Next the liberal principle is forced on us from the necessity of the case. Consider {68} what follows from the very fact of these many sects. They constitute the religion, it is supposed, of half the population; and, recollect, our mode of government is popular. Every dozen men taken at random whom you meet in the streets has a share in political power,—when you inquire into their forms of belief, perhaps they represent one or other of as many as seven religions; how can they possibly act together in municipal or in national matters, if each insists on the recognition of his own religious denomination? All action would be at a deadlock unless the subject of religion was ignored. We cannot help ourselves.
An Amateur Classicist's Review of Political Philosophy, Theology, and Literature, with Occasional Reflections on the Age That Is Passing
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
Newman, too, believed that Liberalism functioned as a peace treaty:
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