all, that the pursuit of truth may be dearly purchased, if the price for it is the clash of controversy and the unsettlement of convictions. 'I will not,' he writes in a significant passage, 'enter into the question how much truth is preferable to peace. Perhaps truth may be far better. But as we have scarcely ever the same certainty in the one we have in the other, I would-unless the truth were evident indeed-hold fast to peace which has in her company charity the highest of the virtues.'1 The passage might, on a first glance, seem to breathe the spirit of toleration; for does it not speak of charity? But in reality it tells in the opposite direction. For when a man is ready to sacrifice truth to peace, he is not likely to do justice to that assertion of freedom to think, even at risk of atheism and infidelity, which the pursuit of truth inexorably demands.

2. To this, however, we must add the further point that the beliefs which the infidel and the atheist denied were never viewed by Burke as merely religious: they were always regarded as politically indispensable. Rightly or wrongly, he was wholly convinced that the institutions he most valued, however strongly buttressed by authority, prescription, and traditional loyalty, could not survive the disintegration of religious faith. The axe was laid to the root of the tree from the moment when political allegiance was divorced from those 1 Speech, Feb. 6, 1772.

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religious beliefs and sentiments which are of the essence of man as 'a religious animal.'

This is the ultimate ground of his intolerance. Convinced that the religious consciousness of a people could not be undetermined without shaking the foundations of the commonwealth, he was not content to urge that it was the duty of the statesman to foster religion by Church establishment and comprehensive toleration of all religious faiths. He went on, in an evil hour for his reputation for tolerance and charity, to erect the civil magistrate into the defender of the faith against infidels and atheists. The best that can be said for him is that, within his limits, he was tolerant enough; and it is a cheerful change to turn from these fulminations against freedom of thought to the declaration that all sorts of religion that exist within the State are to be tolerated because there is a reasonable worship in them all.' 1

Even this catholic declaration, however, is to be understood with two reservations :

(1) The first is that Burke was always peculiarly suspicious of any covert introduction of political propagandism under the mask of pleas and claims for religious liberty. Of this he furnishes significant proof. In 1773 he had supported a Bill for the relief of Protestant dissenters. He did this on the just and reasonable ground (among others) that it is bad Speech on Relief of Protestant Dissenters, 1773.

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policy to make difficulties for conscientious and honest dissenters which 'atheists' may only too easily evade. 'These atheists,' he says, illustrating his point from history, 'eluded all that you could do : so will all free-thinkers for ever. Then you suffer, or the weakness of your law has suffered, these great dangerous animals to escape notice, whilst you have nets that entangle the poor, fluttering, silken wings of a tender conscience.' But the scene changes. In 1792 he opposes a similar petition from the Unitarians; not, however, because he had changed his views on toleration, but because, rightly or wrongly, he was convinced that the petition was, in its real impelling motive, a political movement with political designs behind it. It was, in short, all too closely linked with the militant radicalism and radicals of whom he was the irreconcilable foe. His line of argument is hardly convincing; and a critic might suggest that it is not less intolerable that political hostility and conservative fears should develop opposition to the relief of the religious conscience than that the religious conscience should become politically aggressive. But it is characteristic. Discerning in the Petition of 1792 a veiled attack on the constitution, already menaced by the spread of Jacobinism, and in particular on the Church of England, to which the petitioners were anything but friendly, he withstood it to the face,

1 Speech on Relief of Protestant Dissenters, 1773.

as, on his own avowal, he never would have dreamt of withstanding it, had he regarded it as nothing more than a movement for the relief of aggrieved consciences.

(2) The second reservation is that toleration never meant for Burke, even in his most tolerant mood, anything approaching to abstract religious equality. He was ready, as we have seen, to tolerate all religions; he was willing to urge relief of Nonconformist consciences; he did not hesitate to incur bitter odium, and even to sacrifice his seat, by pleading, with an extraordinary persuasiveness, for the relaxation of the penal laws that weighed heavily on his Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen in Ireland. But there he stopped. 'Dissent not satisfied with toleration,' he once said, 'is not conscience but ambition.'1 For it was, in his eyes, ambition and not conscience that grudged the Church of England as by law established either her privileges, her national dignity, her endowments, or (we must add) her tests.

To understand this, however, we must turn to his well-known plea for the political value of religion, and for Church establishment in particular.

1

Speech on the Acts of Uniformity, Feb. 1772.

CHAPTER VIII

RELIGION AND POLITICS

BURKE's political religion has its roots deep in three convictions. The first is that civil society rests on spiritual foundations, being indeed nothing less than a product of Divine will; the second, that this is a fact of significance so profound that the recognition of it is of vital moment, both for the corporate life of the State and for the lives of each and all of its members; and the third, that whilst all forms of religion within the nation may play their part in bearing witness to religion, this is peculiarly the function of an Established Church, in which the 'consecration of the State' finds its appropriate symbol, expression, and support.

On the first of these convictions it would be needless to enlarge. Enough to reinforce what has been already said by a single sentence which contains the sum of the whole matter: They'he is speaking of both reflecting and unreflective men-conceive that He who gave our nature to be perfected by our virtue, willed also the necessary means of its perfection. He willed therefore the State. He willed its connection with the