It is putting things into
the position of an ugly alternative, into which I hope in God they never
will be put.
I have said most of what occurs to me on the topics you touch upon,
relative to the religion of the king, and his coronation oath. I shall
conclude the observations which I wished to submit to you on this point
by assuring you that I think you the most remote that can be conceived
from the metaphysicians of our times, who are the most foolish of men,
and who, dealing in universals and essences, see no difference between
more and less,--and who of course would think that the reason of the law
which obliged the king to be a communicant of the Church of England
would be as valid to exclude a Catholic from being an exciseman, or to
deprive a man who has five hundred a year, under that description, from
voting on a par with a factitious Protestant Dissenting freeholder of
forty shillings.
Recollect, my dear friend, that it was a fundamental principle in the
French monarchy, whilst it stood, that the state should be Catholic; yet
the Edict of Nantes gave, not a full ecclesiastical, but a complete
civil _establishment_, with places of which only they were capable, to
the Calvinists of France,--and there were very few employments, indeed,
of which they were not capable.
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