is a recognition of the principle; although it is remarkable, not only that the number of offences which are thus punished is small, but that they are frequently of a sort in which pecuniary loss has not been sustained by the injured party. I do not imagine that in the present state of penal law, or of the administration of justice, a general regard to compensation is practicable, but this does not prove that it ought not to be regarded. If in an improved state of penal affairs, it should be found practicable to oblige offenders to recompense by their labour those who had suffered by their crime, this advantage would attend, that while it would probably involve considerable punishment, it would approve itself to the offender's mind as the demand of reason and of justice. This is no trifling consideration; for in every species of coercion and punishment, public or domestic, it is of consequence that the punished party should feel the justice and propriety of the measures which are adopted. The writer of these Essays would be amongst the last to reprobate a strict adherence to abstract principles, as such; but some men, in their zeal for such principles, have proposed strange doctrines upon the subject of punishment. It has been said that when a crime has been committed it cannot be recalled; that it is a 66 past and irrevocable action," and that to inflict pain upon the criminal because he has committed it," is one of the wildest conceptions of untutored barbarism." No one perhaps would affirm that, in strictness, such a motive to punishment is right; but how, when an offence is committed, can you separate the objects of punishment so as not practically to punish because the man has offended? If you regulate the punishment by its legitimate objects, you punish because the offender needs it; and as all offenders do need it, you punish all, which amounts in practice to nearly the same thing as punishing because they have committed a crime. However, as an abstract principle, there might be little occasion to dispute about it; but when it is made a foundation for such doctrine as the following, it is needful to recall the supreme authority of the Moral Law: "We are bound, under certain urgent circumstances, to deprive the offender of the liberty he has abused. Further than this, no circumstance can authorize us. The infliction of further evil, when his power to injure is removed, is the wild and unauthorized dictate of vengeance and rage." This is affirmative; and in turn I would affirm that it is the sober and authorized dictate of justice and good-will. But indeed why may we even restrain him? Obviously for the sake of others; and for the sake of others we may also do more. Besides, this philosophy leaves the offender's reformation out of the question. If he is so wicked that you are obliged to confine him lest he should commit violence again, he is so wicked that you are obliged to confine him for his own good. And, in reality, the writer himself had just before virtually disproved his own position. "Whatever gentleness," he says, "the intellectual physician may display, it is not to be believed that men can part with rooted habits of injustice and vice without the sensation of considerable pain. But, to occasion this pain in order to make them part with vicious habits, is to do something "further" than to take away liberty. * Respecting the relative utility of different modes of punishment and of prison discipline, we have little to say, partly because the practical recognition of reformation as a primary object affords good secu Godwi: Enq. Fol. Just. v. i. p. 748, 751. rity for the adoption of judicious measures, and partly because these topics have already obtained much of the public attention. One suggestion may, however, be made, that as good consequences have followed from making a prisoner's confinement depend for its duration on his conduct, so that if it be exemplary the period is diminished, there appears no sufficient reason why the parallel system should not be adopted of increasing the original sentence if his conduct continue vicious. There is no breach of reason or of justice in this. For the reasonable object of punishment is to attain certain ends, and if, by the original sentence, it is found that these ends are not attained, reason appears to dictate that stronger motives should be employed. It cannot surely be less reasonable to add to a culprit's penalty if his conduct be bad, than to deduct from it if it be good. For a sentence should not be considered as a propitiation of the law, nor when it is inflicted should it be considered, as of necessity, that all is done. The sentence which the law pronounces is a general rule-good perhaps as a general rule, but sometimes inadequate to its end. And the utility of retaining the power of adding to a penalty is the same in kind, and probably greater in degree, than the power of diminishing it. In one case the culprit is influenced by hope, and in the other by fear. Fear is the more powerful agent upon some men's minds, and hope upon others. And as to the justice of such an institution, it appears easily to be vindicated; for what is the standard of justice? The sentence of the law? No; for if it were, it would be unjust to abate of it as well as to add. Is it the original crime of the offender? No; for if it were, the same crime, by whatever variety of conduct it was afterwards followed, must always receive an equal penalty. The standard of justice is to be estimated by the ends for which punishments are inflicted. Now, although it would be too much to affirm that any penalty, or duration of penalty, would be just until these ends were attained, yet surely it is not unjust to endeavour their attainment by some additions to an original penalty when they cannot be attained without. CHAPTER XIII. PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. Of the three objects of punishment, the punishment of death regards but one-Reformation of minor offenders: Greater criminals neglected — Capital punishments not efficient as examples-Public executions-Paul - Grotius - Murder-. The punishment of death irrevocable-Rousseau-Recapitulation. I SELECT for observation this peculiar mode of punishment on account of its peculiar importance. And here we are impressed at the outset with the consideration, that of the three great objects which have just been proposed as the proper ends of punishment, the punishment of death regards but one; and that one not the first and the greatest. The only end which is consulted in taking the life of an offender, is that of example to other men. His own reformation is put almost out of the question. Now, if the principles delivered in the preceding chapter be sound, they present at once an almost insuperable objection to the punishment of death. If reformation be the primary object, and if the punishment of death precludes attention to that object, the punishment of death is wrong. To take the life of a fellow-creature is to exert the utmost possible power which man can possess over man. It is to perform an action the most seri K more efficient as examples than any others? We are not. We do not know from experience, and we cannot know without it. In England the experiment has not been made. The punishment therefore is wrong in us, whatever it might be in a more experienced people. For it is wrong unless it can be shown to be right. It is not a neutral affair. If it is not indispensably necessary, it is unwarrantable. And since we do not know that it is indispensable, it is, so far as we are concerned, unwarrantable. ous and awful which a human being can perform. | indisputably certain that capital punishments are Respecting such an action, then, can any truth be more manifest than that the dictates of Christianity ought especially to be taken into account? If these dictates are rightly urged upon us in the minor concerns of life, can any man doubt whether they ought to influence us in the greatest? Yet what is the fact? Why, that in defending capital punishments, these dictates are almost placed out of the question. We hear a great deal about security of property and life, a great deal about the necessity of making examples; but almost nothing about the Moral Law. It might be imagined that upon this subject our religion imposed no obligations; for nearly every argument that is urged in favour of capital punishments would be as valid and as appropriate in the mouth of a Pagan as in our own. Can this be right? Is it conceivable that, in the exercise of the most tremendous agency which is in the power of man, it can be right to exclude all reference to the expressed will of God! I acknowledge that this exclusion of the Christian law from the defences of the punishment, is to me almost a conclusive argument that the punishment is wrong. Nothing that is right can need such an exclusion; and we should not practise it if it were not for a secret perception, that to apply the pure requisitions of Christianity would not serve the purpose of the advocate. Look for a moment upon the capital offender and upon ourselves. He, a depraved and deep violator of the law of God--one who is obnoxious to the vengeance of heaven-one, however, whom Christ came peculiarly to call to repentance and to save-Ourselves, his brethren-brethren by the relationship of nature-brethren in some degree in offences against God-brethren especially in the trembling hope of a common salvation. How ought beings so situated to act towards one another? Ought we to kill or to amend him? Ought we, so far as is in our power, to cut off his future hope, or, so far as is in our power, to strengthen the foundation of that hope? Is it the reasonable or decent office of one candidate for the mercy of God to hang his fellow-candidate upon a gibbet? I am serious, though men of levity may laugh. If such men reject Christianity, I do not address them. If they admit its truth, let them manfully show that its principles should not thus be applied. No one disputes that the reformation of offenders is desirable, though some may not allow it to be the primary object. For the purposes of reformation we have recourse to constant oversight-to classification of offenders-to regular labour-to religious instruction. For whom? For minor criminals. Do not the greater criminals need reformation too? If all these endeavours are necessary to effect the amendment of the less depraved, are they not necessary to effect the amendment of the more? But we stop just where our exertions are most needed; as if the reformation of a bad man was of the less consequence as the intensity of his wickedness became greater. If prison discipline anda penitentiary be needful for sharpers and pickpockets, surely they are necessary for murderers and highwaymen. Yet we reform the one and hang the other! Since, then, so much is sacrificed to extend the terror of example, we ought to be indisputably certain that the terror of capital punishments is greater than that of all others. We ought not certainly to sacrifice the requisitions of the Christian law unless we know that a regard to them would be attended with public evil.* Do we know this? Are we We ought not for any reason to do this; but I speak in the present paragraph of the pretensions of expediency. And with respect to the experience of other nations, who will affirm that crimes have been increased in consequence of the diminished frequency of executions? Who will affirm that the laws and punishments of America are not as effectual as our own! Yet they have abolished capital punishments for all private crimes except murder of the first degree. Where, then, is our pretension to a justification of our own practice? It is a satisfaction that so many facts and arguments are before the public which show the inefficacy of the punishment of death in this country; and this is one reason why they are not introduced here." There are no practical despisers of death like those who touch, and taste, and handle death daily, by daily committing capital offences. They make a jest of death in all its forms; and all its terrors are in their mouths a scorn.' "Profligate criminals, such as common thieves and highwaymen," "have always been accustomed to look upon the gibbet as a lot very likely to fall to them. When it does fail to them therefore, they consider themselves only as not quite so lucky as some of their companions, and submit to their fortune without any other uneasiness than what may arise from the fear of death-a fear which even, by such worthless wretches, we frequently see can be so easily and so very completely conquered." A man some time ago was executed for uttering forged bank-notes, and the body was delivered to his friends. What was the effect of the example upon them? Why, with the corpse lying on a bed before them, they were themselves seized in the act of again uttering forged bank notes. The testimony upon a subject like this, of a person who has had probably greater and better opportunities of ascertaining the practical efficiency of punishments than any other individual in Europe, is of great importance. "Capital convicts," says Elizabeth Fry, pacify their conscience with the dangerous and most fallacious notion, that the violent death which awaits them will serve as a full atonement for all their sins." It is their passport to felicity-the purchase-money of heaven! Of this deplorable notion the effect is doubly bad. First, it makes them comparatively little afraid of death, because they necessarily regard it as so much less an evil; and, secondly, it encourages them to go on in the commission of crimes, because they imagine that the number or enormity of them, however great, will not preclude them from admission into heaven. Of both these mischiefs, the punishment of death is the immediate source. Substitute another punishment, and they will not think that that is an "atonement for their sins," and will not receive their present encouragement to continue their crimes. But with respect to example, this unexceptionable authority speaks in decided language. "The terror of example is very generally rendered abortive by the predestinarian notion, vulgarly prevalent among thieves, that if they are to be hanged they are to be hanged, and nothing can prevent it."" It may be said that the same notion might be attached to other punishment, and that thus that other would come abortive; but there is little reason to ext this, at least in the same degree. The notion is connected expressly wih hanging, and it is not bable that the same notion would ever be transred with equal power to another penalty. here then is the overwhelming evidence of utility, ich alone, even in the estimate of expediency, can tify the punishment of death? It cannot be luced; it does not exist. But if capital punishments do little good, they do But the answer is at hand-The public do not ally begin with capital crimes. These are comtted after the person has become depraved that claration implies, if he lifts his voice for the punishment of death! But further: the execution of one offender excites in others "the spirit of revenge." This is extremely natural. Many a soldier, I dare say, has felt impelled to revenge the death of his comrades; and the member of a gang of thieves, who has fewer restraints of principle, is likely to feel it too. But upon whom is his revenge inflicted? Upon the legislature, or the jury, or the witnesses? No, but upon the public -upon the first person whose life is in their power, and which they are prompted to take away. You execute a man, then, in order to save the lives of others; and the effect is, that you add new inducements to take the lives of others away. Of a system which is thus unsound-unsound because it rejects some of the plainest dictates of the Moral Law and unsound because so many of its effects are bad, I should be ready to conclude, with no other evidence, that it was utterly inexpedient and impolitic-that as it was bad in morals, it was bad in policy. And such appears to be the fact."It is incontrovertibly proved that punishments of a milder and less injurious nature are calculated to produce, for every good purpose, a far more powerful effect." Finally." The best of substitutes for capital punishment will be found in that judicious management of criminals in prison which it is the object of the present tract to recommend;"† which management is Christian management a system in which reformation is made the first object, but in which it is found that in order to effect reformation severity to hardened offenders is needful. Thus then we arrive at the goal::-we begin with urging the system that Christianity dictates as right; we conclude by discovering that, as it is the right system, so it is practically the best. But an argument in favour of capital punishments has been raised from the Christian Scriptures themselves." If I be an offender, or have committed any thing worthy of death, I refuse not to die." This is the language of an innocent person who was persecuted by malicious enemies. It was an assertion of innocence; an assertion that he had done no. thing worthy of death. The case had no reference to the question of the lawfulness of capital punishment, but to the question of the lawfulness of inflict after he has arrived at that state in which an ecution will harden rather than deter him. We lower their estimate of the life of man." It cannot doubted. It is the inevitable tendency of execuns. There is much of justice in an observation of eccaria's. "Is it not absurd that the laws which teet and punish homicide should, in order to prent murder, publicly commit murder themselves?"† y the procedures of a court, we virtually and perps literally expatiate upon the sacredness of human e, upon the dreadful guilt of taking it away-and en forthwith take it away ourselves! It is no bject of wonder that this "lowers the estimate of e life of man." The next sentence of the writer on whose testimony I offer these comments, is of emendous import :-" There is much reason to beve that our public executions have had a directing it upon him. Nor can it be supposed that it was d positive tendency to promote both murder and the design of the speaker to convey any sanction of icide." 66 Why, if a considerable time elapse between the punishment itself, because the design would have e trial and the execution, do we find the severity of been wholly foreign to the occasion. The argument e public changed into compassion? For the same of Grotius goes perhaps too far for his own purpose. ason that a master, if he do not beat his slave in "If I be an offender, or have done any thing wore moment of resentment, often feels a repugnance thy of death, I refuse not to die." He refused not the beating him at all." This is remarkable. to die, then, if he were an offender, if he had done executions were put off for a twelvemonth, I one of the "many and grievous things" which the ›ubt whether the public would bear them. But Jews charged upon him. But will it be contended hy if they were just and right? Respecting "the that he meant to sanction the destruction of every ontempt and indignation with which every one looks person who was thus "an offender?"-His enemies an executioner," Beccaria says the reason is, were endeavouring to take his life, and he, in earthat in a secret corner of the mind, in which the nest asseveration of his innocence, says, "If you riginal impressions of nature are still preserved, can fix your charges upon me, take it. en discover a sentiment which tells them that their ves are not lawfully in the power of any one."§ et him who has the power of influencing the legisture of the country or publie opinion, (and who as not?) consider the responsibility which this de • Observations on the visiting, &e., of Female Prisoners, 73 Essay on Capital Punishments, c. 28. 4 Godwin: Enq Pol. Just. v. 2, p. 726. Beccaria: Essay on Capital Punishments, chap. 28. Grotius adduces, as an additional evidence of the sanction of the punishment by Christianity, this passage, "Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, &c.-What glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it pa • Observations on the visiting, &c., of Female Prisoners + Ibid. p. 76. p. 75. Acts, xxv. 11; see Grotius: Rights of War and Peace. tiently, this is acceptable with God.”* Some argu ments disprove the doctrine which they are advanced to support, and this surely is one of them. It surely cannot be true that Christianity sanctions capital punishments, if this is the best evidence of the sanction that can be found.† Some persons again suppose that there is a sort of moral obligation to take the life of a murderer: "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." This supposition is an example of that want of advertence to the supremacy of the Christian morality, which in the first Essay we had occasion to notice. Our law is the Christian law, and if Christianity by its precepts or spirit prohibits the punishment of death, it cannot be made right to Christians by referring to a commandment which was given to Noah. There is, in truth, some inconsistency in the reasonings of those who urge the passage. The fourth, fifth, and sixth verses of Genesis ninth, each contains a law delivered to Noah. Of these three laws, we habitually disregard two: how then can we with reason insist on the authority of the third? ‡ After all, if the command were in full force, it would not justify our laws; for they shed the blood of many who have not shed blood themselves. And this conducts us to the observation, that the grounds upon which the United States of America still affix death to murder of the first degree, do not appear very clear; for if other punishments are found effectual in deterring from crimes of all degrees of enormity up to the last, how is it shown that they would not be effectual in the last also? There is nothing in the constitution of the human mind to indicate, that a murderer is influenced by passions which require that the counteracting power should be totally different from that which is employed to restrain every other crime. The difference too in the personal guilt of the perpetrators of some other crimes, and of murder, is sometimes extremely small. At any rate, it is not so great as to imply a necessity for a punishment totally dissimilar. The truth appears to be, that men entertain a sort of indistinct notion that murder is a crime which requires a peculiar punishment, which notion is often founded, not upon any process of investigation, by which the propriety of this peculiar punishment is discovered, but upon some vague ideas respecting the nature of the crime itself. But the dictate of philosophy is, to employ that punishment which will be most efficacious. Efficacy is the test of its propriety; and in estimating this efficacy, the character of the crime is a foreign consideration. Again, the dictate of Christianity is, to employ that punishment which, while it deters the spectator, reforms the man. Now; neither philosophy nor Christianity appears to be consulted in punishing murder with death, because it is murder. And it is worthy of especial remembrance, that the purpose for which Grotius defends the punishment of death is, that he may be able to defend the practice of war:—a bad foundation if this be its best! It is one objection to capital punishment that it is absolutely irrevocable. If an innocent man suffers it is impossible to recall the sentence of the law. Not that this consideration alone is a sufficient argument against it, but it is one argument amongst the many. In a certain sense indeed, all personal punishments are irrevocable. The man who by a mis taken verdict has been confined twelve months in a prison, cannot be repossessed of the time. But if irrevocable punishments cannot be dispensed with, they should not be made needlessly common, and especially those should be regarded with jealousy which admit of no removal or relaxation in the event of subsequently discovered innocence, or subsequent reformation. It is not sufficiently considered that a jury or a court of justice never know that a prisoner is guilty.-A witness may know it who saw him commit the act, but others cannot know it who de pend upon testimony, for testimony may be mistaken or false. All verdicts are founded upon probabilities probabilities which, though they sometimes approach to certainty, never attain to it. Surely it is a serious thing for one man to destroy another upon grounds short of absolute certainty of his guit There is a sort of indecency attached to it-an assumption of a degree of authority which ought to be exercised only by Him whose knowledge is infallibly true. It is unhappily certain that some have been put to death for actions which they never committed. At one assizes, we believe, not less than six persons were hanged, of whom it was afterwards discovered that they were entirely innocent. A deplorable instance is given by Dr Smollett :-" Rape and murder were perpetrated upon an unfortunate woman ia the neighbourhood of London, and an innocent man suffered death for this complicated outrage, while the real criminals assisted at his execution, heard him appeal to Heaven for his innocence, and in the character of friends embraced him while he stood on the brink of eternity.' Others equally innocent, but whose innocence has never been made known, have doubtless shared the same fate. These are tremendous considerations, and ought to make men solemnly pause before, upon grounds necessarily uncertain, they take away that life which God has given, and which they cannot restore. Of the merely philosophical speculations respecting the rectitude of capital punishments, whether affirmative or negative, I would say little; for they in truth deserve little. One advantage indeed attends a brief review-that the reader will perceive how little the speculations of philosophers will aid us in the investigation of a Christian question. The philosopher, however, would prove what the Christian cannot, and Mably accordingly says, “In the state of nature, I have a right to take the life of him who lifts his arm against mine. This right, upon entering into society, I surrender to the magis trate." If we conceded the truth of the first position, (which we do not,) the conclusion from it is an idle sophism; for it is obviously preposterous to say, that because I have a right to take the life of a man who will kill me if I do not kill him, the state, which is in no such danger, has a right to do the same. That danger which constitutes the alleged right in the individual, does not exist in the case of the state. The foundation of the right is gone, and where can be the right itself? Having, however, been thus told that the state has a right to kill, we are next informed, by Filangieri, that the criminal has no right to live. He says, "If I have a right to kill another man, he has lost his right to life."† Rous seau goes a little further. He tells us, that in consequence of the "social contract" which we make with the sovereign on entering into society, "Life is a conditional grant of the state:" so that we hold our lives, it seems, only as "tenants at will,” and must give them up whenever their owner, the state, requires them. The reader has probably hitherto Hist. of Eng. v. 3, p. 318. Montagu on Punishment of Death. Contr. Soc. ii. 5, Montagu. thought that he retained his head by some other tenure. The right of taking an offender's life being thus proved, Mably shows us how its exercise becomes expedient. "A murderer," says he, "in taking away his enemy's life, believes he does him the greatest possible evil. Death, then, in the murderer's estimation, is the greatest of evils. By the fear of death, therefore, the excesses of hatred and revenge must be restrained." If language wilder than this can be held, Rousseau, I think, holds it. He says, “The preservation of both sides (the criminal and the state) is incompatible; one of the two must perish." How it happens that a nation "must perish," if a convict is not hanged, the reader, I suppose, will not know. Even philosophy, however, concedes as much: "Absolute necessity alone," says Pastoret, "can justify the punishment of Death;" and Rousseau himself acknowledges that "we have no right to put to death, even for the sake of example, any but those who cannot be permitted to live without danger." Beccaria limits the right to one specific case and in doing this he appears to sacrifice his own principle, (deduced from that splendid fiction, the "social contract,") which is, that "the punishment of death is not authorized by any right: -no such right exists." For myself, I perceive little value in such speculations to whatever conclusions they lead, for there are shorter and surer roads to truth; but it is satisfactory to find that, even upon the principles of such philosophers, the right to put criminals to death is not easily made out. The argument, then, respecting the punishment of death, is both distinct and short. It rejects, by its very nature, a regard to the first and greatest object of punishment. It does not attain either of the other objects so well as they may be attained by other means. It is attended with numerous evils peculiarly its own. CHAPTER XIV. RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. The primitive church-The established church of IrelandAmerica- Advantages and disadvantages of established churches-Alliance of a church with the state-An established church perpetuates its own evils-Persecution generally the growth of religious establishments-State religions injurious to the civil welfare of a people-Legal provision for Christian teachers-Voluntary paymentAdvancement in the church-The appointinent of religious teachers. A LARGE number of persons embark from Europe, and colonize an uninhabited territory in the South Sea. They erect a government-suppose a republic -and make all persons, of whatever creed, eligible to the legislature. The community prospers and increases. In process of time a member of the legislature, who is a disciple of John Wesley, persuades himself that it will tend to the promotion of religion that the preachers of methodism should be supported by a national tax; that their stipends should be sufficiently ample to prevent them from necessary attention to any business but that of religion; and that accordingly they shall be precluded from the usual pursuits of commerce and from the professions. He proposes the measure. It is contended against by the episcopalian members, and the independents, and the catholics, and the unitarians-by all but the adherents to his own creed. They insist upon the equality of civil and religious rights, but in vain. The majority prove to be methodists; they support the measure: the law is enacted; and methodism becomes, thenceforth, the religion of the state. This is a Religious Establishment. But it is a religious establishment in its best form; and, perhaps, none ever existed of which the constitution was so simple and so pure. During one portion of the papal history, the Romish church was indeed not so much an "establishment" of the state as a separate and independent constitution. For though some species of alliance subsisted, yet the Romanists did not acknowledge, as Protestants now do, that the power of establishing a religion resides in the state. In the present day, other immunites are possessed by ecclesiastical establishments than those which are necessary to constitute the institution-such, for example, as that of exclusive eligibility to the legislature and other alliances with the civil power exist than that which necessarily results from any preference of a particular faith-such as that of placing ecclesiastical patronage in the hands of a government, or of those who are under its influence. From these circumstances it happens, that in enquiring into the propriety of religious establishments, we cannot confine ourselves to the enquiry whether they would be proper in their simplest form, but whether they are proper as they usually exist. And this is so much the more needful, because there is little reason to expect that when once an ecclesiastical establishment has been erected-when once a particular church has been selected for the preference and patronage of the civil power-that preference and patronage will be confined to those circumstances which are necessary to the subsistence of an establishment at all. It is sufficiently obvious that it matters nothing to the existence of an established church, what the faith of that church is, or what is the form of its government. It is not the creed which constitutes the establishment, but the preference of the civil power; and accordingly the reader will be pleased to bear in mind, that neither in this chapter nor in the next have we any concern with religious opinions. Our business is not with churches, but with church establishments. The actual history of religious establishments in Christian countries, does not differ in essence from that which we have supposed in the South Sea. They have been erected by the influence or the assistance of the civil power. In one country a religion may have owed its political supremacy to the superstitions of a prince; and in another to his policy or ambition: but the effect has been similar. Whether superstition or policy, the contrivances of a priesthood, or the fortuitous predominance of a party, have given rise to the established church, is of comparatively little consequence to the fundamental principles of the institution. Of the divine right of a particular church to supremacy I say nothing; because none with whom I am at present concerned to argue imagine that it exists. The only ground upon which it appears that religious establishments can be advocated are, first, that of example or approbation in the primitive churches; and, secondly, that of public utility. I. The primitive church was not a religious establishment in any sense or in any degree. No establishment existed until the church had lost much of its purity. Nor is there any expression in the New Testament, direct or indirect, which would lead a |