It is uncertain what Hogg's real sentiments on matters pertaining to religion were at the close of 1810 and 1811. In later time he was one of those Tories who reflected with pride on the support their party had given Bolingbroke, and on the protection it had afforded Hume:--one of those Tories, of gentle birth and culture, who deemed it their peculiar privilege to think and say amongst themselves whatever they pleased on ecclesiastical polemics, provided they did nothing to weaken the popular belief in the doctrines of the Church of England, as by law established--doctrines that were so eminently conducive to social order, by disposing persons of the less fortunate classes to do their duty submissively in that state of life to which God had been pleased to call them. Whilst commiserating Shelley for being, by education and familiar conditions, one of those 'buff-and-blue folks' who naturally could not speak their own minds freely lest their words should be misconstrued into treason and infidelity, and could not, therefore, carry the poet safe through the difficulties arising out of his ill-advised publications, Mr. Hogg, the mature biographer, observed:-- 'As to my own family, and my immediate connexions, we were all persons whose first toast after dinner was invariably "Church and State!" warm partisans of William Pitt, of the highest Church, and of the high Tory party; consequently we were anything but intolerant, we were above suspicion and ordinances.... My relatives felt that they had margin enough, plenty of sea-room, that whatever might be said or done, their good principles could not be doubted, but would always carry them through.... If the _Age of Reason_ had been republished by myself or one of my earliest friends, the world would have supposed that it was put forth merely to show the utter futility and impotence and vanity of the author's arguments.'