It is answered to these suggestions, that we must take experience when we possess it, rather than analogy, for our guide; that ecclesiastical assemblies have in all ages and countries been mischievous, where they have been powerful, which that of our wealthy and numerous clergy must always be; that, notwithstanding, if the convocation could be brought under the management of the state (which by the nature of its component parts might seem not unlikely), it must lead to the promotion of servile men, and the exclusion of merit still more than at present; that the severe remark of Clarendon, who observes that of all mankind none form so bad an estimate of human affairs as churchmen, is abundantly confirmed by experience; that the representation of the church in the House of Lords is sufficient for the protection of its interests; that the clergy have an influence which no other corporation enjoys over the bulk of the nation, and are apt to abuse it for the purposes of undue ascendancy, unjust restraint, or factious ambition; that the hope of any real good in reformation of the Church by its own assemblies to whatever sort of reform we may look, is utterly chimerical; finally, that as the laws now stand, which few would incline to alter, the ratification of parliament must be indispensable for any material change. It seems to admit of no doubt that these reasonings ought much to outweigh those on the opposite side. _Infringements of the toleration by statutes under Anne._--In the last four years of the queen's reign, some inroads had been made on the toleration granted to dissenters, whom the high-church party held in abhorrence. They had for a long time inveighed against what was called occasional conformity, or the compliance of dissenters with the provisions of the test act in order merely to qualify themselves for holding office, or entering into corporations. Nothing could, in the eyes of sensible men, be more advantageous to the church, if a re-union of those who had separated from it were advantageous, than this practice. Admitting even that the motive was self-interested, has an established government, in church or state, any better ally than the self-interestedness of mankind? Was it not what a presbyterian or independent minister would denounce as a base and worldly sacrifice? and if so, was not the interest of the Anglican clergy exactly in an inverse proportion to this? Any one competent to judge of human affairs would predict, what has turned out to be the case, that when the barrier was once taken down for the sake of convenience, it would not be raised again for conscience; that the most latitudinarian theory, the most lukewarm dispositions in religion, must be prodigiously favourable to the reigning sect; and that the dissenting clergy, though they might retain, or even extend, their influence over the multitude, would gradually lose it with those classes who could be affected by the test. But, even if the tory