How to solve religious conflicts

²⁰² There state can use two very easy and effective remedies to peacefully correct the disagreeably rigorous morals of little sects.

Remedy 1: ²⁰³ The study of science and philosophy.

The state should make the study of science and philosophy universal among the middle class.

It could institute a probationary period for anyone who wished to:

• exercise any liberal profession, or
• be a candidate for any honourable office of trust or profit.

It should not give salaries to teachers that would make them negligent and idle.

If the state imposed the necessity of learning on the people of liberal professions, it would have no problem providing people with the proper teachers. The people would soon find better teachers than what the state could provide. Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. If the superior ranks of people were free from superstition, the inferior ranks could not be much exposed to it.

Remedy 2: ²⁰⁴ The frequency and gaiety of public diversions.

The state could easily dissipate the gloom which breeds popular superstition by encouraging proper public amusement through:

• painting, poetry, music, dancing, and
• dramatic representations and exhibitions.

Public diversions were always hated by all religious fanatics.

The good humour inspired by those diversions were inconsistent with that mental temper fittest for superstitions or which those promoters could best work on.

Dramatic representations frequently exposed those promoters to public ridicule.

²⁰⁵ Religions do not need to depend on the executive power in countries with no state religion.

• The sovereign would not appoint nor dismiss clergy.
  • His only concern would be to maintain the peace among religions.

It is opposite in countries which have a state religion.

• The sovereign can only be secure if he can influence the teachers of that religion.

Organized Religion

²⁰⁶ The clergy of an established church is a great incorporation.

They can:

• act in concert,
• pursue their interest with one plan and one spirit, as if directed by one man.

Their interest as an incorporated body is never the same with that of the sovereign. It is sometimes directly opposite to it.

Their great interest is to maintain their authority.

• This authority depends on the doctrine they inculcate for avoiding eternal misery.
• The independent clergy will brand the sovereign as profane if he derides their doctrine
  • They will use the terrors of religion to oblige the people to ally to a more religious prince.

The fears spurred by religion are stronger than all other fears.

The sovereign can only maintain his authority against a church through a standing army.

Even an army cannot give him any lasting security because its soldiers are usually drawn from the people.

• They can be soon corrupted by those very doctrines.

The sovereign who is unable to influence the state religion’s clergy has a precarious rule. This is proven by:

• the revolutions continually caused by the Greek clergy at Constantinople, and
• the convulsions continually created by the Roman clergy in Europe.

²⁰⁷ Articles of faith and all other spiritual matters are not within the department of a temporal sovereign.

He is seldom qualified for instructing spiritual matters. His authority on such matters can seldom be enough to counterbalance the established church’s united authority.

The public peace and his own security frequently depends on the church’s doctrines.

He can influence the church only by exciting fears and expectations in the church:

• the fear of deprivation or other punishments, and
• the expectation of further preferment.

²⁰⁸ In all Christian churches, the clergy’s benefices are freeholds.

• They enjoy them during life or good behaviour.
• They could never maintain their authority with the people if they could be easily removed by the sovereign or his ministers.

The people would see them as mercenary dependents of the court. They would have no confidence in their instructions.

A sovereign who violently deprives any seditious clergymen of their freeholds, would only make them and their doctrine 10 times more popular, 10 times more dangerous than before.

Fear should never be used against anyone who desires independence because terrifying them only strengthens their opposition.

The French government violently forced their parliaments or courts of justice to enact any unpopular law.

• They usually did this by imprisoning all the refractory members.
• They very seldom succeeded.

The princes of the house of Stewart sometimes did the same to influence the English parliament.

• The princes generally found the parliament equally stubborn.

The English parliament is now managed in another way.

The Duke of Choiseul made a very small experiment about 12 years ago on the Paris parliament.

• He demonstrated that all French parliaments could be managed more easily.
• That experiment was not pursued.

Management and persuasion are always the safest instruments of governments.

Force and violence are the most dangerous. But man’s natural insolence makes him always disdain the good instrument except when he cannot use the bad one. The French government could use force and so it did not use management and persuasion. I think that it is so ruinous to use force and violence on any respected clergy.

Every clergy member’s rights, privileges, and personal liberty are more respected than those of anyone of equal rank and fortune even in the most despotic governments. This is true in all degrees of despotism, from the gentle government of Paris to the violent government of Constantinople. The clergy cannot be forced.

However, they may be managed as easily as any other. The sovereign’s security and the public peace depends very much on how the sovereign manages them. It is in the preferment which he has to bestow on them.