malice, and gratifies the passions from whence it sprang, we call
the wisdom of our ancestors: when such laws are repealed, they will
be cruelty and madness; till they are repealed, they are policy and
caution.

I was somewhat amused with the imputation brought against the
Catholics by the University of Oxford, that they are enemies to
liberty. I immediately turned to my "History of England," and
marked as an historical error that passage in which it is recorded
that, in the reign of Queen Anne, the famous degree of the
University of Oxford respecting passive obedience, was ordered by
the House of Lords to be burnt by the hands of the common hangman,
as contrary to the liberty of the subject and the law of the land.
Nevertheless, I wish, whatever be the modesty of those who impute,
that the imputation was a little more true, the Catholic cause would
not be quite so desperate with the present. Administration. I
fear, however, that the hatred to liberty in these poor devoted
wretches may ere long appear more doubtful than it is at present to
the Vice-Chancellor and his Clergy, inflamed as they doubtless are
with classical examples of republican virtue, and panting, as they
always have been, to reduce the power of the Crown within narrower
and safer limits. What mistaken zeal to attempt to connect one
religion with freedom and another with slavery! Who laid the
foundations of English liberty? What was the mixed religion of
Switzerland? What has the Protestant religion done for liberty in
Denmark, in Sweden, throughout the north of Germany, and in Prussia?
The purest religion in the world, in my humble opinion, is the
religion of the Church of England: for its preservation (so far as
it is exercised without intruding upon the liberties of others) I am
ready at this moment to venture my present life, and but through