One of the many ways of disparaging the rights of reason is--openly or covertly to doubt or deny that morals, metaphysics, and religion, are--in the full sense of the word--sciences. This is to withdraw them from the empire of reason, and to hand them over to some rival pretender.
No science can flourish while it is understood that its discussion must be made palatable to the public. In any supposable code of the rights of reason, one primary article would limit and define the functions of the public in the investigation of truth--a topic which, together with the kindred inquiry, Who are the public? is suggested by your second query.
Mankind have naturally a degree of antipathy for reason. They have found Reason, in the work he affects, dull, in the help he furnishes, deficient, in the truth he unveils, ugly, in the rule he arrogates, imperious. Barbarism, in all its stages, may be said to be founded, not merely on ignorance, but on a state of the inclinations that revolts from reason.
Two competitors have always disputed the rights of reason; authority or precedent, and faith or conscience. Conscience, early or late, must receive almost all his light from authority; and, therefore, in respect to opinion, may generally be called the creature of authority. Yet, in a moral aspect, authority is confessedly of no account, and conscience has a sole jurisdiction. A large portion of mankind have, in our times, outgrown the error of resting their sense of duty on the mere dictate of other men. The only legitimate directors of human conduct are now generally admitted to be conscience and reason; the conscience must be exclusively one's own, but the reason need not entirely--and, indeed, cannot in any great proportion--be one's own, but may be partly that of one's neighbor.
The question of the division of power between these two potentates, though not yet understood by the public, does not seem to be more complicated than that analogous one just alluded to, and of which they evidently understand the gist.
For authority, as above intimated, though the venerable instructor of conscience, is yet morally subjected to him; and, not dissimilarly, have conscience and reason reciprocal claims of precedence on each other. Reason is the judge, but he is bound, under conscience, to give a sufficient and attentive hearing to any pleadings that conscience may have to offer, and conscience is the pleader, but he is bound, under reason, to conform to whatever verdicts reason declares himself competent to render.