If
legal ways are not found, illegal will be resorted to; and seditious
clubs and confederacies, such as no man living holds in greater horror
than I do, will grow and flourish, in spite, I am afraid, of anything
which can be done to prevent the evil. Lawful enjoyment is the surest
method to prevent unlawful gratification. Where there is property, there
will be less theft; where there is marriage, there will always be less
fornication.
I have said enough of the question of state, _as it affects the people
merely as such_. But it is complicated with a political question
relative to religion, to which it is very necessary I should say
something,--because the term _Protestant_, which you apply, is too
general for the conclusions which one of your accurate understanding
would wish to draw from it, and because a great deal of argument will
depend on the use that is made of that term.
It is _not_ a fundamental part of the settlement at the Revolution that
the state should be Protestant _without any qualification of the term_.
With a qualification it is unquestionably true; not in all its latitude.
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