I.--'LETTER TO A DISSENTER'

BY GEORGE SAVILE, MARQUESS OF HALIFAX


(_There is no doubt that Halifax's work deserves to rank first in a
collection of political pamphlets. He signed none; it was indeed
almost impossible for a prominent person in the State then safely or
decently to do so, and different attributions were made at the time of
some of them, as of the _Character of a Trimmer_ to Coventry, and of
this _Letter_ (this 'masterly little tract,' as Macaulay justly calls
it) to Temple. But shortly after his death all were published as his
unchallenged, and there never has been any doubt of their authorship
in the minds of good judges. Four of them are so good that extrinsic
reasons have to be brought in for preferring one to the other. The
_Character of a Trimmer_ is rather too long for my scheme; the _Anatomy
of an Equivalent_ is too technical, and requires too much illustration
and exegesis; the _Cautions for Choice of Members of Parliament_,
though practically valuable to the present day, is a little too
general. The _Letter to a Dissenter_ escapes all these objections. It
is brief, it is thoroughly to the point, it is comprehensible almost
without note or comment to any one who remembers the broad fact that
by his Declaration of Indulgence James the Second attempted to detach,
and almost succeeded in detaching, the Dissenters from their common
cause with the Church in opposing his enfranchisement of the Roman
Catholics, and his preferment of them to great offices. As for its