“Most politicians have injured commerce by restricting, confining or burthening it too much; the consequence of which has been that by aiming at great immediate advantage they have cut off the very springs of all future advantage. The inconveniences which have arisen to a nation from leaving trade quite open are few, and very problematical in comparison of the manifest injury it receives from being cramped in almost any form whatsoever.... “Mr Colbert, a man of great probity, knowledge and industry ... would have done better to have listened to the advice of an old merchant, who being consulted by him about what he should do in favour of trade, said, ‘_Laissez nous faire_.’” In another place he says:— “The happiness of all nations, therefore, as one great community, will be best promoted by laying aside all national _jealousy of trade_, and by each country cultivating those productions or manufactures which they can do to the most advantage; and experience, in a state of perfect liberty, will soon teach them what those are. In this state of things the only advantage will be on the side of industry and ingenuity, and no man or nation ought to wish it to be anywhere else.” With regard to questions of political and civil liberty, the theory of the progress of law, the influence of religion on civil society, the connection of modes of religion with forms of government, the teaching is precisely what we should expect in such a hot-bed of liberal dissent as the Warrington Academy. With regard to the connection between civil government and religion he says:— “The principal sufferer by this alliance between the Church and the State is religion itself, that is, the members of society as professors of religion and deriving advantages from it. For when it is thus guarded by the State, if it be faulty or wants reformation, it must long continue so. The professors of it, being interested in its support, will do everything in their power to prevent any alteration, though it should be ever so much wanted....