ietly transacted.

That justice would be violated by transferring to the people the right
of patronage, is apparent to all who know whence that right had its
original. The right of patronage was not at first a privilege torn by
power from unresisting poverty. It is not an authority, at first usurped
in times of ignorance, and established only by succession and by
precedents. It is not a grant capriciously made from a higher tyrant to
a lower. It is a right dearly purchased by the first possessours, and
justly inherited by those that succeed them. When Christianity was
established in this island, a regular mode of worship was prescribed.
Publick worship requires a publick place; and the proprietors of lands,
as they were converted, built churches for their families and their
vassals. For the maintenance of ministers they settled a certain portion
of their lands; and a district, through which each minister was required
to extend his care, was, by that circumscription, constituted a parish.
This is a position so generally received in England, that the extent of
a manor and of a parish are regularly received for each other. The
churches which the proprietors of lands had thus built and thus endowed,
they justly thought themselves entitled to provide with ministers; and,
where the episcopal government prevails, the bishop has no power to
reject a man nominated by the patron, but for some crime that might
exclude him from the priesthood. For, the endowment of the church being
the gift of the landlord, he was, consequently, at liberty to give it,
according to his choice, to any man capable of performing the holy
offices. The people did not choose him, because the people did not pay
him.

We hear it sometimes urged, that this original right is passed out of
memory, and is obliterated and obscured by many translations of property
and changes of government; that scarce any church is now in the hands of
the heirs of the builders; and that the present persons have entered
subsequently upon the pretended rights by a thousand accidental and
unknown causes. Much of this, perhaps, is true. But how is the right of
patronage extinguished? If the right followed the lands, it is
possessed, by the same equity by which the lands are possessed. It is,
in effect, part of the manor, and protected by the same laws with every
other privilege. Let us suppose an estate forfeited by treason, and
granted by the crown to a new family. With the lands