BRITISH RESIDENTS. 



225 



forms and ceremonies of worship, whose devoted- 

 ness to their church -establishment surpasses 

 every other feeling. It is not thus that the 

 British nation is to become respectable ; we may 

 have relations of trade with these people, but 

 we must be content to be merely regarded ac- 

 cording to our utility ; there can be no respect 

 for our general character as a body of men, none 

 of that regard which would make us listened to 

 in any great question, which would make our 

 opinions and our assertions depended upon as 

 codling from men of steadiness, — of religious 

 habits. Nor can we be accounted as more than 

 residents for a time ; we cannot be considered as 

 an established community, who are thus without 

 any common bond of union, who have not any 

 general place of meeting, who have not any 

 one point to which all are directed ; we have no 

 appearance of belonging to one nation, as if we 

 were brethren meeting in a foreign land. To 

 these political reasons for the establishment of a 

 place of worship are to be added those which 

 are of far greater importance, those to which no 

 Christian ought to be indifferent. I well know 

 that it is not with the merchants that the evil 

 arises; — but enough, I will go no farther, 

 although I could tarry long upon this subject. 

 I wish however that I could have avoided the 

 mention of it altogether. I might have done so, 



VOL. II. Q 



