Their very existence
depended on the powerful and unremitted assertion of that claim. All
Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But
the religion most prevalent in our Northern Colonies is a refinement on
the principle of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the
protestantism of the Protestant religion. This religion, under a variety
of denominations agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of
liberty, is predominant in most of the Northern Provinces, where the
Church of England, notwithstanding its legal rights, is in reality no more
than a sort of private sect, not composing most probably the tenth of the
people. The Colonists left England when this spirit was high, and in the
emigrants was the highest of all; and even that stream of foreigners which
has been constantly flowing into these Colonies has, for the greatest
part, been composed of dissenters from the establishments of their several
countries, who have brought with them a temper and character far from
alien to that of the people with whom they mixed.
Sir, I can perceive by their manner that some gentlemen object to the
latitude of this description, because in the Southern Colonies the Church
of England forms a large body, and has a regular establishment.
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