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It is true that he shut out the Catholics from the pale of his charity and barely tolerated the Dissenters. The idea of entire religious liberty and equality shocked even his moderate degree of sensitiveness.
The same also is the case as to the questions at issue between the Church of England and many of the Dissenters. In these disputes it is notorious that the practice and authority of the church are continually appealed to, or, it may be, considerations of another kind, as to the inherent reasonableness of a doctrine; all which are, again, a distinct matter from the interpretation of Scripture.
At the end of January, 1687, he sent a remarkable letter to Versailles. The King, such was the substance of this document, had almost convinced himself that he could not obtain entire liberty for Roman Catholics and yet maintain the laws against Protestant Dissenters.
Curious, indeed, was it to learn that this "arch-persecutor," this "Torquemada of the nineteenth century," this man whose hand is especially heavy upon Catholics and Protestants and dissenters throughout the empire, whose name is spoken with abhorrence by millions within the empire and without it, still reads, as his favorite author, the philosopher of Concord.
For a while the Connecticut authorities refused to recognize "as sober Dissenters" any converts other than the stationed preachers and their charges.
In order to obtain a grasp of the situation within the colony at the time when its government concluded that the passing of the Toleration Act would be politic, it is necessary to examine the status of the dissenters there. Of these there were four classes, the Quakers or Society of Friends, the Episcopalians, the Baptists, and the Rogerines.
The repeal of the Test Act by the previous administration, which removed the disabilities of Dissenters from the Established Church to hold public office, was only another act in the great drama of national development which was to give ascendency to the middle class in matters of legislation, rather than to the favored classes who had hitherto ruled.
When, however, the Bill, after passing the Commons, was opposed and modified by the Lords, Defoe suddenly appeared on a new tack, publishing the most famous of his political pamphlets, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, which has, by a strange freak of circumstances, gained him the honour of being enshrined as one of the martyrs of Dissent.
"Liverpool is a place where the dogma of absolute perfection is accepted as a religion. But some of us may be pardoned if, in both local and national interests, we must be dissenters. "That the bar may be made better instead of growing worse is obvious.
We have too long confounded them with the mass of Dissenters, but their conduct at several of the later elections proves that they are far from being unreasonable and disloyal individuals. When we come in, something should be done for the Wesleyans, eh, Rigby?
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