If England, from a lust of ambition and dominion, will insist on maintaining despotic rule over distant and hostile nations, beyond all comparison more numerous and extended than herself, and gives commission to her viceroys to govern them with no other instructions than to preserve them, and to secure permanently their revenues, with what color of consistency or reason can she place herself in the moral chair, and affect to be shocked at the execution of her own orders; adverting to the exact measure of wickedness and injustice necessary to their execution, and, complaining only of the excess as the immorality, considering her authority as a dispensation for breaking the commands of God, and the breach of them as only punishable when contrary to the ordinances of man? Such a proceeding, gentlemen, begets serious reflection. It would be better, perhaps, for the masters and the servants of all such governments to join in supplication, that the great Author of violated humanity may not confound them together in one common judgment. Lord Erskine.
CLV.
DECLARATION OF RIGHT.
I might as a constituent, come to your bar and demand my liberty. I do call upon you by the laws of the land, and their violation; by the instructions of eighteen counties; by the arms, inspiration, and providence of the present moment—tell us the rule by which we shall go; assert the law of Ireland; declare the liberty of the land! I will not be answered by a public lie, in the shape of an amendment; nor, speaking for the subjects' freedom, am I to hear of faction. I wish for nothing but to breathe in this our island, in common with my fellow-subjects, the air of liberty. I have no ambition, unless it be to break your chain and contemplate your glory. I never will be satisfied so long as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of the British chain clanking to his rags. He may be naked,—he shall not be in irons. And I do see the time at hand; the spirit is gone forth; the Declaration of Right is planted; and though great men should fall off, yet the cause shall live; and though he who utters this should die, yet the immortal fire shall outlast the humble organ who conveys it, and the breath of liberty, like the word of the holy man will not die with the prophet, but survive him. H. Grattan.
CLVI.
POLITICS AND RELIGION.
That religion has, in fact, nothing to do with the politics of many who profess it, is a melancholy truth. But that it has of right, no concern with political transactions, is quite a new discovery. If such opinions, however, prevail, there is no longer any mystery in the character of those whose conduct in political matters violates every precept and slanders every principle of the religion of Christ. But what is politics? Is it not the science and the exercise of civil rights and civil duties? And what is religion? Is it not an obligation to the service of God, founded on his authority, and extending to all our relations, personal and social? Yet religion has nothing to do with politics? Where did you learn this maxim? The Bible is full of directions for your behavior as citizens. It is plain, pointed; awful in its injunctions on ruler and ruled as such: yet religion has nothing to do with politics! You are commanded "in all your ways to acknowledge Him." In everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, to let your requests be made known unto God "And whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, to do all in the name of the Lord Jesus." Yet religion has nothing to do with politics! Most astonishing! And is there any part of your conduct in which you are, or wish to be, without law to God, and not under the law of Jesus Christ? Can you persuade yourselves that political men and measures are to undergo no review in the judgment to come? That all the passion and violence, the fraud and falsehood and corruption, which pervade the system of party, and burst out like a flood at the public elections, are to be blotted from the catalogue of unchristian deeds, because they are politics? Or that a minister of the gospel may see his people, in their political career, bid defiance to their God in breaking through every moral restraint, and keep a guiltless silence, because religion has nothing to do with politics? I forbear to press the argument farther; observing only that many of our difficulties and sins may be traced to this pernicious notion. Yes, if our religion had had more to do with our politics; if, in the pride of our citizenship, we had not forgotten our Christianity; if we had prayed more and wrangled less about the affairs of our country, it would have been infinitely better for us at this day J. M. Mason