RELIGION OF TORYISM.

 Of all the pretensions put forth by Toryism the affectation of religious zeal is the most disgusting, from its utter and shameless want of truth. We will not retort on the Tories individually the charge of infidelity—a charge which they never scruple to bring against men as sincerely and truly religious as any in the land. We will not, as we might well do, recall the names of Hobbes and Bolingbroke, of Hume and Gibbon, and appeal to the notorious fact that every writer of eminence in the English language who has attacked the truths of natural and revealed religion has also attacked the principles of civil and religious liberty, and identified himself in public life and private sentiment with the Tory party. We will not, we say, be tempted, by the example of our opponents, to impute to individuals obnoxious opinions which they themselves disavow; or drag the private lives of some of these self-styled champions of the church before the world, and show how ill their practice and professions agree ; but this we will say, that the spirit of Toryism is in its very nature and essence an irreligious spirit. Turn it as you will, its fundamental maxim is, still, distrust in the existence of good, distrust in the people, distrust in the progress of improvement, distrust in every thing except brute force; it leans blindly on the past, and the stale tricks and expediments of a miserable pettifogging policy. Toryism has neither faith nor hope —without confidence in the present, without reliance on the advance of the human race in the career marked out for it by a wise and over-ruling Providence, with ill dissembled jealousy, apprehension, and dislike, the Tory theory of society is still at bottom that of Hobbes—that men are a race of wild beasts, only prevented by a set of cunningly devised institutions from tearing one another to pieces.—Morning Chronicle.

Australasian Chronicle (Sydney, NSW : 1839 - 1843), Saturday 1 August 1840, page 1