you, and without compulsion, and then your law would be unnecessary; but if he is not so convinced, he must know that it is his duty in this point to sacrifice his interest here to his opinion of his eternal happiness, else he could have in reality no religion at all.  In the former case, therefore, as your law would be unnecessary, in the latter it would be persecuting:  that is, it would put your penalty and his ideas of duty in the opposite scales; which is, or I know not what is, the precise idea of persecution.  If, then, you require a renunciation of his conscience, as a preliminary to his admission to the rights of society, you annex, morally speaking, an impossible condition to it.  In this case, in the language of reason and jurisprudence, the condition would be void, and the gift absolute; as the practice runs, it is to establish the condition, and to withhold the benefit.  The suffering is, then, not voluntary.  And I never heard any other argument, drawn from the nature of laws and the good of human society, urged in favor of those proscriptive statutes, except those which have just been mentioned.

FOOTNOTES: 

[22] Cicero de Legibus, Lib.  L 14,15 et 16.—­“O rem dignam, in qua non modo docti, verum etiam agrestes erubescant!  Jam vero illud stultissimum existimare omnia justa esse, quae scita sint in populorum institutis aut legibus,” etc.  “Quod si populorum jussis, si principum decretis, si sententiis judicum jura constituerentur, jus esset latrocinari, jus adulterare, jus testamenta falsa supponere, si haec suffragiis aut scitis multitudinis probarentur.”

CHAPTER III.

PART II.

The second head upon which I propose to consider those statutes with regard to their object, and which is the next in importance to the magnitude, and of almost equal concern in the inquiry into the justice of these laws, is its possession.  It is proper to recollect that this religion, which is so persecuted in its members, is the old religion of the country, and the once established religion of the state,—­the very same which had for centuries received the countenance and sanction of the laws, and from which it would at one time have been highly penal to have dissented.  In proportion as mankind has become enlightened, the idea of religious persecution, under any circumstances, has been almost universally exploded by all good and thinking men.  The only faint shadow of difficulty which remains is concerning the introduction of new opinions.  Experience has shown, that, if it has been favorable to the cause of truth, it has not been always conducive to the peace of society.  Though a new religious sect should even be totally free in itself from any tumultuous and disorderly zeal, which, however, is rarely the case, it has a tendency to create a resistance from the establishment in possession,