A Letter from Batista Angeloni - 5
What right have any set of men to the protection of a government in times of peace, who will not assist with every power they possess to defend their country in times of war? their taxes are not greater than other peoples.
Are the catholics more ridiculous in indulging monks amongst them without contributing to save their country by arms, than the Britons in permitting a sect amongst themselves, who openly avow that their religion will not suffer them to defend their country?
Another indulgence their obstinacy has procured them is this; they are suffered to affirm before a magistrate that which all other subjects of this crown are obliged to depose upon oath on the Evangelists. In order to observe the effect of this sufferance, I have frequently attended trials where these people have been witnesses, and thro’ the whole course of my observation I have never found them give an explicit answer when it could make against their friends; nay, the chicanery and search of the council could not draw an answer which was not filled with ambiguities.
Their cause of demanding this privilege is the most convincing reason for its not being allowed them; it is evident they imagine that there is something more obligatory, sacred and binding in an oath, than in an affirmation: therefore since all the individuals of a nation ought to be under the same influence and apprehension in the administration of an oath, it was extremely ill understood to grant this liberty of affirmation to any set of men whatever. It is a road that leads to injustice; it is injustice itself, that one man should be subjected to the terrors of eternal punishment, for the breach of that which another only conceives as something of a common nature.
