He will accept them verbally
with alacrity, even with enthusiasm, because the word toleration
has been moralized by eminent Whigs; but what he means by
toleration is toleration of doctrines that he considers
enlightened, and, by liberty, liberty to do what he considers
right: that is, he does not mean toleration or liberty at all;
for there is no need to tolerate what appears enlightened or to
claim liberty to do what most people consider right.
Toleration and liberty have no sense or use except as
toleration of opinions that are considered damnable, and
liberty to do what seems wrong. Setting Englishmen free to marry
their deceased wife's sisters is not tolerated by the people who
approve of it, but by the people who regard it as incestuous.
Catholic Emancipation and the admission of Jews to parliament
needed no toleration from Catholics and Jews: the toleration they
needed was that of the people who regarded the one measure as a
facilitation of idolatry, and the other as a condonation
of the crucifixion. Clearly such toleration is not clamored
for by the multitude or by the press which reflects its
prejudices. It is essentially one of those abnegations of passion
and prejudice which the common man submits to because uncommon
men whom he respects as wiser than himself assure him that it
must be so, or the higher affairs of human destiny will suffer.
Such admission is the more difficult because the arguments
against tolerating immorality are the same as the arguments
against tolerating murder and theft; and this is why the Censor
seems to the inconsiderate as obviously desirable a functionary
as the police magistrate.
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