tical grounds, as distinguishable
from theological motives pure and simple. Sceptics and agnostics have
been often marked out for persecution in the West, but I do not think
that they have been molested in India, China, or Japan, where they
abound, because they seldom meddle with politics.[61] It may perhaps
be admitted, however, that a Government which undertakes to regulate
impartially all rites and worship among its subjects is at a
disadvantage by comparison with a Government that acts as the
representative of a great church or an exclusive faith. It bears the
sole undivided responsibility for measures of repression; it cannot
allege divine command or even the obligation of punishing impiety for
the public good.

To conclude. In Asiatic States the superintendence of religious
affairs is an integral attribute of the sovereignty, which no
Government, except the English in India, has yet ventured to
relinquish; and even in India this is not done without some risk, for
religion and politics are still intermingled throughout the world;
they act and react upon each other everywhere. They are still far from
being disentangled in our own country, where the theory that a
Government in its collective character must profess and even propagate
some religion has not been very long obsolete. It was maintained
seventy years ago by a great statesman who was already rising into
prominence, by Mr. Gladstone. The text of Mr. Gladstone's argument, in
his book on the relations of the State with the Church, was Hooker's
saying, that the religious duty of kings is the weightiest part of
their sovereignty; while Macaulay, in criticising this position,
insisted that the main, if not the only, duty of a Government, to
which all other objects must be subordinate, was the protection of
persons and property. These two eminent politicians were, in fact, the
champions of the ancient and the modern ideas of sovereignty; for the
theory that a State is bound to propagate the religion that it
professes was for many centuries the accepted theory of all Christian
rulerships, though I think it now survives only in Mohammedan
kingdoms.

As the influence of religion in the sphere of politics declines, the
State becomes naturally less concerned with the superintendence of
religion; and the tendency of constitutional Governments seems to be
towards abandoning it. The States that have completely dissolved
connection with ecclesiastical institutions are th