should be stopped by changing those circumstances which cause it, but none in which it ought to be simply prohibited. The universal principle of adhesiveness, so strong in all spheres of action, thought, and affection, and which forms one of the elementary principles of society and continuity of civilization, is sufficiently strong to keep people where they are, if they possibly can remain ; and if they leave an overpeopled country, or one in which they cannot find work or fair living, they become active producers, and consequently proportionate consumers in the new country, so that the old country will reap its proportionate benefit, provided free exchange be allowed by the latter.

The same applies to the capital removed along with emigration. It becomes more productive, and mankind at large are benefited by it.

Besides, it is but a part of the general question, shall or shall not governments prohibit the efflux of money? It was formerly considered one of the highest problems of statesmanship, even by rulers so wise as Frederic the Second, of Prussia, to prevent money from flowing out of the country; for wealth was believed to consist in money. Experience has made us wiser. We know that the freest action in this, as in so many other cases, is also the most conducive to general prosperity. It was stated in the journals of the day, that Miss Jenny Lind remitted five hundred thousand dollars from the United States to Europe. Suppose this to be true; would they have been benefited had she been forced to leave that sum in this country? Or should we, upon the whole, profit by preventing five million dollars, which, according to the statement of our secretary of state, are now annually sent by our Irish immigrants to Ireland, from leaving our shores? Unquestionably not. But

this is not the place for farther pursuing a question of political economy.

The English provided for a free egress and regress as early as in Magna Charta.5 As to the freest possible locomotion within the country, I am aware that many persons accustomed to Anglican liberty may consider my mentioning it as part of civil liberty somewhat overminute. If they will direct their attention to countries in which this liberty is not enjoyed in its fullest extent, they will agree that I have good reason for enumerating it. Passports are odious things to Americans and Englishmen, and may they always be so.o

5 Hon. Edward Everett's despatch to Mr. Crampton, on the Island of Čuba, December 1, 1852.

6 The primordial right of locomotion has been discussed by me in Political Ethics, at considerable length.

CHAPTER X.

LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE.

2

PROPERTY. SUPREMACY OF

THE LAW.

8. LIBERTY of conscience, or, as it ought to be called more properly,' the liberty of worship, is one of the primordial rights of man, and no system of liberty can be considered comprehensive which does not include guarantees for the free exercise of this right. It belongs to American liberty to separate entirely the institution which has for its object the support and diffusion of religion from the political government. We have seen already what our constitution says on this point. All state constitutions have similar provisions. They prohibit government from founding or endowing churches, and from demanding a religious qualification for any office or the exercise of any right. They are not hostile to religion, for we see that all the state governments direct or allow the Bible to be read in the public schools; but they adhere strictly to these two points,-no worship shall be interfered with, either directly by persecution, or indirectly by disqualifying members of certain sects, or by favouring one sect above the others; and no church shall be declared the church of the state, or "established

1 Conscience lies beyond the reach of government. "Thoughts are free," is an old German saw. The same must be said of feelings and conscience. That which government, even the most despotic, can alone interfere with, is the profession of religion, worship, and church government.

See Primordial Rights, in Political Ethics.

church," nor shall the people be taxed by government to support the clergy of all the churches, as is the case in France.

In England there is an Established Church, and religious qualifications are required for certain offices and places, at least in an indirect way. A member of parliament cannot take his seat without taking a certain oath " upon the faith of a Christian," which of course excludes Jews. There is no doubt, however, that this disqualification will soon be removed. Whether it will be done or not, we are nevertheless authorised to say that liberty of conscience forms one of the elements of Anglican liberty. It has not yet arrived at full maturity in some portions of the Anglican race, but we can easily discern it in the whole race, in whose history we find religious toleration at an earlier date than in that of any other large portion of mankind. Venice, and some minor states, found the economical and commercial benefit of toleration at an early period; but England was the earliest country of any magnitude where toleration, which precedes real religious liberty, was established. While Louis the Fourteenth of France, called the Great, dragonaded the Protestants, on no other ground than that they would not become Catholics, a greater king, William the Third, declared in England that "conscience is God's province." The Catholics were long severely treated in England, but it was more on a political ground-because the Pope supported for a long time the opponents to the ruling dynasty-than on purely religious grounds.

There is a new religious zeal manifesting itself in all branches of the Christian Church. The Catholic Church seems to be animated by a renewed spirit of activity, not dissimilar to that which animated it in the seventeenth

century, by which it regained much of the ground lost by the Reformation, and which has been so well described by Mr. Ranke. The Protestants are not idle,-they study, probe, preach, and act with great zeal. May Providence grant that the Anglican tribe, and all the members of the civilized race, may more and more distinctly act upon the principle of religious liberty, and not swerve from it even under the most galling circumstances! Calamitous consequences, of which very few may have any conception at this moment, might easily follow.

As to that unhappy and most remarkable sect called the Mormons, who have sprung up and consolidated themselves within our country, and who doubtless may become troublesome when sufficiently numerous to call on us for admission into the Union, I take it that the political trouble they may give cannot arise from religious grounds. Whether they have fallen back into Buddhism, making their god a perfectible being, with parts and local dwelling, cannot become a direct political question, however it may indirectly affect society in all its parts. The potent questions which will offer great difficulty will be, whether a Mormon state, with its "theodemocratic" government, as they term it, can be called a republic, in the sense in which our constitution guarantees it to every member of the Union. It will then, probably for the first time in history, become necessary legally to define what a republic is. The other difficulty will arise out of the question, which every honest man will put to himself—Can we admit, as a state, a society of men who deny the very first principle, not of our common law, not of Christian politics, not of modern progress, but of our whole western civilization, as contradistinguished to oriental life of that whole civilization in which we have our being, and which is the precious