Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/470

460 All the controversies between hierarchies and governments and their several fluctuations of power, are witnesses to the truth of this observation. A balance of power between a government and a hierarchy, produced with critical exactness, the same effects as its balance between other orders. The two orders were constantly in a state of war, for the purpose of subjecting each other; or united, for the purpose of oppressing the people; and their warfare produced occasional ameliorations of the hard and regular tyranny arising from their union.

No such amelioration can occur, from a priesthood and a nation, cut up into jealous and inveterate religious orders or casts, by a multitude of tenets; when patronised and managed by a government. These divisions would in time constitute so many casts of China or Indostan, over which, western, like eastern governments, would preside with absolute power; because they will be made to deprive a nation of its unity or self, and destroy the idea of a common or publick good, as effectually, as its division into civil orders or casts. Such a divided priesthood, instead of a check upon tyranny, would become its instrument. And under pretence of impartiality between God and Baal, the government would draw inexhaustible recruits from both.

The oppression resulting from a mass of legal pecuniary religious rights, orders or privileges, will ultimately become the same, as that which would result from a mass of legal pecuniary civil rights, orders or privileges. Mercenary armies, and most corporate bodies, belong to the latter species of moral beings; and a patronage of government over the ^hole priesthood of a nation, composing one church, or ma- ny churches, to the former; but both are of the same moral nature, and will operate the same moral effects.

The denunciation of exclusive privileges, titles, and an interposition with religion, by the policy of the United States, was suggested by the consideration, that such rights or powers, commence or terminate in despotism. One of the reprobated powers is exercised by charters, and another