of men, until they actually strike at the root of order.  This it does in things actually moral.  In all matters of speculative improvement the case is stronger, even where the matter is properly of human cognizance.  But to consider an averseness to improvement, the not arriving at perfection, as a crime, is against all tolerably correct jurisprudence; for, if the resistance to improvement should be great and any way general, they would in effect give up the necessary and substantial part in favor of the perfection and the finishing.

But, say the abettors of our penal laws, this old possessed superstition is such in its principles, that society, on its general principles, cannot subsist along with it.  Could a man think such an objection possible, if he had not actually heard it made,—­an objection contradicted, not by hypothetical reasonings, but the clear evidence of the most decisive facts?  Society not only exists, but flourishes at this hour, with this superstition, in many countries, under every form of government,—­in some established, in some tolerated, in others upon an equal footing.  And was there no civil society at all in these kingdoms before the Reformation?  To say it was not as well constituted as it ought to be is saying nothing at all to the purpose; for that assertion evidently regards improvement, not existence.  It certainly did then exist; and it as certainly then was at least as much to the advantage of a very great part of society as what we have brought in the place of it:  which is, indeed, a great blessing to those who have profited of the change; but to all the rest, as we have wrought, that is, by blending general persecution with partial reformation, it is the very reverse.  We found the people heretics and idolaters; we have, by way of improving their condition, rendered them slaves and beggars:  they remain in all the misfortune of their old errors, and all the superadded misery of their recent punishment.  They were happy enough, in their opinion at least, before the change; what benefits society then had, they partook of them all.  They are now excluded from those benefits; and, so far as civil society comprehends them, and as we have managed the matter, our persecutions are so far from being necessary to its existence, that our very reformation is made in a degree noxious.  If this be improvement, truly I know not what can be called a depravation of society.

But as those who argue in this manner are perpetually shifting the question, having begun with objecting, in order to give a fair and public color to their scheme, to a toleration of those opinions as subversive of society in general, they will surely end by abandoning the broad part of the argument, and attempting to show that a toleration of them is inconsistent with the established government among us.  Now, though this position be in reality as untenable as the other, it is not altogether such an absurdity on the face of it.  All I shall here observe is, that those