An alliance of the two upon certain fixed terms has its inconveniences and its perils, but its effects may be also very salutary; it may be essential, and does not of necessity exclude religious sincerity or religious liberty. M. Vinet, in discussing the subject, lost sight of the general history of human societies, and attached too much importance to the specious and transient facts which he had before his eyes. If M. Vinet were now living, he might in his own country behold two fair examples of the good results of the mixed systems which he so absolutely condemned. In the Cantons of the Vaud and of Geneva, after the violent and painful contests to which I have above referred, a dissenting Independent Church was established by the side of a Church recognized and supported by the State. In neither canton was this establishment a temporary expedient, the fruit of a momentary ardor; the Independent Church has consolidated and developed itself; it endures and prospers. Like the Establishment, it has its pastors, its churches, its solemnities, its schools for general and for superior instruction. {186} I have before me facts and figures which prove its vitality and its progress. And not only did the Established Church finally acquiesce in the peaceable existence of the independent Church, it also profited by it, and its salutary influence has been frankly acknowledged by its worthiest pastors. In Switzerland, as in England, Scotland, and Holland, and in our days more easily and more promptly than in ancient times, the existence on the one side of a national Church recognized by the State, has given to the different forms of Christian belief a stability and a dignity which have secured its permanent effects upon succeeding generations; the existence, on the other side, of independent Churches, and the religious emulation between the two establishments, have turned in both to the profit of faith and of piety. {187}