INQUIRY

INTO THE

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHARACTER

OF THE

AMERICAN GOVERNMENT.

[H. W. Warner (1787-1875)]

"A commonwealth ought to be but as one huge christian personage, one mighty growth and stature of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in body."

Milton's Prose Works

NEW-YORK:

WILEY AND PUTNAM. 1838.

Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1838, by

WILEY & PUTNAM,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New-York.

G F HOPKINS & SON, Printers, 2 Ann-street

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE writer of the following essay has aimed to do what he thought the times imperiously called for.

It has seemed to him that for some years past there, has been a dangerous and growing misapprehension in the public mind as to the true con-

stitutional relation of our political interests to those of a religious nature. He has seen with anxiety that even wise and good men, some of them his personal friends, have gradually given way to the opinion, which men of another stamp have made it their business to inculcate, that these two classes of interests ought to be kept so wide apart from each other in the conduct of our public affairs, as to have no reciprocal influence take place between them. He had thought that Christianity was admirable everywhere and in all circumstances. How is it possible that political life

should form an exception? The church indeed is a thing by itself; but this is but a part of Christianity; what becomes of the residue, the great principles of its moral code? Are politicians to reject these also? Have they not committed the mistake of regarding the church as equivalent to the whole system, and so rejecting the whole because the church is not to be meddled with? Can the facts of the case be otherwise accounted for? Such at any rate has been the writer's impression, and he has derived from it the chief motive for what he has done. The reader will judge of the rest.

ERRATA

Page 61, line 6 from the bottom, for "sanctity" read sanity " 88, line 5 from the bottom, for "design" read designs " 102, line 11 from the top, for "goodness" read his goodness. " 175, line 12 from the top, for "contests" read contest.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. — INTRODUCTORY,

CHAPTER II. — THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION EXAMINED.

SECTION I. — The Letter of the Constitution.

——— II. — General Views of Constitutional

Lam.

CHAPTER III. — HISTORICAL VIEW or THE

SUBJECT. SECTION I. — The Principle.

——— II. — Settlement of the Country.

——— III. — Subject continued.

——— IV. — Facts reviewed with reference to

their Causes and the Conclusion to be drawn from

them.

CHAPTER IV. — PRIMARY STATE CONSTITUTIONS.

CHAPTER V. — PRESENT CHARACTER OF THE

STATE SYSTEMS.

CHAPTER VI. — POLICY OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. SECTION I. — The Legislature.

——— II. — Executive policy.

——— III. — Federal Judiciary.

——— IV. — Results.

CHAPTER VII. — QUESTION or EXPEDIENCY CONSIDERED.

SECTION I. — Direct Bearings of the Question.

——— II. — Christianity Favourable to Popu-

Iar Intelligence.

——— III. — Christianity Favourable to Popular Virtue.

——— IV. — Christianity Favourable to Liberty.

CHAPTER VIII. — POPULAR MISTAKE CORRECTED.

CHAPTER IX. — CONCLUSION.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

NATIONS, like individuals, should endeavour to learn something from the ills they suffer. It is especially becoming in a free people, when visited with chastisement, to consider wherein they have provoked the rod, and as far as may be, to compensate their misfortunes by growing wiser and better under them.

We have run into many novelties both of opinion and practice. Our fathers had no conception of some of the modern notions of what are called state-rights; and I believe they would have stood amazed at the kind of suggestion now current in the country, that a government such as they have left us, so respectful of the rights of man in every form, ought yet to be administered with as little avowed deference as possible for those of the supreme being. Priestcraft is an evil of no late discovery: the danger of formal alliances between

church and state, is matter of history long and well understood: but the propriety and merit of political irreligion, — of carrying on the business of the commonwealth professedly as "without God in the world," — this, so far as I know, is what was never openly taught and accredited till very recent times.

President Jefferson was the first American teacher of this sort of doctrine. When applied to in 1807 to recommend to his fellow-citizens a day of national humiliation and prayer, he excused himself by alleging that he had not the power to do it; and he affected to maintain his dogma, then a most novel and surprising one, by argument. "I consider the government of the United States," said he, "as interdicted by the constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises." This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting an establishment of religion, but from that also which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the United States. "Certainly," he continued, "no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the general government." Whence he concludes, "it must then rest with the states."

Nor has the sophistry of this reasoning made it harmless. President Jackson, after Mr. Jeffer-

son's example, refused in 1832 to say a word to the people about humbling themselves before their maker; though it was a time, if ever there was one, that demanded some signal act of religious self-abasement and sorrow at our hands; for it was during the first cholera season, when the angel of destruction was hovering over us with dreadful omen, darkening the heavens with his wings, and scattering unheard-of plagues upon the earth. It was a strange thing to hear from the chief magistrate of a people circumstanced as we were then, that he could lend no countenance to the piety of our wishes, and was even prohibited By the fundamental laws from recommending the slightest public acknowledgement of that deity whose judgements were so visibly abroad. Congress, without exactly following in this track, have too often acted in the same spirit. It is not a great while since a member of the federal senate declared in his place, that the very record of our religion was "an unfortunate reference," a bad authority to quote, in the debates of that body; in a word, "that no senator had a right to allude to it:" while in the other house, (omitting minor proofs,) there is an odour that will not soon die away, entailed upon its memory by the report of the majority of a certain sabbath-mails committee; where the occasion furnished by a number of modest and respectful petitions, which

had come up from various quarters to solicit the fathers of the nation on a point of christian mortals, was perverted, in the face of the world, to the maligning of christianity itself.

And instead of these scandals having been wiped away by the rebuke of the country, they seem to have carried the country along with them. Praise, rather than censure, has in general waited on irreligion wherever it has appeared in our official politics. Most of our functionaries nowadays are party-men; and it is astonishing with what facility such men, with station to aid them, create opinions for the public mind. If they tell us Baal is God, Baal becomes at once the object of an extended popular worship. They have but to speak the word, and immediately a thousand newspapers publish it; a whole race of minor demagogues repeat and inculcate it; ignorance is led captive; intelligence itself gives way to clamour; reason fails of its office; error and passion march in triumph through the land.

It is of the lot of error too, as it advances in popularity, to be gradually curtailed of the alleviating or disguising qualifications that were found convenient to be thrown around it at first. Mr. Jefferson's argument against political christianity was founded on certain peculiarities of the federal system, and to that system he confined its application. Instead of saying that religious observances

ought to be scouted from the country,—a proposition too bold to begin with,—he barely urged that federal authorities should keep clear of them; leaving the particular states to act as they pleased. But the men of our day go further. Separating Mr. Jefferson's dogma from his argument, they generalize it into a universal maxim, and insist that even the state-governments ought to shut their doors against all manner, of religious concerns.

And this, from appearances, may yet be done. Who does not remember what has lately happened on more than one occasion in the legislature of New-York, upon the ordinary motion for appointing a chaplain? What mind, capable of just reflection, but has been shocked by the insinuations and avowals which that harmless motion gave rise to?—a motion called for by invariable usage, and which decency itself had placed in the rubrick of things never to be omitted. Nor was the example thus set permitted to fall to the ground. Connecticut, even Connecticut, stooped to a legislative controversy about imitating it. So that the question seems fairly up for decision, whether the makers of human laws are any longer to recognise the claims of a superior lawgiver; or whether the honour of serving the people be not too high to allow of any measure of service or homage towards the majesty of heaven.

The evil is spreading. The same misconception of the genius of our institutions, attended with the same extravagance and folly of development, may be seen and heard at all the corners of the streets from Portland to New-Orleans. The whole land is infected and becoming sick with the notion, that somehow there is that in the nature of our government, that calls not only for caution in regard to religion, but for distrust and jealousy against it. With a certain set, it is already fashionable to rail against religion under the very pretext of patriotism or regard for the laws; and whether in private society, or through the press, or amid the councils of the nation, no opportunity of setting up the republican in contradistinction, if not in opposition to the christian, comes to these gentlemen in vain. Piety is to them an offence. One of our most widely circulating journals lately paraded among the numerical objections of its editor to a particular candidate for the presidency, that he was too religions. It is not enough to put religious citizens on a level with the irreligious and profligate, they mast be disparaged in the comparison; they must be frowned upon as objects of political aversion.

No doubt the far greater number of those who indulge this tone of feeling, do so without looking after logical or even intelligible reasons for it, and only because it suits their predilections. Men who

hate religion are easily satisfied with grounds for opposing it. Bad principles find conclusions by affinity rather than by logic. The constitution is a popular theme; the theme of all demagogues and of most villains; and the possibility of turning it to ends of infidel scoffing and impiety, has addled more heads than those of the majority of the sabbath-mails committee.

On the other hand, it is not to be concealed that there are men of fair lives and reputable standing, men who perhaps detest the whole herd of the profane, but who yet have drifted far enough on the prevailing tide to hold opinions on this subject better suited to characters of a different stamp. These men, let us admit, are honestly irreligious in their politics. Some of them take credit for being particularly conscientious. One of the anti-chaplain objectors in the Connecticut legislature, appealed stoutly to his conscience, (his republican conscience I presume,) for the zeal with which he endeavoured to hold back his law-making brethren from their accustomed devotions. He was unable, it seems, to lay his finger on the clause (and nothing less would satisfy him) in the charter of his little sub-republic, (I am afraid the defect is common to all our charters,) where the power to pray was delegated to them; and how could they pray without a power? especially after a philosopher-president had found it impossible even

to advise such an act, without the people's sign-manual to show for it!

But the point in which reputable citizens are seen in greatest numbers to go hand in hand with the revilers, is the elective franchise; and a point it is of infinite importance; the only one indeed where private politics can put on the significancy of practical things. And how extensively and generally characters the most opposite to each other in their moral features, meet and harmonize in this vital point, let the polls testify; let multitudes of the so-called wise and good, and (shall I say it?) pious of the land, — men who go to the polls in black coats and long faces, and probably with honest hearts, — confess and be ashamed. Has it not become a cant among us, that as electors we have nothing to do with men's religious sentiments; no right even to inquire about them? Twenty gods or no god, or the God that made the worlds, is quite indifferent: papists and protestants are one; socinians, jews, and evangelical believers, all one; yes, and the tattooed cannibal of the South Sea, were he to honour our asylum of liberty by seeking a lot in its blessings, would enter at once into the same family circle of undistinguished and indistinguishable unity; free alike to live among us, and to rise above our heads; for the doctrine is, that whoever is entitled to sit in the shade of the constitutional tower, has a right also

to scale its walls. In a word, religion, even with those who make profession of it, is nothing at an election,

And though the fact is not to be accounted for like that of the conscientious heathenism of some of our law-makers, there being here no imaginable lack of power to do what is seen to be right; yet the laws are still appealed to in another fashion, as really making it necessary to do wrong. The electors, it is said, are bat fatalists of the constitution after all, and go no further than they must. They do not mean to put vice above virtue, but just in a rank of equality with it. Equality they take to be an undoubted element of our legal system, and they apply the principle indifferently to rights of protection under the government, and rights of electioneering ambition that would take the government in hand. And as neither infidelity nor atheism, nor yet the personal impurity and vileness which these engender, is sufficient cause for interfering with the immunities or liberties of a private citizen, why should they hinder his political advancement? Does the constitution warrant that distinction? Has not Mr. Jefferson's famous statute of religious freedom settled the point forever that it does not? If men are equal as citizens, why not also as candidates for office?

So far has this conceit prevailed, that not even the most delicate trusts of civil life, such as the

presidency of colleges and modelling of our youth, are exempt from the constitutional pretensions of men confessedly hostile to the religious faith of those they claim to act for. Witness the case of doctor Cooper and the college of South Carolina. Arid I remember to have heard a zealous papist complain, as of a wrong against the spirit of the laws, that some village parents had thought his creed an objection to his being entrusted with the training of their protestant children.

The sum of all is this, that one way or another, that religion which has given us a name among the states of Christendom, and which many of us deem essential to our future well-being as a people, is everywhere politically set at nought; regarded as an outlaw to the institutions of the country; a feather in the scale of its interests; as useless, if not discreditable in public life; and in reference to the elective sovereignty itself, not to be thought of!

Now to what are these things tending? How are they likely to affect the destinies of a people known rather in blood than in present character as the posterity of the pilgrims? We are told our government rests on public opinion. No doubt it does; and just as that foundation shall prove sound or rotten, will the proud superstructure abide or perish. But public opinion carried out in action, is but another name for public morals; and of the morals of a people it is not too much to

say, that they are the vital organ of existence—an organ sensitive in the extreme to every influence, and in which, at the same time, changes for the worse can never happen in any marked degree, bat under peril of life itself. So that if religion be to public morals what these are to the general welfare, what is our prospect?

It is true, religion has not now to contend for the first time with infidelity and vice; they are its old enemies; and, upon equal terms, it can both maintain its ground among them and achieve an ultimate mastery over them. But if the principalities and powers of government are to be enlisted on the other side — a novelty without example since the world began, but in one wild instance; if the people are to see the claims of religion spurned and ridiculed by those who are over them in state affairs; if scoffers and blasphemers are to have pre-eminence among them as favourites of the constitution and entitled to its chief honours; who can answer for the effects which under God may be allowed to ensue, in filling up the measure of our national offences, and visiting them at last with their deserts?

For one, I am not ashamed to own myself afraid of these consequences. The country seems to me to abound already with indications pointing that way. What is the growing rage and insolence of faction among us, but evidence that whatever be

the spirit we are of, the temperate virtues of christianity are no part of it? What is the triumph of party zeal over everything else in our official administrations, but a sign that Christian honesty is as rare as christian meekness in the conduct of our affairs? What are the rudeness and profaneness of speech that degrade some of the highest places of the government?* what the mobs and violences and atrocities, unheard-of till of late, among the people; the contempt of law, in a land where law is of the essence of liberty no less than of social order; the outrages perpetrated daily and openly, and by persons of some standing too, against the lives and property of many citizens and the peace of all—what are these, but an assemblage of proofs, that the tone of our morals is fearfully relaxed, and that if the fiat, "let them alone," were to be heard in heaven, we might look in vain for a redeeming principle of health in the bodypolitic to save it from utter dissolution.

But without regarding the subject in its worst lights, there yet is cause enough for pondering with some interest on that feature of our condition, that strange peculiarity in the state of our opinions and morals, indicated by the political disrepute into which the religion of the country is fallen. Is it possible to interpret such a circum-

* This was written before Mr. Van Buren's accession to the presidency.

stance favourably? Can any good come of it? and if not good, then what but evil? Politicians should think of this. And if, by the mercy of God, there is yet a portion of the people left, who are conscious of higher motives than the passing hour suggests, they also will do well to think of it — and promptly: a little more progress in our present course, and it may be too late to think with advantage.

CHAPTER II,

THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION EXAMINED.

SECTION I. — The Letter of the Constitution.

BEGINNING therefore at the ostensible head of the mischief, let us see in the first place, whether the federal constitution is liable, in any just view of it, to the reproach of giving countenance to unchristian politics.

The provisions of that instrument in regard to religion are but two, and those, it must be owned, of a negative character; expressing no positive favour to the subject, and only guarding against abuses. Such is the general state of the case.

Upon which two observations occur. The best things are the most conspicuously liable to abuses, and so are rather honoured than dishonoured, if either, by being furnished in advance with protection against them. And as for any argument that can be drawn from the absence of terms of posi

tive favour to religion, it will lie with equal force against agriculture, commerce, manufactures, virtue itself; for they are all under like neglect; the object of the constitution being to distribute power, not favour; to frame a government, and not to forestall and clog the administration of it by words of preconceived partiality for this or that possible subject of its future action.

But what is the precise import of the provisions in question? One of them declares "that no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification for any office or public trust in the United States 5" the other, "that congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." These are the words, and all of them.

And now the point to be considered is, whether these words convey a meaning, or will bear a construction, unfriendly to religion. If so, it must be for one or the other of two reasons in matter of fact — either that the tests and establishments thus provided against are abuses of religious origin, or that their mischievous tendency is caused or aggravated by religious influence: for if religion neither gives rise to those abuses, nor in any way contributes to their evil consequences, then it would seem, that whoever is guilty, religion must go clear.

It is common, I believe, to speak of tests and

establishments as religious institutions. Admitting they could justly be regarded in that light, still they are not of the essence of religion, and might therefore be denounced by the constitution, and by all the world, without necessarily dragging religion itself along with them into the same disgrace. If a person were heard to rail against monasticism, or the inquisition, it would hardly prove him an infidel; he might be a good man and a Christian nevertheless. Religion, and most of the institutions found in nominal connexion with it, are so entirely distinguishable and so often misjoined, that no general inference can be safely drawn from one to the other.

But the fact assumed here is as false as it is inconclusive. Tests and establishments are not religious institutions. They are the handywork of political men, designed for political uses. Involving the exercise of state power, and looking to ends of state policy, they are emphatically things of state. The church, or its friends as such, have generally no agency in creating them; much less have they any authority or resources of their 6wn that could bring them into being. And accordingly it is not against the church or its friends that the barriers of the Constitution are reared. The prohibition is directed to congress, to the law-making functionaries; men, who if not restrained, would at least be able to do that

which it is thought fit to interdict. So that precisely as a statute made for regulating commerce, would be an act of political government, not of trade; in like manner, a provision for imposing a formulary of religious profession as a test of eligibility to offices and trusts in the state, or for assuring in any other way or measure the patronage of the state to a particular class of religionists, would be an act of the same kind of government, and not an institute of religion, or for which religion could be held responsible in the remotest

degree.

If then it be illogical to argue from an abuse to the thing abused, what shall be said of the injustice and absurdity of arraigning religion for abuses not her own, but of which she is only the passive subject, and made such by a power with which she has absolutely nothing in common?

The working, moreover, of these truly secular institutions, is of a character with the source they spring from. The motives they employ, and the principles of action they appeal to, are wholly secular. A test-law is a partial or qualified establishment of religion; and it is fair to say of all establishments of that nature, that they tempt mankind with worldly motives to conform to a political standard of religious profession. They are bribes tendered by government to the consciences of the people. Their language to every one is, "swear,

subscribe, make a pretence; and the god of this world shall provide for you."

Is this the voice of the pure spirit? or one with which that spirit can be suspected of harmonizing for any imaginable purpose?

But perhaps it is thought that religion, though incapable of offering bribes, or joining actively in any sort of vicious instrumentalities, may yet be chargeable with yielding sometimes to their influence, and giving up her servants to be led astray by them. Appearances too often pass for realities. There are dead men that have "a name to live;" nay, that appear abroad and make a figure on the stage of life: but let not the mimickry of shadows be mistaken for the workings of immortal substance and vitality. Religion (I speak of Christianity, the only religion known to the laws) can no more receive corruption than impart it. Religious men, as such, have one master and but one; they can serve no more. And when persons calling themselves religious, take to the service of the world; when the lust of the world's honours and emoluments becomes too strong for their principles, and leads them into a self-indulgent venality which they would otherwise avoid; the very fact is conclusive against them, that they are worldly men, and have had no more to do with religion than just to profess and betray it.

Seeing therefore that from beginning to end;

in parentage, in policy, in operation and even in subjects of influence; the tests and establishments misnamed religious in the constitution, are purely secular; we have a clew to the evils that have rendered them so deservedly odious, — evils which on examination will be found precisely such as they might be expected to produce.

Hypocrisy and falsehood are the first fruits. The rewards of conformity are too enticing to be withstood by mere nominal christians, men who have the form of godliness without its power; while multitudes, who are alike strangers to both, take the bait with still greater facility. The cases of fact are various: in some the sacrifice seems greater than in others; but in all, truth is the victim.

And when this preliminary sacrifice is past, and the sanctum of a political church (for such it is) thrown open to the religionists of policy; the next development in due course, is one of pride, vainglory and intolerance: beyond which, in circumstances allowing further progress, the step is natural and easy to persecution, the last villany of church-and-state combinations. He who begins a race of ambition by throwing truth behind him, is not likely to pick up many of the self-denying virtues in the sequel of his career. When first principles are perverted, the opportunities of place

and power only serve to bring out the character into more hideous distortion.

But what connexion have evils like these with a religion which is plainly their opposite in every point? Are deception, and priestcraft, and ecclesiastical tyranny, to be confounded with sincerity, meekness, gentleness, brotherly kindness, charity? May not vices and abominations be put in check, without disparagement to qualities they have no relation to but by contrast?

The state itself is doubtless apt to suffer prejudice from the experiment so often tried, of drawing the church's affairs into joint stock with its own. Not however because religion is ever a party to connexions of that kind. It is generally not religion, but the church; nay, it is not the church, but a corrupted and degraded part of it, that enters into those arrangements. Religion scorns such harlotry. And it is because she does so, and because, in her absence, she is thus vilely personated in the embraces of the state, that the issue of those conjunctions is so vile.

And after all, religious interests are more hurt than any others by establishments of religion so called. It is not by secular power that the truths of Christianity are to prevail on earth. God will have service, not partnerships. Least of all will he divide his glory with politicians, a class of men whom he permits at times to mar his work and

hinder the progress of his cause, but whose counsel he despises, and whose co-operation he rejects. Nothing is more to be deprecated by those who love the prosperity of his kingdom, than the stretching forth of political hands towards the ark of his covenant 3 it is superfluous; it is unlawful; it is presumptuous; it tends only to mischief.

And why should an ill construction be put upon the care taken in the great charter of the country to prevent this mischief? Why turn good into evil? Why imagine that the church and people of God have been thus hedged in from the pollution of state-contact, not for their own advantage. not for any purpose of goodwill towards them, but just to give vent to legislative spleen? to enmity?

Observe, moreover, that the same clause that interdicts establishments of religion, guards forever the freedom of its exercise. What does this mean? is this too done in wrath? Religion in exercise, is active-piety; it is religion abroad in the world, showing itself to friends and foes, displaying the attraction of its graces, wielding openly the engines of its mild but transforming influence: for all which, it seems, there is a warrant of perpetual liberty. Is not this encouragement? If nowhere else; have we not here a token of positive favour?

Upon the whole, it must, I think, be deemed a very moderate conclusion, and quite within bounds,

to say of the express provisions of the constitution, that they are neither unfavourable to religion nor intended so. The interests of religion alone considered, nothing better could have been done. Christianity, like trade, thrives best by itself. To be let alone, is all it craves of sublunary power.

SECTION II. — General Views of Constitutional

Law,

Passing therefore from the written terras of the national compact, let us see, in the next place, how a question which these, to say the least, do not embarrass, stands affected by some considerations of fact and reason bearing intimately upon it.

Written constitutions are necessarily brief. It is impossible that a whole people should come at once to an agreement as to all the details of legal regiment proper even for their statute-book; much less can they be expected to put down on paper the unnumbered rights and interests that need no paper evidence, and call for no positive legislation, but which, as appertaining to the political and civil patrimony of all men, are the undoubted property of all, and therefore, as of course, to be preserved and cherished under every government, be it what it may in other respects.

Nor is such precautionary exactness needful, though it were feasible. The omission of a bill of rights from a state-charter, leads to no uncer-

tainty, no insecurity. Such charters take nothing from the citizen but by concession. What he notoriously possesses at the time, and does not give up, it needs no formal article to declare that he retains. And even the little that he does give up, is understood on all hands to be yielded for the direct purpose of Securing for what he retains a more perfect protection than his own personal energies and resources can make good.

Constitutions of government are but administrative systems. They are not the foundations of our rights, but superstructures of convenience for housing and nourishing, for guarding, fostering and perpetuating them. The moment a government does more than this, it oversteps the line of legitimate policy. Government is a means, not an end; its use is to preserve peace, order, justice, among men; justice, with a view to peace and order; justice, in the largest application, extending not only to those rights and interests which the laws may happen to honour with a verbal recognition, but also and equally to thousands of others unmarked with that distinction, but which, from their intrinsic value and self-evidence, are yet to be held sacred.

And this appears to be the public sense of the country on the subject. We have rights which the whole nation, sitting in judgement on the question, have pronounced inalienable; rights, in

other words, which we could not get rid of if we would. And "among these," it is said, (of course not constituting all of them,) "are the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The enumeration is short, but admirably comprehensive; covering a great deal of ground which no written constitution, bill of rights, or statute-book, ever formally touched. Whatever appertains to life, and the enjoyment of it; to liberty, with its ten thousand functions and prerogatives; to the pursuit of happiness, through every walk of business and pleasure, and by every instrumentality of genius, enterprise, industry, benevolence, and I will add, religion; all this is safe, inalienably safe; the people have said it; the first page of their history will be forever luminous with the declaration.

I repeat it, religion, and her beautiful family of rights, are all here included. No matter whether the constitution names them or not, they are here, and their fortress is impregnable. Who does not know that they belong to "the pursuit of happiness?" Who does not feel that his concern in them is indefeasible; a subject of necessary, of transcendental law?

Was it not in their religious privileges chiefly, that the first settlers of America had suffered persecution in their native land? Was it not to save these from further wrong that they came hither? And did they not look to these, more than to all

other interests, when they set about the task of founding states and governments for the protection of their liberties? Indeed, is there a primary constitution to be found, the work of their hands, that does not in set terms proclaim concerning the rights of conscience and religion, that they are indistructible, immortal?

Rights of this pre-eminence, whether registered or not in verbal charters, possess the essential dignity and deserve the name of constitutional things. They are constitutional by their very nature, and need not the compliment of a written recognition. Popular speech, if I mistake not, has already so decided. It is part of the language of freedom thus to speak of them. We naturally disdain to acknowledge for them any rank but the highest; or even that, but on the ground of their own merits, without regard to phraseological credentials. When a petty or doubtful interest is invaded, we submit to think of statute remedies; or if the wrong we suffer have relation to points embraced in the political arrangements of the country, our recourse perhaps is to the meaning of the compact by which we have agreed to abide in those matters; but let a right of first-rate magnitude be brought in question; one of those rights that stand out in high relief, not on the pages of statute-books or verbal constitutions, but upon the broad façade of society; upon our characters, and relations as men; our

history, usages and habits, our avocations, circumstances and condition, as a people; — upon facts and principles universally known and acknowledged among us; and it will be seen that we appeal in such a case, neither to the records of legislation, nor yet to the conventional wisdom of our forefathers; we wait not to inquire among books and documents, nor stir the dust of our libraries; we look neither to dead nor living for direction, but invoke at once the spirit of the fundamental code, the common law of our essential liberties. Nor is it in the option of public men to refuse us their protection here if necessary. Rights which nature gave us, which we have never relinquished, which no statutory drivelling could make clearer, and which a hundred social compacts could neither strengthen nor exalt by ratification, as they are the heritage of freemen, so wherever the semblance of free government exists, they are entitled to its best guardianship and must have it; nothing else can be safe where they are not.

CHAPTER III.

HISTORICAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT.

SECTION I. — The Principle.

BUT not to press the argument further in so elementary a form, there is a rale of plain every-day law, which taken in connexion with certain historical facts, may answer all its purposes: I allude to the well settled doctrine of presumptive evidence, by which agreements (private or public can make no difference) are, in points otherwise doubtful, to be interpreted with reference to the characters, circumstances and probable intent of the original parties to them.

Thus, if two merchants in a particular branch of trade, should agree in general words to become partners in business, there could be no difficulty in determining what that business must be, and that the agreement must be so construed as to favour it. In like manner, if an association were

to be formed for common benefit among a number of persons engaged in manufacturing employments, no vagueness of terms, or deficiency of articles could prevent the law from deciding that the arrangement is to have a favourable application to the mechanical interests of all concerned, so far forth at least as may consist with the greatest good of the whole. And supposing the scheme of fellowship enlarged to a national compact, providing generally for the organization of a government, but entering into no details of policy; if the population thus provided for were entirely agricultural, can it be doubted that the administration of their public affairs ought, and for good legal reasons, to be conducted in a spirit of assiduous kindness towards the prevailing husbandry of the people? and if one-third of the people were merchants, would not their peculiar avocations and interests claim a ratable regard? and if another third were artisans, must not the benefit of the same doctrine be extended to them?

Now it will doubtless be admitted that there are lawful interests and pursuits of a religious nature. Of course, for securing and promoting these, there must be somewhere an obligation to see that they be not improperly interfered with; and where but among the ruling powers, which alone are competent to fulfil an obligation of that kind? Assuming therefore that of a given community, consisting,

we will suppose, of agriculturists, merchants and mechanics, onehalf, onethird, or even onetenth part, are truly religious, while a much greater portion would be thought so, and the whole mass, pious or not as individuals, insist generally that they are a Christian people; is the absurdity to be tolerated for a moment, that because it does not happen to be So set down in the conventional bond of such a people, nothing is due from their rulers to the cause of their religion? What difference in the argument now and before? are religious interests less precious than others? less important to private or to public happiness? or do they want evidence? are they not of common notoriety? and have they not record evidence itself, beyond and above the pretensions of mere earthly things?

Here then is a convenient rule of judgement, which every man understands, and of which the use and necessity in common life are universally admitted. Why not apply it to the case in hand?

That the inhabitants of these states are now as exemplary as they once were in either the faith or practice of christianity, need not be asserted. The argument does not call for that. If they were christians when the institutions of the land were founded by them, it is enough. The rule in question goes precisely to this point, no farther. Being a rule of reason no less than of law, it contemplates the Very date of those institutions as afford-

ing the best evidence of their meaning, so far as circumstances can help to make it out. If we know what the sentiments of the people were then, and what the interests then most dear to them, we may pronounce, without the least danger of mistake, that those interests and sentiments cannot now be disregarded in the administration of the government, without a gross departure from the principles on which the government was originally constructed, and to which, in legal fitness it ought forever to adhere.

Let us pause a little, therefore, upon some matters of fact, not uninteresting in themselves, and of which american politicians should methinks be neither ignorant nor unmindful.

SECTION II.— Settlement of the Country.

Of all the colonial settlements made here from abroad, those of Georgia and the Carolinas were least creditable to the christian fame of the country. The circumstances attending them were comparatively unfavourable,

During the proprietary government in Georgia, considerable numbers of protestant emigrants of good character came thither from Scotland, Germany, and other parts of Europe; but with these were gradually mingled so many others of a different description, that it would be difficult to assign for the whole a religious character of any sort.

Georgia was too late for a healthful beginning. The times of pure religious colonization were gone by. The causes it depended on had ceased. In the Carolinas, which were occupied much earlier, an attempt was made some five or six and twenty years before the English revolution, to establish a colony of hugonots, but it failed: and though the attempt was afterwards repeated and with better promise, it failed again, and most tragically, involving near a thousand of those fated exiles in utter extermination. Nor could their blood purchase for the grounds that drank it a further succession of like occupants. The blight of an English crown patent came instead. It was a patent to men indeed who made large professions of being actuated by what it styled "a laudable and pious zeal for the propagation of the gospel," but who did little or nothing all their lives long to make good their title to that praise. Population was poured in for many years from the best of sources — from puritan New-England; from presbyterian New-York; from Virginia, under the expulsive rigours of a prelatical establishment; from France, crushed by the yoke of a popish tyrant; and from Britain, struggling for religious as well as political life with a royal bigot of the same atrocious stamp: bat this advantage was in great measure lost by the neglect and mismanagement of the proprietaries. It is true, they had Locke,

the philosopher at once and christian, to legislate for them; true, that they were considerate enough to speak well of Christianity in their colonial institutions; true even, that a belief in the existence and government of God, and some sort of church membership besides, were required by their laws as prerequisites for admission to the grade of freemen of the province: yet words are not religion; and in all but words they proved totally deficient— unless it should be stated as an exception, that after nearly half a century of inexertion, an effort was at last made to introduce, not religion, but an establishment under that name, with the monster of a high-commission court to support it.

Who can wonder that the best interests of these colonies languished? and who can help wondering, that their progress, after many desolate years, began at length to improve? The good seed had not all perished. Some of it took root and grew. God remembered his servants in their extremity. And when the period arrived for putting seals to the great family compact, the three southernmost provinces, like the rest, not only claimed to be Christian, but really were so.

Further north, the country was always such in a yet more signal degree.

There were two points on our shores, to which in the early times of American colonization, most of the fugitives from European cruelty directed

their course across the waters, and through which, as points at once of convergence and radiation, they gradually diffused themselves over the neighbouring territories. Virginia and New-England were the places of refuge first and chiefly resorted to by those whom the insolent tyrannies of the old world compelled to seek a new one; and it was in great measure under the auspices and on the example of these primary settlements, that most of the others were subsequently formed.

Virginia, the firstborn of the whole family, and long the favourite of the parent kingdom, adopted from the first and with zeal, the form of church polity and worship which had been preferred by the laws of that kingdom under all its protestant monarchs; and from various concurring causes, the Virginia settlement, after being' once fairly begun, was rapidly filled up with inhabitants strongly attached to the rites and government of the church of England. As early as 1688, there were among them nearly fifty episcopal parishes, with as many glebes, church edifices and pastors. Episcopacy was established by law: attendance on parochial worship was enforced by penalties: even the sacramental services of the church were legally enjoined upon the people: everything wore the appearance of a very strict religious economy. In some respects there was vastly too much rigour. Laws were made to prohibit the preaching of dissenters;

quakers were banished, and in case of their return, menaced with death; persons of every name coming into the colony, and who had not been Christians in the land they came from, were exposed to worse than death, to slavery. Shocking extravagance. but showing by its very enormity how deep and strong, as well as dark and feculent, the tide of religious feeling ran among the people, If they were not wise christians, they were strenuous religionists at least.

Maryland, a lopped branch of Virginia, was no sooner cut off from that stem and put under separate culture, than it took a form and verdure peculiar to itself. The patentee of Maryland was a papist; and his declared object in asking for a grant of the province from the crown, was to provide an asylum for the unfortunates of his own faith. This object being openly favoured by the English government, the papists of that country flocked in great numbers to the restingplace secured for them here, Leonard Calvert, a brother of the patentee, came over with the first body of emigrants as their local governor. They erected a crucifix on the forest-shore of the Chesapeake where they landed; and as it was religion brought them hither, they hastened to profess, in the most solemn manner, before the ensign thus set up, that they took possession of the province "for their sa-

viour," as well as for "their sovereign lord the king."*

This was beautiful. And whatever we may think of the creed of these people, and how different soever their practice here from what the history of other lands might have led us to look for, the truth is not to be concealed, and God forbid we should want the magnanimity to own it, that they proceeded as they began, beautifully. Strict in their principles, and yet liberal in their institutions, they set an example which in some respects the protestants of the age might have done well to follow. They considered their body-politic as comprising only "the Christian inhabitants" of the colony; and it was only to "persons professing to believe in Jesus Christ," that they felt authorized to give an unqualified assurance of religious freedom: but on the other hand, while Christianity was everything to their policy, sect was nothing. Toleration, as yet a stranger among the puritans of New-England, who could hardly bear with one another, much less with papists; toleration, to which the ruling zealots of Virginia had not yet learnt to open their hearts, holding papists and dissenting puritans in nearly equal abhorrence; toleration, which at that day had scarce an existence anywhere, and which no

* Graham's United States.

part of protestant christendom held due to members of the Romish church; was freely, nobly tendered by the Romanists of Maryland to all the churches and religions under heaven. They carried on their government for more than half a century in this spirit, and indeed till their control in the colony was supplanted, and the worthless Andros thrust into the seat of the Calverts — as if to show off the mild purity of their administration by the contrasted vices of his, and thus ,to give to popish institutions, for once at least, a strange but unquestionable triumph of Christian pre-eminence in the midst of a protestant country.

The occupancy of Delaware was commenced, in the time of Gustavus Adolphus, the lion of European protestantism, by a company of emigrants from his dominions. To these New-York added a considerable body of Dutch presbyterians; and when William Penn at length succeeded in wresting the territory from Lord Baltimore, whose patent covered it, a third stock came in, with quaker principles, to complete the trifold elements of the province. These elements were all pure, and mixed well, forming a compound happily suited to the ends of public order and stability.

Of the Pennsylvania colonists, little need be said. That they were strict professors of Christianity, is known the world over. And as to their

celebrated founder and his works, fame has finished its account of them. In the estimation of the quaker patriarch, government derived neither its obligations nor powers from man. God was to him the beginning and the end of government, as of everything else; the ordaining and the final cause. To God therefore he was fain, as a legislator, to render an homage which some of his successors in the art of policy have grudged and withheld. He thought of government as "a part of religion itself;" * a business calling for the exercise of habitual piety in those to whom either the making or execution of the laws was committed. He was for carrying religion into office, where modern statesmen are ashamed of it; and he held religious citizens to be alone fit for office. "christians," according to him, "should keep the helm and guide the vessel into port."† Even the rank of freemen, connected as it was with the elective franchise, could not in his judgement be prudently conferred on other men; nor was he willing, with all his proverbial gentleness and liberality, to say in the elementary laws, that persons capable of atheistical sentiments should enjoy the liberty of the press, or of speech itself, to publish them among the people.

Pennsylvania was eminently a Christian colony.

*No Cross no Crown.

There, as in Maryland, though sects were tolerated, Christianity was the religion of the laws. The very first act of the provincial statute-book recognised it as such. It entered indeed into the original project of the settlement; was one of the professed objects of the royal charter; and in the words of a Pennsylvania judge of the present day,* "the very basis" of the policy of the patentee,

The vast majority of the people continued for a long time quakers. And the quakers of that day had not yet fallen into the "sere and yellow leaf" of their profession; they had all the energy of a young and growing sect; they were enthusiastic religionists; not inattentive possibly to the tithing of weeds, but yet alive in every thought and feeling to the infinitely weightier matters with Which their faith was charged.

Other sectaries it is true, soon mingled in large numbers and even masses with these quaker colonists; by which means the aspect of their province was gradually altered and the character of the population became legs and less peculiar in its more obvious features, a case common to most of the sister settlements; yet as late as the beginning of the last century, when Pennsylvania (including Delaware, then under the same government)

Duncan.

numbered nearly 40,000 inhabitants, the quakers were still largely predominant among them. The laws had been often changed in some important particulars; the rights and powers of the primary lawgiver had been strangely, perhaps unnaturally, interfered with; yet the political, and mutch more the moral and religious principles of the people (sect aside) had suffered very little innovation: as far as I have learnt, the same consistency of life and character, the same sound tone of general worth continued, down even to the end of colonial times, to attest the strength of those principles, and the solidity of the foundations on which they had been reared by the wisdom and piety of the first settlers—those venerable men, whom God had honoured as the founders of a Christian state, and whose extraordinary virtues had won from the savages around them what neither bribes nor the sword could have commanded, peace, unbroken peace, while the glorious structure was going up.

The colonization of New-Jersey, which a little preceded that of Pennsylvania, was conducted for the most part under similar auspices; the province having passed early into quaker hands by purchase from the grantees of the duke of York. It was here that Penn first tried his skill at lawmaking. His policy was much the same as in his later and more celebrated experiment, though the

fruits of it did not ripen quite so well. The New-Jersey colonists were more various in origin and character, and as a whole, less uniform in the good order of their habits, than the Pennsylvania fathers. Many of them were derived from New York, more from New-England, and not a few, and those of the best, from Scotland. At the close of the seventeenth century, they numbered about 18,000 persons; of whom the bulk were quakers, presbyterians and baptists — a motley, but still a Christian community, sound in the ingredients of their composition, respectable among the sister colonies, and incomparably superior to the beginnings of any foreign state that can be named.

New-York was a peculiar case. The first settlers here were Dutch, They were of the presbyterian order, holding themselves subject to the classis of Amsterdam, and maintaining the doctrines of the reformation in all republican simplicity and honesty. Never was a set of worthier men or truer Christians. And it is remarkable, that in an age signalized by enthusiasm, when religion verged almost everywhere towards frenzy, this noiseless, peaceful, happy society kept, with very few exceptions, firm to the guidance of their reason, cultivating the growth and enjoying the fruits of piety, without excess. A praise too, which as it belonged to the parents, has come

down from generation to generation among the children, gilding with a mild and placid gleam the whole line of descent. "Justice," says the historian,* (who wrote in the time of the colony, but near a century after Nichol's conquest) "justice obliges me to declare, that for loyalty to the present reigning family and a pure attachment to the protestant religion, the descendants of the Dutch planters are perhaps exceeded by none of his majesty's subjects."

The conquest brought changes along with it.

Many of the true-hearted New-Belgians loved their

old allegiance, their laws and religion too well to

bow willingly to a monarch who was likely to have

small regard for any thing but his own caprice.

They therefore emigrated in considerable numbers

to other colonies. But their places were soon

filled by new settlers, some from Britain, multitudes

from New-England and elsewhere; there were

hugonots from France, Scotch and Dutch presby-

terians, sectaries of all descriptions from various

European countries, where rights of conscience

were insecure. At the opening of the eighteenth

century however, when the population amounted

to perhaps 30,000, the great body of the people

consisted still of presbyterians and independents;†

and the prevailing popular character, imbued as it

* Smith

† Graham.

continued to be with the spirit of the first stock, was one of staid and exemplary Christian habits.

SECTION III. — Subject Continued.

Last, not least, New-England, originally one colony, afterwards several, presents itself for notice — of all the early wonders of American story the most interesting; of all the patterns of religious colonization known to the world, the most striking and illustrious.

The first settlers of this favoured region have been indifferently styled brownists, independents, and puritans.

The brownists, properly so called, were extravagant sectaries, and never very numerous; while the independents (a name to which that of brownist soon gave place) became speedily the most prominent and conspicuous of the several classes of British separatists of dissenters; being at the same time as much less fanatical than the leading zealots of of the brownist faction, as they were less cold and superficial than the dominant party in the established church. Under the more general name of puritans, the brownists and independents, with most Presbyterians, and some episcopalians of the devouter sort, grouped promiscuously together: all indeed were called puritans, who held religion to be something more than a hierarchy and a ritual; for it was a name applied by way of ridicule

to every sort of men who loved the bible better than the establishment, the rights and liberties of conscience better than the church-proud tyranny that trampled on them.

The rapid increase of the puritan independents only exasperated the intolerance that strove to hunt them down; and a large company of them, headed by a clergyman of the name of Robinson, made good at length their escape from England to the Low Countries; whence again, in 1620, a portion of these, in order to provide for the religion of their posterity as well as their own, took their departure for America, and became the ever memorable Plymouth patriarchs of New-England. They were men suited to the enterprise. Every step they took left an impression of their character. The friends they were leaving in Holland, went with them to the place of embarcation, like the Ephesian elders pressing around the apostle of the gentiles for the last time; and there, in farther imitation of the same example, they knelt down together on the ocean beach, and baring their heads beneath the vaulted temple of the universe, lifted their eyes and voices to the God of its altars. What a spectacle!

And when these parting devotions were paid, and the destined colony came forth upon the waters, there was no relapse in their religious feelings or exercises, no interval to the flow of

that deep-toned piety in which the adventure had begun, and which afforded the best, if not the only sure pledge, of its successful termination. It was throughout a voyage of faith, and hope, and indefatigable prayer. The same temple-vault was still over their heads; the same God still present at its altars: they called again and again upon his name: martyrs of self-expartiation for his name's sake, they clung with a life-grasp to the promise of his good word; never ceasing to remind him of their reliance on it; and that in this reliance they had "left all and followed him;" and that in this reliance they were ready to encounter the worst that might come—cold, want, desolation, the last enemy himself. Nor was their trust vain: he heard them: they arrived in safety; and after singing a hymn to his praise, and entering into covenant with him, and with each other, for the future fidelity of their lives in his service, they debarked upon the pilgrim's rock, and pitched their tents in the new world.

Such was their beginning. And the same spirit so manifest in it upheld them afterwards against all discouragements, and enabled them to go forward with an energy of perseverance and a rapidity of success never surpassed, probably never equalled. No other spirit could have done so much. The love of lucre would have been frozen by the climate or starved by the soil. The Plymouth com-

pany, for want of a less sordid motive, accomplished nothing. The love of fame would have shrunk from the ignoble miseries of savage warfare lowering in the prospect. Fame seeks a brighter field. The love of dominion, vigorous as it is, would have sickened at the distance of view in which, if anywhere, its triumphs were to be looked for. Power, like physical objects, may be too far off to seem of much significance. Nothing in short but a principle that was above the world, and to which time and circumstance, the usual coadjuvants of worldly action, were but antagonist excitements to the exertion necessary for overcoming the obstacles they presented—nothing less than such a principle could have borne the pilgrim fathers to the end of their task.

As it was, they went on their way rejoicing. The first party of emigrants was followed by others in the same spirit. "New-England must have remained unoccupied," says Robertson, "if the same causes which occasioned the emigration of the brownists, had not continued to operate." No other sort of men would answer; and things were so ordered, that just the kind of men required came in abundance to the work. By 1640, the colony was 20,000 strong; and in little more than thirty years after, 120,000—nearly three times the population of Virginia at the same date: so much more effective is the favour of heaven than of earthly monarchies.

And though New-England did not long continue single in its political organization, and notwithstanding many feuds and troubles from time to time in the sectarian affairs of the church, yet the substantial unity of its religious tone and character was never seriously interrupted. As with the elder settlement of Massachusetts-Bay, so with those that issued from it, religion, in its piety at least, continued to hold the lead in all things, and without a moment's interval. The successive detachments that went forth to the south, west and north of Massachusetts, not only carried their religion along with them, but went distinctly and only as religionists. They were ecclesiastical swarms, leaving a more populous hive for others less crowded. And they moved under characteristic guidance. A clergyman of the name of Williams led a colony of his church friends to Rhode-Island: another clergyman named Hooker proceeded with a like attendance to Hartford in Connecticut; while a third, a Mr. Wheelwright, took a northerly course and Settled with his band of followers in the borders of New-Hampshire and Maine. In every direction where the people went to occupy the land, they marched in regular christian order, led by officers of Jesus Christ, and with the pennon of his salvation floating over them, their sole rallying ensign. There was a great deal of party spirit in the origin of these

movements: religious whims and follies had much too large a concern in them: but religion itself, the great principle of the fear and love of God, was at the bottom of all, the abiding basis on which every public measure was founded, every legal and even political structure reared.

Look, for example, at the laws of the pilgrim colonies. For a considerable time after the arrival of the first settlers, they had all things in common, and as nearly as might be, on the New Testament model. As numbers and interests multiplied, their legal system became more extended; but still without any relaxation of tone. In some respects the rigour of their policy, always stern enough, and often too much so, acquired a gradual increase of austerity as they went on. Their statute-book is perhaps the most singular cabinet of wonders upon earth. Nor is it the less remarkable for being all in one style: other statute-books are incongruous medleys; here the general uniformity of character is unbroken, while yet the details of the work appear everywhere so novel both in form and conception, that the eye wanders from one item to another with ever renewed amazement; so fresh and striking is the whole train of the evidence it abounds with to show, that the people of colonial New-England were not only different from other men, but so very different, that their own descendants of the pre-

sent day, however moral, however truly christian, scarce remind us of them; and we can only arrive at a just estimate of what they were, by groping like antiquaries among their tombs and relics. Their whole polity was religious. Within a dozen years after their arrival in the country, they resolved by a sort of constitutional statute, that in order to be admitted to a share in the government, or to any grade of magistracy, or to the jury-box, or even to the name of a freeman, it was indispensable that a man should not only be religious, but should give proof of this by a regular church profession. And to the sentiment thus enthroned in the elementary code, every part and tittle of their laws paid homage.

Even the internal affairs of the church were watched over by the legislature with the keenest vigilance. The records of the first fifty or eighty years are full of this. The forming of ecclesiastical societies and their economy when formed; the exemption of their liberties and discipline from the interference of secular power; the privileges of their public assemblies and worship; the peace and dignity of their proceedings; the maintenance of "an able and faithful ministry" among them; and the duty of all men to wait upon the exercise of that ministry "on the Lord's day, and upon such fastdays and days of thanksgiving as were to be generally observed by appointment of antho-

rity"*—all these were topics of continual and anxious legislation.

Nor were the general morals of the community looked after with a less attentive concern. Morality, at that time of day, was practical religion; something appertaining not only to social order, but to the honour of the divine government. Penalties of the heaviest kind, most of them capital, were denounced against idolatry, heresy, blasphemy, false witness, disobedience to parents, conjugal infidelity, sabbath-breaking—offences scarce intelligible but under a Christian dispensation, and to minds imbued with Christian notions and principles. Laws of this extreme severity were made and multiplied almost before the settlement was a score of years old; certainly before the evils they pointed at could be much known as things of actual occurrence: and it is difficult to account for such a precocious development of censorial rigour, without ascribing it to an over-scrupulous zeal for the letter of the Mosaic code; a code to which we find them frequently appealing by express references on the page and in the body of their statutes, citing books, chapters and verses in numerical array, to show the ground of their proceedings.

The very language of their laws was religious, not to say biblical. In an act for instance, passed in 1646, for repressing blasphemy, as well

* Colonial Statutes

among the indians of their jurisdiction as elsewhere, they declare, that "albeit faith be not wrought by the sword, but by the word; and therefore such pagan indians as have submitted themselves to our government, though we would not neglect due helps to bring them on to grace and to the means of it, yet we compel them not to the Christian faith, nor to the professsion of it, either by force of arms or by penal laws; nevertheless, seeing the blaspheming the true God cannot be excused by any ignorance or infirmity of human nature, the eternal power and godhead being known by the light of nature and the creation of the world; and common reason requiring every state and society of men to be more careful of preventing the dishonour and contempt of the most high God (in whom we all consist) than of any mortal princes or magistrates; it is therefore ordered and decreed, for the honour of the eternal God, whom only we worship and serve, that no person within this jurisdiction, whether Christian or pagan, shall wittingly and willingly presume to blaspheme his holy name, either by wilful or obstinate denying of the true God, his creation or government of the world; or shall curse God, or reproach the holy religion of God, as if it were but a public device to keep ignorant men in awe; nor shall utter any other eminent kind of blasphemy of the like nature or degree:

if any person or persons whatever within our jurisdiction shall break this law, they shall be put to death." Such was the Jewish precedent, and they copied it.

Even vices and levities, such as now are little thought of, were pursued with unsparing indignation; profane cursing and swearing, lascivious-ness, gambling, drunkenness, "dancing in ordinaries," and the like, having punishments allotted them in the spirit rather of religious chastisement than of civil correction.

Everything, in short, was done under the influence of supposed religious duty, and for religion's sake.

And what if it be true, as some appear to find pleasure in asserting, that the puritan lawgivers, by pushing matters too far, were guilty of excesses and abuses? Strong principles tend everywhere to this. Allowing the eastern patriarchs to have been over-zealous in their religion, the fact that they were religious men, and prized the privileges of that character, is not the less apparent: That they sometimes judged and acted wrong; that they were intolerant of what they thought it their duty to suppress; that they abhorred and expelled heretics, were superstitious about witches, and often betrayed a fiery impatience of schism among themselves; all this, though it may charge their escutcheon with some actual stains, impeaches not

their faith or sincerity, but rather fortifies the credit of both. Men do not become superstitious by trick, nor cruel for cruelty's sake. Infirmity is the common lot. Apostles brought no cloud over their commissions by confessing that they were of like passions with other men. When the religious principle is well informed and directed, its operation is at once potent and benign; but if led astray by erroneous convictions, its potency finds a new train of developement: the principle remains the same both in nature and energy, while its effects are only those of perverted action.

Let not the unconscious misapprehensions of duty which at times betray the best of men into lamentable errors, overlay the proofs by which their general well-doing is attested,

If the New-Englanders believed for a while in modern facts of witchcraft, it was their error, not their crime. Nor was the error theirs alone, it was a thing of the age, it existed everywhere; there was not perhaps a penal code in Christendom untinctured with it. Trials and condemnations for witchcraft had actually and recently taken place, before judges of undoubted sanctity, unquestioned wisdom. Britain, with all her improvements, had witnessed this. Even the simple-hearted Dutch christians of New-York had gone ahead of the pilgrims in the same infatuation, holding a solemn assize of witchcraft for several

days together in their metropolis, a spectacle for earth and heaven.

And then, the persecution of the eastern quakers, wherein was it worse than the same kind of injustice dealt out by episcopal Virginia to quakers there? or wherein was the common error of the east and south in this respect more grievous, more obnoxious to reproach, than the treatment received by the papists of that period at the hands of nearly the whole protestant world? a treatment too, bad as it was, yet not half so atrocious as the whole papal world (Maryland excepted) had long been in the habit of inflicting on the protestants that fell under their power. Where all are guilty, who shall sit in judgement on a part?

At any rate, the Christians of colonial New-England, in the very excesses and abuses which, like other vehement religionists, they sometimes committed, believed that they were doing God service. Who can doubt it? So that be the story of their superstition and intolerance what it may in point of verity, these things were but the per versions of a great and noble principle; exceptions, and trivial ones too, compared with the importance of the rule they violated, and which at the same time that they dishonoured it, they forcibly illustrated, showing it in greater strength, By disclosing the depth of its foundations.

SECTION III.—Facts Reviewed, with Reference to their Causes, and the Conclusion to be drawn from them.

Such then was the commencement of our history; and the causes which were chiefly active in it were as peculiar as the work achieved by them.

We have heard of lands colonized by paupers, who had no alternative but to emigrate or starve. Other lands have been seized upon in the way of covetous adventure, for the mines and treasures expected to be found in them. Some have been thought worth occupying as commercial stations, or for other ends of trade; and some, as Botany-Bays for the cast-off population of overgrown states, the vagabonds and felons snatched by banishment from the dungeon and the gallows. But which of these considerations led to the peopling of America? Individuals, of course, were swayed by various motives: there were cases even of profligates and criminals being sent here by the English, government to get rid of them, or by colonial proprietaries, to swell the numerical masses of their jurisdictions: but what was the general course of things? and what the leading influences that controlled it?

Thanks to the giver of all good, we are not more favourably distinguished from other governments by our present political economy, than we were in our infancy from their historical begin-

nings, by the character and views of our settlers. It was an era of the world's affairs, such as had neither preceded nor is likely to follow it. The protestant reformation had been just long enough in progress to have brought the minds of the nations to a sort of moral crisis. In the zeal of new opinions to which men had everywhere been roused from the stupor of past ages, they naturally became more and more sensible of the value of their religious rights; while on the other hand, the governments of Europe, as yet unrenovated by the spirit of the times, arrayed themselves in deadly opposition to that spirit, resolved to crush, if possible, a faith that appeared to them dangerous alike to despotism in the state as in the church: and it was in this critical conjuncture, when the prevailing enthusiasm of religious excitement was assailed and frenzied by persecution, that the western hemisphere was happily thought of by the Christians Of Europe, as a place of last refuge, a hoped-for rest beyond the seas, where God would finally receive and cherish those who were willing to serve him. The settlement of America by such men and for such reasons, was a thing without parallel; nothing could be more opposite to the usual colonizing process. Rome, the queen of empires, was at first but an imposthume, drawn to a head by circumstances. England herself is come she knows not of what parentage, for she

was begotten out of wedlock, and by a commerce of savages. The fathers of America are known, and worth knowing. They were the best men that European communities could furnish, or European cruelty drive away; the purest runnings of the winepress of Europe under the tread of its tyrants.

If Georgia and the Carolinas do not altogether verify this description, an exception of three provinces out of thirteen, leaves it still substantially and generally true.

The case of Virginia may also be admitted to have been singular, considered as a colony agreeing in its religious forms with the dominant party in the mother country, and for a time enjoying their patronage. And undoubtedly, so far as the progress of the colony was advanced by court-favour, the advantage may not have been so apparent in the quality of the settlers thus furnished as in some other possible respects.

But then it must be borne in mind, that during the long parliament and the protectorate, episcopalians in England had to drink of the same cup which at other times their leaders administered to dissenters. Persecuted in turn by the political power, they fled before it, bringing over large and valuable additions to the kindred society here.

There was another influence, which though quite different in character, must have drawn with con-

siderable force in the same direction. The courts of the latter Stuarts were exceedingly corrupt, and the excesses of a bigoted church despotism under their countenance (for even the last James, with all his preference for the establishment of Rome, liked that of England well enough as a machine for trampling on the puritans) must have filled the minds of the more pious episcopalians with sentiments scarcely leaving them an option but to flee, for conscience' sake, beyond the sight of such abominations. The articles of their church were on paper Calvinistic. To adhere to them strictly was puritanism. Puritans we know there were in plenty within the precincts of that church: most of the English clergy were Calvinistic in the time of Laud: and when the spectacle was exhibited, of a British monarch with his hierarchy around him, audacious enough, not only to employ stocks, jails, and gibbets, for repressing the growth of unmitred Christianity, but swelling the apparatus of persecution by the obtruded levities and vices of their own example, setting their perverted manners and morals in ostentatious contrast with the austerities of uncourtly virtue, publishing orders of profane revelry and pastime for the Christian sabbath itself, and with the avowed design of desecrating it to spite the puritans; when such things were possible, methinks it was time for good men, as well in the establishment as out of it, to remember

the "cities of the plain," and to look from old England to young Virginia, from the palace to the desert, with desire.

The early population of Delaware and New-Jersey was so variously derived, and so much of it from the eastern provinces, that excepting the quaker inhabitants, who classed with those of Pennsylvania, there is little in the history of these settlers to call for special observation as to the influences under which they were brought together. Even New-York presents no very peculiar features in this point of view.

But with the remaining provinces the case was otherwise. Maryland was the asylum of persecuted English papists; Pennsylvania, of English quakers under like oppression; while Massachusetts, Rhode-Island, Connecticut, and New-Hampshire, were successively filled with puritan refugees of the same national stock, and who in like manner had given up their native land, the home of their fathers, to save their religion, which was still dearer to them. Ten, in short, of the original thirteen states, were religiously colonized; and seven, by sectaries of the utmost piety and zeal, such as only puritan times could have produced. And it must be added, that these seven provinces comprised, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, more than five sixth parts of the entire population of the country. Nor was this relative state of

things materially altered down to the federal period itself.

It is cheering to review such facts. They are facts of great peculiarity; and why not of glorious indication too, for the yet unrevealed destinies of a land whose virgin annals they so strongly mark? Whatever may have happened more recently, there was a time when Christian piety, instead of being under public reproach, was popular, was general, was nearly universal in the country; respected of all men, and by most regarded as the best of earthly possessions. We are descended, God be thanked, from Christian parents. Religion was the fountainhead of our history. It was not till men were goaded by intolerance to the point of preferring exile and a wilderness with religious freedom, to the pleasures of the most improved and loved society without it, that our colonial settlements were formed. Our fathers came hither as christians, as men devoted to Christianity above all things. It was the most conspicuous, brightest aspect of their characters. They came to build temples in the desert, and to fill them with prostrate worshippers.

And what they came for they accomplished. Their lives here were like the principles they brought with them; pure, ardent, full of the unction of their calling. They had some follies, but for every one of these, a hundred virtues.

They were not perfect men, but men sincerely and devoutly earnest in pressing toward the mark of perfection, and who counted everything else as trash, compared with the right, the duty, the necessity, of serving their maker, and holding fast the integrity of those Christian liberties which were to them the one thing needful upon earth.

Their tenets were in some respects greatly diversified; how could it be otherwise? The persecutions they had fled from were not for the most part levelled against this or that denomination of christians in particular, but against all manner of dissenters from certain shibboleth creeds of state — all who could not join in the prescribed kneeworship of some two or more imperial models of church-formalism. In France, and some other countries, the idol they were ordered to bow to was the papacy; in England it was the protestant episcopacy of a venal court — save only, that during the brief hour of the commonwealth, the pedestal of this dagon was usurped for a time by the no less hard and much ruder statuary of the roundhead chisel. Everywhere however, the causes of the emigration that took place, were of a nature to secure two points at least in the character of the emigrating mass: diversity of sect was one, because in all sects there were those who would sooner become exiles than apostates: the other, was a very high degree of

religious faith and ardour; for nothing less was likely to hold out to an extremity like that of exile, against the united corruption and power of political church-establishments, armed as they were with both the lure and the lash, the bribes and curses of malignant empire. It was a tyranny over the consciences of men, extending to every variety of dissenting believers, but bearing with severest pressure on those whose consciences were tenderest and purest; putting thus to flight and self-banishment, for the good of cisatlantic regions, the soundest and most precious materials of the bodypolitic. Happy the land peopled from such a source ! Happy and honoured the generations after, that can trace to such a source the streams of at once their physical and moral life. If then the ancestors we boast of were of various sects, enough for us that they were all religious. They were independents, presbyterians, episcopalians, baptists, papists, quakers — but all of Christian profession, and most of them of sterling Christian worth. To be an atheist or an infidel, or even to be neutral in religious matters, was alike rare and discreditable among them; a singularity that might occur in individuals, but could have no countenance from society.

And now the question is, whether a character so marked and prominent as this of their religion, was likely to be honoured in their public institu-

tions, or to be contradicted and disgraced by them; whether that which is known to have been of chief estimation in the paternal mind, and the most enriching quality of the paternal estate, is likely to have been cut off from the children's portion and thrown ruthlessly away, at the grave moment and amid the yearning affections of a last will in their favour. What is the fair presumption? Can a mere omission to declare the contrary be tortured into an occasion of doubt? As well might a bond of present debt be held to bear no interest because none is expressed. As well might our bible-societies be deemed enemies of the bible, for sending it forth without a commentary to explain it. Men are wont to express but half the intended import of their doings; leaving the rest to be gathered from facts and circumstances of the place and time. Debtors are such according to the local laws. Bible-distributors forbear their annotations, not from unconcern about results, but from a sense of mutual charity among co-operating sects, and in the hope of a greater good upon the whole. And if our pious ancestors have failed to tell us in set phrase, that they wished us to be Christians like themselves, and their works to receive a Christian interpretation at our hands, are we to shut our ears to the "expressive silence" of their memories, and fill the blanks of the political charters they have left

us, with atheism? Is it reasonable to do so? is it jurisprudential?

Suppose it had been moved in the convention of 1787, to denounce Christianity outright; how would such a motion have been met? What would the puritan states have said to it? What would the least religious of the states have said? Was there one among them capable of being thus insulted without a thrill of abhorrence?

On this head, as on others, the federal constitution was a compromise. Religion could not well be introduced into it for any purpose of positive regulation. There was no choice but to tolerate all Christian denominations and to forbear entering into the particular views of any. Religion was itself likely to fare best in this way. Men who loved it better than we do nowadays, felt bound in prudence to leave it at once unaided and unencumbered by constitutional provisions, save one or two of a negative character. And they acted thus, not that it might be trodden under foot, the pearl among swine; but to the very end, of its greater ultimate prevalence, its more sure and lasting sway among the people.

CHAPTER IV.

PRIMARY STATE CONSTITUTIONS.

BUT let us proceed a step further. There are facts deserving notice in what may be called the constitutional period of our history; the birthtime of those republican forms of polity we still so anxiously adhere to, but of whose religious bearings the world it seems is lately fallen into doubt. If it be not enough to know what the founders of the nation were, there may be use in giving some attention to what they did, in cases not within the federal compromise, and less embarrassed by diversity of views.

It was natural that a constitution for the whole country should be less minutely faithful to the opinions and feelings of individuals, or even classes of men, than those of the particular states might be. The larger the territory and population, and the more various the interests that pervade them, the more general must be the structure of the

political order. Society cannot be classified into great masses but upon the principle of all other generalizations, that of abstracting from what is special to the parts.

And practically, the parts lose nothing by this process. Their peculiarities are not the less to be adverted to when measures of administration are to be applied, or rules of policy settled. For all the purposes of construction, details must still be looked at. National generalities can receive their just interpretation in no other way. And as, in a large view, the federal and state constitutions form together but one system, that for national, these for local ends; the propriety of deriving from the several ingredients of the system hints and analogies for judging of the whole in points otherwise doubtful, is self-evident. So that admitting the general government to be wanting in express marks of Christian character, the governments of the particular states, the thirteen elder states especially, the original sisterhood of the union, may be referred to for supplying that defect. Acts of one and the same people, done at about the same period, and upon like subject matters, differing only or chiefly in mere breadth of design, are reciprocal evidence for explaining each other—good in a court of justice, good everywhere.

If then it can be shown from the constitutional records of a few short years after the declaration

of our independence, that all or nearly all the thirteen primary states, by which the federal government was so soon afterwards and so cordially established, were then Christian states, it will be hard methinks to turn them into infidels and atheists by combination. Let us see how the matter stands.

One of those states, and that a great and honoured one, has left us indeed no record to the purpose. That Virginia was in truth a Christian state, will not be questioned; but her philosophers have not allowed the fact to appear in her political framework.

It must also be confessed that the constitutions of Connecticut and Rhode-Island are scarcely in point, as having been mere crown charters when the union took place. The religion of the inhabitants is well known: they were puritans: nor was the subject overlooked in the constitutional records such as they were: but I pass them by.

Of the remaining states, some have declared themselves more pointedly, some less so.

New-York is among the least explicit. Yet the people of this state, by their constitution of 1777, did two important things — they guarded strongly the rights of conscience and religious worship; and they made public offices of a worldly nature inaccessible to the clergy, on the express ground, that the clergy were "by their profession dedicated

to the service of God and the cure of souls," and "ought not to be diverted from the great duties of their function."

The New-Jersey constitution of 1776, after providing, like that of New-York, that no citizen should ever be deprived of what it termed "the inestimable privilege of worshipping almighty God in a manner agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience," declared that no "protestant inhabitant" should be denied the enjoyment of any civil right on account of his religious principles, and that "all persons professing a belief in the faith of any protestant sect, and who should demean themselves peaceably under the government, should be capable of being elected into any office of profit or trust, or being a member of either branch of the legislature, and should fully and freely enjoy every privilege and immunity enjoyed by others, their fellow-citizens." From which ill-drawn passage it may at least be gathered, that happen what might to other men, the professors of protestant Christianity were to be favoured by the government.

In the state of New-Hampshire the point was not left to inference. Assuming "that every individual had a natural and inalienable right to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience and reason;" and further, "that morality and piety, rightly grounded on evangelical principles, would give the best and greatest security to government, and would

lay in the hearts of men the strongest obligation to due subjection:" and again, "that the knowledge of these was most likely to be propagated by the institution of the public worship of the deity, and public instruction in morality and religion:" therefore," to promote these important purposes," the people of that state, by their constitution of 1792 (the act of 1776 was one of mere organization) empowered the legislature to take measures for having provision made by the minor jurisdictions "for the support and maintenance of public protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality," Such was the voice of New-Hampshire.

Massachusetts went still further, the constitution of 1780 holding this language: "that as the happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend upon piety, religion and morality; and as these cannot be generally diffused through a community but by the institution of the public worship of God, and of public instruction in piety, religion, and morality: therefore, to promote their happiness, and to secure the good order and preservation of their government, the people of this commonwealth have a right to invest their legislature with power to authorize and require, and the legislature shall from time to time authorize and require the several towns, parishes, precincts, and other bodies politic or religious societies, to make suitable provision at

their own expense for the institution of the public worship of God and for the support and maintenance of public protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality, in all cases where such provision shall not be made voluntarily: and the people of this commonwealth have also a right to, and do invest their legislature with authority to enjoin upon all the subjects an attendance upon the instructions of the public teachers as aforesaid at stated times and seasons, if there be any on whose instructions they can conscientiously attend:"— and further, that "because a frequent recurrence to the fundamental principles of the constitution, and a constant adherence to those of piety, justice, moderation, temperance, industry, and frugality," (Christian virtues all) "are absolutely necessary to preserve the advantage of liberty, and to maintain a free government, the people ought consequently to have a particular regard to all those principles in the choice of their officers and representatives; and they have a right to require of their lawgivers and magistrates an exact and constant observance of them in the formation and execution of all laws necessary for the good administration of the commonwealth:"— and finally, that every person "chosen governor, lieutenant governor, senator, or representative, and accepting the trust," shall subscribe a solemn profession "that he believes the Christian religion, and has a firm persuasion of its truth." To such

lengths did their dread of being governed by infidels carry them.

Nor was the case a rare one. The constitution of Maryland, made in the first year of our independence, after empowering the legislature "to lay a general tax for the support of the Christian religion;" and declaring "that all persons professing the Christian religion, were equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty," — a boon not promised to other men; wound up with a conclusion against all tests except those specially reserved, and then reserving these three, namely, an oath of office, an oath of allegiance, "and a declaration of a belief in the Christian religion"

By the Pennsylvania constitution of the same memorable year, it was provided, not only that the legislature should consist of "persons most noted for wisdom and virtue" in the commonwealth, but that to these known qualities every member should add this solemn declaration: "I do believe in one God, the creator and governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good and the punisher of the wicked; and I do acknowledge the scriptures of the old and new testament to be given by divine inspiration"

The constitution of Delaware too, another work of the jubilee date, premising "that all men have a natural and inalienable right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences and understandings;" and declaring specially,

"that all persons professing the Christian religion, ought forever to enjoy equal rights and privileges" in the state; proceeded to ordain, that every citizen "who should be chosen a member of either house" of the legislature, or appointed to any other office, should be required to subscribe as follows, viz: "I do profess faith in God the father, and in Jesus Christ his only son, and the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed forevermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the old and new testament to be given by divine inspiration"

The people of North-Carolina, by their constitution dating concurrently with the three last, went also straight to the mark; declaring expressly, "that no person who should deny the being of God, or the truth of the protestant religion, or the divine authority of either the old or new testaments, or who should hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the state, should be capable of holding any office or place of trust in the civil government of the state"

By the constitution of South-Carolina, made in 1778, it was ordained, that at every meeting of the legislature "they should choose by ballot from among themselves, or from the people at large, a governor and commander in chief, a lieutenant governor and privy council, all of the protestant religion;" — "that no person should be eligible to a seat in the senate, unless he be of the pro-

testant religion;" — "that no person should be eligible to sit in the house of representatives, unless he be of the protestant religion;" — in fine, "that the Christian protestant religion be deemed, and was thereby constituted and declared to be, the established religion of the state"

Nor is this all. Provision was made for the incorporation, maintenance and government of such "societies of Christian protestants, either already formed or thereafter to be formed," as might choose to avail themselves of the especial favour of the laws; subject however to the condition, that every such society should first "agree to and subscribe in a book the five following articles:

"First, that there is one eternal God, and a future state of rewards and punishments;

"Second, that God is publicly to be worshipped;

"Third, that the Christian religion is the true religion;

"Fourth, that the holy scriptures of the old and new testament are of divine inspiration, and are the rule of faith and practice;

"Fifth, that it is lawful, and the duty of every man, being thereunto called by those that govern, to bear witness to the truth."

Nor even yet satisfied, the South-Carolina fathers went on to declare, "that to give the state sufficient security for the discharge of the pastoral office, no person should officiate as a minister of

any established church, who should not have been chosen by a majority of the society to which he should minister, nor until the minister chosen should have made and subscribed the following declaration, over and above the aforesaid five articles, viz: that he was determined by God's grace, out of the holy scriptures to instruct the people committed to his charge, and to teach nothing as required of necessity to eternal salvation, but that which he should be persuaded might be concluded and proved from the scriptures; — that he would use both public and private admonitions, as well to the sick as to the whole within his cure, as need should require and occasion be given; — that he would be diligent in prayers and in reading of the holy scriptures, and in such studies as help to the knowledge of the same; — that he would be diligent to frame and fashion his own self and his family according to the doctrine of Christ, and to make both himself and them, as much as in him lay, wholesome examples and patterns of the flock of Christ; — that he would maintain and set forwards, as much as he could, quietness, peace and love among all people, and especially among those committed to his charge,"

Thus spoke Carolina, in the dawn and freshness of the country's liberty, before political sophisters had slandered our religion, or political fashion made us ashamed of it.

And Georgia, though in fewer words, was of the same mind. "Every officer of the state," said the

Georgia constitution of 1777, "shall be liable to be called to account by the house of assembly;" and of all the members of that house of ultimate control it was added, "they shall be of the protestant religion,"

Such were the constitutions originally framed for the particular states.

And now let any man conversant with the rules of legal evidence, or who knows the uses of his own reason, judge for himself concerning the founders of these early state establishments, whether it is probable, that in constructing another work of the same kind and of corresponding date, intended for the same people too, but in a breadth of application not favourable to detail, such men could have been all at once divested of the habits and principles of their lives, and from legislating for every part of the country as Christians, were capable of turning traitors to Christianity when they legislated for the whole.

Let Virginia stand aside. Connecticut and Rhode-Island may also be dispensed with for the present. We have still ten constitutions left to speak for us; and what a testimony do they give. Even New-York, besides providing for religious liberty in general, attests the importance of the gospel ministry, and by confining that ministry to its appointed sphere, makes one of the soundest regulations possible for advancing its great end. New-

Jersey, another competent witness, thinks the piety of good men entitled to a perpetual bond of favour; while New-Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, North-Carolina, South-Carolina and Georgia, eight of the unexceptionable ten, concur in making Christianity an essential part of their systems; some, by providing for its support, and all save one, by making the profession of it an indispensable condition of access to the public service. By their rule, no state is safe but in Christian hands.

And these are the communities by and for which the great pact of the nation was established — a union under which they fondly hoped their local governments were to harmonize forever; but which some modern constructionists would have us take for a league of impiety, such as none but heathen could have devised or acquiesced in. Men who shrank from giving up comparatively small interests to infidel management, are represented as practical infidels themselves, nay as encouragers and pimps of infidelity, in the very act by which, more than by all others, they put at once their own and their children's welfare beyond their immediate control.

But the calumny is too gross. Consistent with themselves, the people of 1787 meant by the federal arrangement nothing but a new and larger organization of government on principles already familiar to the country. The state governments

were not broad enough for national purposes, and the old confederation was deficient in central power: it was just to remedy these two defects, not of principle, but of distributive adjustment, that the public mind addressed itself: innovation, to any other end, was never thought of; least of all, in reference to religion, a thing utterly apart from the whole design. So that admitting the constitution framed on that occasion does not in terms proclaim itself a Christian document, what then? Does it proclaim itself unchristian? for if it is merely silent in the matter, law and reason both tell us that its religious character is to be looked for by interpretation, among the people that fashioned it; a people, Christian by profession and by genealogy; what is more, by deeds of fundamental legislation that cannot deceive.

CHAPTER V.

PRESENT CHARACTER OF THE STATE SYSTEMS.

AND now, let me ask, does the argument end here? Can it be brought no further down? Are we not in some fair sense of terms, a Christian people still?

There is encouragement in knowing that we still pretend to be so. However men may think or speak concerning personal religion, Christianity is at least considered reputable as a general attribute of the nation. Our pride, if nothing else, would claim it for the public fame.

Nor is the pretension groundless, as a glance at the subsisting legal economy of the states will show.

Even the constitutional law of the state governments, though many changes have been made in it, continues in the main favourable. Of the states that once possessed establishments of religion,

most are now without them; for the reason probably that the tendency of such establishments has of late become better understood, as prejudicial to religion itself, no less than to other interests. Two of the states (Maryland and North-Carolina) remain steadfast, I believe, to this hour, in holding Christians alone eligible to public trusts; and there is scarce an instance among them where Christianity has not more or less of constitutional protection. The advantages of public worship and of general piety are widely recognised and sought to be preserved in this manner.

In one particular deserving special notice, all our constitutions are exactly alike in their religious tenor — they all guarantee the rights of conscience.

But to whom? Will it be said that because the guaranty is general in its terms, the liberty secured by it is not strictly religious, but belongs to everybody? to Christians indeed, but at the same time and in equal measure, to the unbeliever and the licentious? Is the benefit of such a guaranty to be claimed for men having no imaginable interest in its subject matter? General as the terms are, there must be one implied reserve. Persons possessing no rights of the description which the guaranty applies to; none that can be the better or the worse, the more or less secure, for having or wanting the protection it offers; in a word, no

rights of conscience practically understood; come not, I should think, within its scope, and can with no propriety be numbered among its objects.

Conscience respects essentially the divine government. Rights or liberties of conscience, have no meaning but in this relation. They are religious things; and it is only to religious beings they can be said to appertain. Men of the world may have honour, may have policy; but these are not conscientious principles, nor can entitle any one to the securities that have been provided, no matter how broadly, for the freedom of conscientious action. Something more is requisite. There must be some regard for another law than that of worldly interest or human opinion; a law that goes to the heart; that tries the reins of the inner man, while it points to issues larger than earthly destinies, more lasting than time. Such a law there is, and conscience is the principle that has to do with it. Conscience is a peculiar principle. To protect its rights is to protect the use of them: they are practical rights: and what I pray does the use of them consist in, if not in active religion? worshipping God, doing what he commands, and forwarding the design of his kingdom? To enjoy liberty of conscience is to believe, towards him, as we have evidence, and to practice freely as we believe. Is this a boon for unbelievers? Unbelief is not to be disturbed in its retirement, its

private haunts; but having no religious functions to discharge, no worship to render, no behests of heaven to heed, no kindly purposes of heaven's empire to subserve — in short, no conscience, and no rights of conscience to be cared for by the laws; what legal passport can it claim for appearing abroad, or ever going forth of its den? Why should such a privilege be promised it? Why should unbelief be anticipated by the organic laws with fostering provisions? Has it a character deserving this? is it known to the world as a benefactor? Why place bad principles on a footing with the best? Is liberty of conscience to be confounded with the license that acts against conscience? Do we hold our religious freedom in common with knaves and profligates? and on the same warrant too? Can they challenge the constitutions of the land as well as we? Absurd. The constitutions of the land, so far as religion or conscience is concerned, are made for us, not them; in furtherance of our liberties, not theirs. They are Christian constitutions.

And with these elements, still found in the essential structure of the state governments, the municipal order of the country is everywhere in full accordance.

Take for instance the statute regulations that are universal among us, for enforcing a due observance of the Christian sabbath. Whence come these

regulations? From the light of nature? from the arts of civilization? from the discoveries of science? Has human wisdom invented them? Has philosophy found out the glorious secret of a day in seven to the Lord? Who does not see, that our lawmakers have taken their lesson here from revelation? and whether consciously or not, have legislated for us distinctly as a Christian people?

Take another instance. There is not a state perhaps in the union—I am sure there are not many, for I have searched far without finding one — in which penalties are not established by law against profane swearing. And again I ask, why is this, if not because it is found written, "thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain?" What is it to swear profanely? Is it to insult the deities of Hindostan or of ancient Rome? to speak lightly of Vishnoo or of Jupiter-tonans? Or is it rather, to do irreverence to the Christian's God? Is there any form of the offence but this, that could possibly attract the notice of the laws in question? and if none, then what are those laws but solemn recognitions of the same God as the God of the land, and of the volume that reveals him, as the acknowledged text book of the principles that govern it?

Illustrations of like bearing might be multiplied from various statutory topics; such as the religious peace of society, the decorums that relate to public

worship, church incorporations, the title and disposal of church property, the clerical office, the marriage contract and relation, divorce, charities public and private, and several others; all of which are treated of in our statute-books in a manner to which heathen institutions furnish no parallel or resemblance, and which the bible alone can explain or account for. Nor are our statutes to be regarded as showing merely what have happened to be the sentiments of a few law-making agents of the people; for the people themselves are constantly succeeding each other in the functions of that agency, to an extent warranting the as