Political principles and all human laws and institutions were moulded
and altered at their pleasure; the barriers of the society in which they
were born were broken down before them; the old principles which had
governed the world for ages were no more; a path without a turn and
a field without an horizon were opened to the exploring and ardent
curiosity of man: but at the limits of the political world he checks
his researches, he discreetly lays aside the use of his most formidable
faculties, he no longer consents to doubt or to innovate, but carefully
abstaining from raising the curtain of the sanctuary, he yields with
submissive respect to truths which he will not discuss. Thus, in the
moral world everything is classed, adapted, decided, and foreseen; in
the political world everything is agitated, uncertain, and disputed:
in the one is a passive, though a voluntary, obedience; in the other an
independence scornful of experience and jealous of authority.

These two tendencies, apparently so discrepant, are far from
conflicting; they advance together, and mutually support each other.
Religion perceives that civil liberty affords a noble exercise to the
faculties of man, and that the political world is a field prepared by
the Creator for the efforts of the intelligence. Contented with the
freedom and the power which it enjoys in its own sphere, and with the
place which it occupies, the empire of religion is never more surely
established than when it reigns in the hearts of men unsupported by
aught beside its native strength. Religion is no less the companion of
liberty in all its battles and its triumphs; the cradle of its infancy,
and the divine source of its claims. The safeguard of morality is
religion, and morality is the best security of law and the surest pledge
of freedom. *m

[Footnote m: See Appendix, F.]