Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/477

Rh that it is easier to mould matter than spirit. The necessity of a system of orders for the mind-carving policy, is as demonstrable from their nature as from experience. Such systems can only operate according to the minds of their component orders. The operation of these three artificial minds, must control the minds of individuals, or these orders would cease to govern, and the system terminate. Its essence consists in substituting three artificial minds or interests, for a natural mind or interest. If a government is founded in the first, it destroys the latter; if in the latter, it destroys the first. The natural mind and interest must of course be carved into a shape, suitable to the artificial mind and interest. The necessity of this substitution to the system of orders, for the sake of existence, is the true parent of its double-faced idols, called churel and state. And hence religion in England is contrived for the temporal salvation of three artificial minds, neither of them existing after death, instead of the eternal salvation of the souls of men.

Orders seldom admit that their powers are deduced from the people; they deduce them from inheritance, unwritten compact, or time immemorial. The rights of man being thus lost in the rights of orders, it is obvious that an individual cannot retain any species of right, not even the right of conscience, because it is the principle of orders, that nature gives man no rights at all; and that all his rights are conventional or legal. Such being the case, if it is the will of a government of orders, the the conscience of an individual should be cut into any shape whatsoever, it would be preposterous for him to assert that it ought not to be done, and that he ought not to be punished for having a conscience which he was obliged to take from an almighty power. He would be silenced by learning, that under the theory of orders, there are no natural rights.

Religious freedom, or the right of keeping our consciences, is compatible with the policy of the United States, because the natural mind or will of man is not controlled by