being more extended and more violent, an equitable procedure in a country professing to be governed by law.  It is, however, impossible not to observe with some concern, that there are many also of a different disposition,—­a number of persons whose minds are so formed that they find the communion of religion to be a close and an endearing tie, and their country to be no bond at all,—­to whom common altars are a better relation than common habitations and a common civil interest,—­whose hearts are touched with the distresses of foreigners, and are abundantly awake to all the tenderness of human feeling on such an occasion, even at the moment that they are inflicting the very same distresses, or worse, on their fellow-citizens, without the least sting of compassion or remorse.  To commiserate the distresses of all men suffering innocently, perhaps meritoriously, is generous, and very agreeable to the better part of our nature,—­a disposition that ought by all means to be cherished.  But to transfer humanity from its natural basis, our legitimate and home-bred connections,—­to lose all feeling for those who have grown up by our sides, in our eyes, the benefit of whose cares and labors we have partaken from our birth, and meretriciously to hunt abroad after foreign affections, is such a disarrangement of the whole system of our duties, that I do not know whether benevolence so displaced is not almost the same thing as destroyed, or what effect bigotry could have produced that is more fatal to society.  This no one could help observing, who has seen our doors kindly and bountifully thrown open to foreign sufferers for conscience, whilst through the same ports were issuing fugitives of our own, driven from their country for a cause which to an indifferent person would seem to be exactly similar, whilst we stood by, without any sense of the impropriety of this extraordinary scene, accusing and practising injustice.  For my part, there is no circumstance, in all the contradictions of our most mysterious nature, that appears to be more humiliating than the use we are disposed to make of those sad examples which seem purposely marked for our correction and improvement.  Every instance of fury and bigotry in other men, one should think, would naturally fill us with an horror of that disposition.  The effect, however, is directly contrary.  We are inspired, it is true, with a very sufficient hatred for the party, but with no detestation at all of the proceeding.  Nay, we are apt to urge our dislike of such measures as a reason for imitating them,—­and, by an almost incredible absurdity, because some powers have destroyed their country by their persecuting spirit, to argue, that we ought to retaliate on them by destroying our own.  Such are the effects, and such, I fear, has been the intention, of those numberless books which are daily printed and industriously spread, of the persecutions in other countries and other religious persuasions.—­These observations, which are a digression, but hardly, I think, can be considered as a departure from the subject, have detained us some time:  we will now come more directly to our purpose.