spirit. The people are Protestants; and of that kind which is the
most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a
persuasion not only favorable to liberty, but built upon it. I do not
think, Sir, that the reason of this averseness in the dissenting churches
from all that looks like absolute government is so much to be sought in
their religious tenets, as in their history. Every one knows that the
Roman Catholic religion is at least coeval with most of the governments
where it prevails; that it has generally gone hand in hand with them, and
received great favor and every kind of support from authority. The Church
of England too was formed from her cradle under the nursing care of
regular government. But the dissenting interests have sprung up in direct
opposition to all the ordinary powers of the world, and could justify that
opposition only on a strong claim to natural liberty. Their very existence
depended on the powerful and unremitted assertion of that claim. All
Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But
the religion most prevalent in our Northern Colonies is a refinement on
the principle of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the
protestantism of the Protestant religion. This religion, under a variety
of denominations agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of
liberty, is predominant in most of the Northern Provinces, where the
Church of England, notwithstanding its legal rights, is in reality no more
than a sort of private sect, not composing most probably the tenth of the
people. The Colonists left England when this spirit was high, and in the
emigrants was the highest of all; and even that stream of foreigners which
has been constantly flowing into these Colonies has, for the greatest
part, been composed of dissenters from the establishments of their several
countries, who have brought with them a temper and character far from
alien to that of the people with whom they mixed.

Sir, I can perceive by their manner that some gentlemen object to the
latitude of this description, because in the Southern Colonies the Church
of England forms a large body, and has a regular establishment. It is
certainly true. There is, however, a circumstance attending these Colonies
which, in my opinion, fully counterbalances this difference, and makes the
spirit of liberty still more high and haughty than in those to the
northward. It is that in Virginia a