your own fashion, and I will warrant them, before the end of it, the
legislature will be willing to concede to them more than they at present
demand.

"Either the institution of marriage depends not for its validity upon
hypocritical compliances with the ritual of an alien church, and then I
do not see why you cannot marry among yourselves, as the Quakers,
without their indulgence, would have been doing to this day,--or it does
depend upon such ritual compliance, and then in your Protests you offend
against a divine ordinance. I have read in the Essex-Street Liturgy a
form for the celebration of marriage. Why is this become a dead letter?
Oh! it has never been legalized: that is to say, in the law's eye it is
no marriage. But do you take upon you to say, in the view of the gospel
it would be none? Would your own people, at least, look upon a couple so
paired to be none? But the case of dowries, alimonies, inheritances,
etc., which depend for their validity upon the ceremonial of the church
by law established,--are these nothing? That our children are not
legally _Filii Nullius_,--is this nothing? I answer, Nothing; to the
preservation of a good conscience, nothing; to a consistent
Christianity, less than nothing. Sad worldly thorns they are indeed, and
stumbling-blocks well worthy to be set out of the way by a legislature
calling itself Christian; but not likely to be removed in a hurry by any
shrewd legislators who perceive that the petitioning complainants have
not so much as bruised a shin in the resistance, but, prudently
declining the briers and the prickles, nestle quietly down in the smooth
two-sided velvet of a Protesting Occasional Conformity.

"I am, dear Sir,

"With much respect, yours, etc.,