Compare the kindred offences: James deprived the Protestant rectors of their livings; he did not persecute, nor did he interfere with their religion; for tithes, and oblations, and glebes, and church lands, though solid appendages to any church, are no part of the Protestant religion. The Protestant religion would, I presume--and for the honor of human nature I sincerely hope--continue its influence over the human mind without the aid of those extrinsic advantages. Its pastors would, I trust and believe, have remained true to their charge, without the adventitious benefits of temporal rewards; and, like the Roman Catholic Church, it might have shone forth a glorious example of firmness in religion, setting persecution at defiance. James did not attack the Protestant religion; I repeat it; he only attacked the revenues of the Protestant Church; he violated the law and the constitution, in depriving men of that property, by his individual authority, to which they had precisely the same right with that by which he wore his crown. But is not the controlling the election of members of Parliament a more dangerous violation of the constitution? Does it not corrupt the very sources of legislation, and convert the guardians of the state into its plunderers? The one was a direct and undisguised crime, capable of being redressed in the ordinary course of the law, and producing resistance by its open and plain violation of right and of law; the other disguises itself in so many shapes, is patronized by so many high examples, and is followed by such perfect security, that it becomes the first duty of every man who possesses any reverence for the constitution, or any attachment to liberty, to lend all his efforts to detect, and, if possible, to punish it.