Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/471

Rh is advocated by the doctrine, that government ought to patronise all metaphysical idols. But neither the perpetrated nor intended violation is chargeable to our constitutional policy; that labours to leave wealth to be distributed by industry, and salvation by God; and abstains throughout from the idea of a power in government to regulate either by law. By leaving to every one a fair chance to work out his temporal and eternal welfare, it excites merits called forth by no motive, when governments assume the dispensation of both.

The constitutions of the United States, have renounced the practice of creating by law, moral duties, temporal or eternal, in the shape of exclusive privileges or religious tenets, because they deemed it equally oppressive to enrich the priesthood of fraud as the priesthood of superstition. Had they been formed by atheism, they would have seen no objection to one species of manufacture; nor to the other, had they been formed by paper systems, patronage or orders.

From an opinion, that there is really a God, our policy has inferred, that he has established some mode of inculcating virtue, preferable to human frauds; that there is no occasion to kill or persecute one another on the score of religion, because God needs no champion to assert his honour or to avenge his quarrels; that at this time of day, martyrdom would be lunacy, and saintship, under the banner of a dogma, intolerance; and that it is a profanation of religion, to make it an instrument, to gratify avarice or ambition. Governments have almost universally inculcated opinions contrary to these, and irreligion and insincerity have been the fruits of their policy. If we see governments making gods of wood or of dogma, or settling revelation by law; if the people see them coining religion into power and money, under pretence of coining it into good morals; it will teach them also atheism and deceit. As a cunning government uses religion to cheat a nation, a cunning man will use it to cheat his neighbour; and in place of its being a bond of love,