characters upon their banner this inscription: LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE?
America is not distinguished as a country without religion; on the
contrary, it is blamed for the excursiveness of its faith, for the
multiplicity and sometimes for the extravagance of its sects. Was it a
sceptic that taught the inhabitants of the New World to respect
religious convictions? Assuredly not! William Penn was shut up in the
Tower of London for the crime of free thought. Set free from prison, he
crossed the ocean. While intolerance was reigning still on both shores
of the Atlantic, he founded in Pennsylvania a place of refuge for all
proscribed opinions; and the germ has been fruitful. In vain I pass from
old Europe to young America; I look, I observe, and I do not see that
liberty is developed in proportion to the scepticism and the incredulity
of nations. I seem, on the contrary, to see that there is perhaps most
liberty where there is most real faith.

Some may dispute the validity of these conclusions by remarking that the
condition of communities is a complex phenomenon depending upon divers
causes. Let us simplify the question. Is it not, it will be said, the
literary representatives of the spirit of doubt who have demanded and
founded toleration? Is it not.... But it is not necessary for my
supposed questioner to go on. If he is a Frenchman, he will name
Voltaire. No doubt, freedom of opinion has been claimed by sceptics.
They have served a good cause; let us know how to rejoice in the fact,
and not to be unmindful of what there may have been in their work of
noble impulses and generous inspirations. Let us remark however that
every proscribed opinion puts forth a natural claim to the liberty of
which it is deprived. But it is one thing to claim for one's-self a
liberty one would gladly make use of to oppress others, and it is
another thing to demand liberty seriously and for all. There was, as I
am glad to believe, a certain natural generosity in the motives which