ation and disgust; they
compute more as they feel less; and every severe act which does not
appear to be necessary is sure to be offensive.

In selecting the criminals, a very different line ought to be followed
from that recommended by the champions of the Protestant Association.
They recommend that the offenders for plunder ought to be punished, and
the offenders from principle spared. But the contrary rule ought to be
followed. The ordinary executions, of which there are enough in
conscience, are for the former species of delinquents; but such common
plunderers would furnish no example in the present case, where the false
or pretended principle of religion, which leads to crimes, is the very
thing to be discouraged.

But the reason which ought to make these people objects of selection for
punishment confines the selection to very few. For we must consider that
the whole nation has been for a long time guilty of their crime.
Toleration is a new virtue in any country. It is a late ripe fruit in
the best climates. We ought to recollect the poison which, under the
name of antidotes against Popery, and such like mountebank titles, has
been circulated from our pulpits and from our presses, from the heads of
the Church of England and the heads of the Dissenters. These
publications, by degrees, have tended to drive all religion from our own
minds, and to fill them with nothing but a violent hatred of the
religion of other people, and, of course, with a hatred of their
persons; and so, by a very natural progression, they have led men to the
destruction of their goods and houses, and to attempts upon their lives.

This delusion furnishes no reason for suffering that abominable spirit
to be kept alive by inflammatory libels or seditious assemblies, or for
government's yielding to it, in the smallest degree, any point of
justice, equity, or sound policy. The king certainly ought not to give
up any part of his subjects to the prejudices of another. So far from
it, I am clearly of opinion that on the late occasion the Catholics
ought to have been taken, more avowedly than they were, under the
protection of government, as the Dissenters had been on a similar
occasion.

But though we ought to protect against violence the bigotry of others,
and to correct our own too, if we have any left, we ought to reflect,
that an offence which in its cause is national ought not in its effects
to be vindicated on individuals, but with a very w