‘Dear Arthur,—I have but just received yours of the 19th, and though I do not think my letters worth paying for, yet since you do, and I have a leisure half hour, have at you. And in this duel of our pens, who would expect a Bishop of the Established Church to be an advocate for the anti-Episcopal Schismatics, called Presbyterians, whilst a man whose religion lies in his plough and his garden, that is, with the Goddess of the one and with the God of the other, to be so zealous an opponent? My defence rests principally on this point, that they have as good a right to differ from me as my ancestors from our joint ancestors, or the Church established above twelve hundred years before. ‘As to their political principles, I think them, from their system of parity, and from their practice in most parts of Europe, infinitely more favourable to political liberty than ours. ‘Witness Germany and Switzerland and the short reign of _Old Nol._ ‘You say, “But their political principles never became powerfully active without involving their country in a civil war.” And are there not two words to that bargain, and does not the _pot_ call the _kettle_, &c. &c.?[95] You might as well object the same to all good citizens when oppressed by bad ones; you may as well object the same to the first Brutus and to the second; you may as well object it to Luther and Melanchthon. Did the Presbyterians ask anything unreasonable when they desired to have _their_ nonsense tolerated as well as other nonsense? for if it be nonsense ’tis paying _it_ too great a compliment, and ourselves too bad a one, to persecute it; and if it be good sense, surely, for one’s own sake, as well as that of our neighbours, it deserves a better reception than persecution. ‘When I see Switzerland and Germany pacified for above 150 years, after throat-cutting for 140, by the single means of a reciprocal toleration, and by the Pacta Conventa of 1648,[96] which allowed them to share those loaves and fishes alternately monopolised by each party, I must confess, if I were Frederick the First of Oceana, or of Atlantis, I should not hesitate to begin my reign with that system with which most sovereigns are compelled to close theirs! The rights of humanity, dear Arthur, the rights of humanity form a great article in my creed, and that religion, or sect of religion, which can teach otherwise may come from below, but surely did not descend from above. ‘Believe me, our whirlwind is not past, perhaps ’tis only just beginning; yet three hundred labourers with their spades fill my mind’s eye with as pleasing and as satisfactory ideas as the whole Coleraine Battalion with their muskets before my door. If in this whirlwind _I_ can direct the storm, so much the better for humanity, but not for the lank-haired Divinity, nor the frizzle-topped Divinity, nor the hocus-pocus Divinity.