: Anna Letitia Barbauld
(revised Zach Weir).
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