“With such facts as these, the cry of persecution will not do; it is unwise to make it, because it can be so very easily, and so very justly retorted.  The business is to forget and forgive, to kiss and be friends, and to say nothing of what has passed; which is to the credit of neither party.  There have been atrocious cruelties, and abominable acts of injustice, on both sides.  It is not worth while to contend who shed the most blood, or whether death by fire is worse than hanging or starving in prison.  As far as England itself is concerned, the balance may be better preserved.  Cruelties exercised upon the Irish go for nothing in English reasoning; but if it were not uncandid and vexatious to consider Irish persecutions[90] as part of the case, I firmly believe there have been two Catholics put to death for religious causes in Great Britain for one Protestant who has suffered:  not that this proves much, because the Catholics have enjoyed the sovereign power for so few years between this period and the Reformation; and certainly it must be allowed that they were not inactive, during that period, in the great work of pious combustion.

“It is however some extenuation of the Catholic excesses, that their religion was the religion of the whole of Europe when the innovation began.  They were the ancient lords and masters of faith, before men introduced the practice of thinking for themselves in these matters.  The Protestants have less excuse, who claimed the right of innovation, and then turned round upon other Protestants who acted upon the same principle, or upon Catholics who remained as they were, and visited them with all the cruelties from which they had themselves so recently escaped.

“Both sides, as they acquired power, abused it; and both learnt, from their sufferings, the great secret of toleration and forbearance.  If you wish to do good in the times in which you live, contribute your efforts to perfect this grand work.  I have not the most distant intention to interfere in local politics; but I advise you never to give a vote to any man whose only title for asking it is that he means to continue the punishments, privations, and incapacities of any human beings, merely because they worship God in the way they think best:  the man who asks for your vote upon such a plea, is, probably, a very weak man, who believes in his own bad reasoning, or a very artful man, who is laughing at you for your credulity:  at all events, he is a man who knowingly or unknowingly exposes his country to the greatest dangers, and hands down to posterity all the foolish opinions and all the bad passions which prevail in those times in which he happens to live.  Such a man is so far from being that friend to the Church, which he pretends to be, that he declares its safety cannot be reconciled with the franchises of the people; for what worse can be said of the Church of England than this, that wherever it is judged necessary to give it a legal establishment, it becomes necessary to deprive the body of the people, if they adhere to their old opinions, of their liberties, and of all their free customs, and to reduce them to a state of civil servitude?

    “SYDNEY SMITH.”