climate of Scottish life before we can account for Smith's general popularity at home as well as abroad after his handling of "enthusiasm and superstition" in the Wealth of Nations. The fact stands out that the two most eminent thinkers in Scotland in the latter half of the eighteenth century were non-Christians, [852] and that their most intellectual associates were in general sympathy with them. § 11 In Ireland, at least in Dublin, during the earlier part of the century, there occurred, on a smaller scale, a similar movement of rationalism, also largely associated with Shaftesbury. In Dublin towards the close of the seventeenth century we have seen Molyneux, the friend and correspondent of Locke, interested in "freethought," albeit much scared by the imprudence of Toland. At the same period there germinated a growth of Unitarianism, which was even more fiercely persecuted than that of Toland's deism. The Rev. Thomas Emlyn, an Englishman, co-pastor of the Protestant Dissenting Congregation of Wood Street (now Strand Street), Dublin, was found by a Presbyterian and a Baptist to be heretical on the subject of the Trinity, and was indicted in 1702 for blasphemy. He was sentenced to two years' imprisonment and a fine of £1,000, which was partly commuted on his release. He protested that South and Sherlock and other writers on the Trinitarian controversy might have been as justly prosecuted as he; but Irish Protestant orthodoxy was of a keener scent than English, and Emlyn was fain, when released, to return to his native land. [853] His colleague Boyse, like many other Churchmen, wished that the unhappy trinitarian controversy "were buried in silence," but was careful to conform doctrinally. More advanced thinkers had double reason to be reticent. As usual, however, persecution provoked the growth it sought to stifle; and after the passing of the Irish Toleration Act of 1719, a more liberal measure than the English, there developed in Ulster, and even in Dublin, a Unitarian movement akin to that proceeding in England. [854] In the next generation we find in the same city a coterie of Shaftesburyans, centring around Lord Molesworth, the friend of Hutcheson, a man of affairs devoted to intellectual interests. It was within a few years of his meeting Molesworth that Hutcheson produced his Inquiry, championing Shaftesbury's ideas; [855] and other literary men were similarly influenced. It is even suggested that Hutcheson's clerical friend Synge, whom we have seen [856] in 1713 attempting a ratiocinative answer to the unbelief he declared to be abundant around him, was not only influenced by Shaftesbury through Molesworth, but latterly "avoided publication lest his opinions should prejudice his career in the Church." [857] After the death of Molesworth, in 1725, the movement he set up seems to have languished; [858] but, as we have seen, there were among the Irish bishops men given to philosophic controversy, and the influence