orrence do I conceive against whatever may shake it. I know
nothing but the supposed necessity of persecution that can make an
establishment disgusting. I would have toleration a part of
establishment, as a principle favorable to Christianity, and as a part
of Christianity.

All seem agreed that the law, as it stands, inflicting penalties on
all-religious teachers and on schoolmasters who do not sign the
Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, ought not to be executed. We are all
agreed that _the law is not good_: for that, I presume, is undoubtedly
the idea of a law that ought not to be executed. The question,
therefore, is, whether in a well-constituted commonwealth, which we
desire ours to be thought, and I trust intend that it should be, whether
in such a commonwealth it is wise to retain those laws which it is not
proper to execute. A penal law not ordinarily put in execution seems to
me to be a very absurd and a very dangerous thing. For if its principle
be right, if the object of its prohibitions and penalties be a real
evil, then you do in effect permit that very evil, which not only the
reason of the thing, but your very law, declares ought not to be
permitted; and thus it reflects exceedingly on the wisdom, and
consequently derogates not a little from the authority, of a legislature
who can at once forbid and suffer, and in the same breath promulgate
penalty and indemnity to the same persons and for the very same actions.
But if the object of the law be no moral or political evil, then you
ought not to hold even a terror to those whom you ought certainly not to
punish: for if it is not right to hurt, it is neither right nor wise to
menace. Such laws, therefore, as they must be defective either in
justice or wisdom or both, so they cannot exist without a considerable
degree of danger. Take them which way you will, they are pressed with
ugly alternatives.

1st. All penal laws are either upon popular prosecution, or on the part
of the crown. Now if they may be roused from their sleep, whenever a
minister thinks proper, as instruments of oppression, then they put vast
bodies of men into a state of slavery and court dependence; since their
liberty of conscience and their power of executing their functions
depend entirely on his will. I would have no man derive his means of
continuing any function, or his being restrained from it, but from the
laws only: they should be his only superior and sovereign lords.

2nd. They