Because Protestant England allows the Romanists to open as many churches, schools, and convents as they please.
All that England demands from those who live on her hospitable soil is respect for her laws. Monarchs exiled by their subjects, and Communists, Nihilists, Socialists, exiled by their monarchs, may jostle one another in her streets any day; the individual liberty of the revolutionary subject being held as sacred as that of the ex-monarch.
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Our neighbor's eccentricities are but the natural fruit of liberty; and these same eccentricities, which amuse us so much, in England pass unnoticed. Everyone does as he pleases, and thinks it quite natural that others should do the same. I have seen young girls on tricycles make their way through a crowd, without an unpleasant remark or a joke being indulged in at their expense. The men made way, and allowed them to pass without remarking them more than if they had been on horseback.
Do not fear the abuse of liberty; among an intelligent race, good sense will always take the upper hand.
Liberty is sure to lead to a few excesses; but it does not suffer because of them.
Take England again.
English religious liberty is in no wise in danger because the law tolerates, nay, protects, the rowdy proselytes of the Booth family. True religion may suffer, but not religious liberty.
The right of association is not in danger because a philanthropic club has been formed at Ashpull, in Lancashire, by men who subscribe to defray the costs when one of their number is fined for ill-treating his wife.[10]
No, no, these eccentricities do but prove the vital force of England.