If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism, if there were two they would cut each other’s throats, but there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness.
Voltaire, Letters on England, letter 6, “On the Presbyterians,” Leonard Tancock, trans. (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1980): p. 41, published first in English in 1733.
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