end of their continent, from the rivers of Maine and the hills of New Hampshire to the mountain valleys of Tennessee and the borders of Georgia, one voice called to the other, that there should be no connection of the church with the state, no establishment of any one form of religion by the civil power; that "all men have a natural and unalienable right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences and understandings." With this great idea the colonies had travailed for a century and a half; and now, not as revolutionary, not as destructive, but simply as giving utterance to the thought of the nation, the states stood up in succession, in the presence of one another and before God and the world, to bear their witness in favor of restoring independence to conscience and the mind.

In this first promulgation by states of the "creation-right" of mental freedom, some survivals of the old system clung round the new; but the victory was gained for the collective American people. The declaration of independence rested on "the laws of nature and of nature's God;" in the separate American constitutions, New York, the happy daughter of the ancient Netherlands, true to her lineage, did, "in the name of" her "good people, ordain, determine, and declare the free exercise of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, to all mankind;" for the men of this new commonwealth felt themselves "required, by the benevolent principles of national liberty, not only to expel civil tyranny, but to guard against that spiritual oppression and intolerance wherewith the bigotry and ambition of weak and wicked princes have scourged mankind." Independent New York with even justice secured to the Catholic equal liberty of worship and equal civil franchises, and almost alone had no religious test for office. Henceforth no man on her soil was to suffer political disfranchisement for his creed.

The liberality of New York was wide as the world and as the human race. History must ever declare that at the moment of her assertion of liberty she placed no constitutional disqualification on the free black. Even the emancipated slave gained with freedom equality before the constitution and the law. New York placed restrictions on the suffrage and on eli

gibility to office; but those restrictions applied alike to all. The alien before naturalization was required to renounce allegiance to foreign powers, alike ecclesiastical or civil.

The establishment of liberty of conscience, which brought with it liberty of speech and of the press, was, in the several states, the fruit not of philosophy, but of the love of Protestantism for "the open book." Had the Americans wanted faith, they could have founded nothing. Let not the philosopher hear with scorn that at least seven of their constitutions established some sort of religious test as a qualification for office. Maryland and Massachusetts required "belief in the Christian religion;" South Carolina and Georgia, in "the Protestant religion;" North Carolina, "in God, the Protestant religion, and the divine authority of the Old and of the New Testament;" Pennsylvania, “a belief in God, the creator and governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good and punisher of the wicked," with a further acknowledging "the scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration;" Delaware, a profession of "faith in God the Father, Jesus Christ his only Son, and the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore."

These restrictions were but incidental reminiscences of ancient usages and dearly cherished creeds, not vital elements of the constitutions; and they were opposed to the bent of the American mind. Joseph Hawley of Massachusetts, having been chosen a senator at the first election under its constitution, refused to take his seat, because he would not suffer the state or any one else outside of the village church of which he was a member to inquire into his belief. Discussions ensued, chiefly on the full enfranchisement of the Catholic and of the Jew; and the disfranchisements were eliminated almost as soon as their inconvenience arrested attention. At first the Jew was eligible to office only in Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, and Virginia; the Catholic, in those states, and in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and perhaps in Connecticut. But from the beginning the church no longer formed a part of the state; and religion, ceasing to be a servant of the government or an instrument of dominion, became a life in the soul. Public worship was voluntarily sustained.

Nowhere was persecution for religious opinion so nearly at an end as in America, and nowhere was there so religious a people.

There were not wanting those who cast a lingering look on the care of the state for public worship. The conservative convention of Maryland declared that "the legislature may in their discretion lay a general and equal tax for the support of the Christain religion, leaving to each individual the appointing the money collected from him to the support of any particular place of public worship or minister;" but the power granted was never exercised. For a time Massachusetts required of towns or religious societies "the support of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality" of their own election; but as each man chose his own religious society, the requisition had no effect in large towns. In Connecticut, the Puritan worship was still closely interwoven with the state, and had moulded the manners, habits, and faith of the people; but the complete disentanglement was gradually brought about by inevitable processes of legislation.

Where particular churches had received gifts or inheritances, their right to them was respected. In Maryland and South Carolina, the churches, lands, and property that had belonged to the church of England were secured to that church in its new form; in Virginia, where the church of England had been established as a public institution, the disposition of its glebes was assumed by the legislature; and, as all denominations had contributed to their acquisition, they came to be considered as the property of the state. Tithes were nowhere continued; and the rule prevailed that "no man could be compelled to maintain any ministry contrary to his own free will and consent." South Carolina, in her legislation on religion, attempted to separate herself from the system of the other states; she alone appointed a test for the voter, and made this declaration: "The Christian Protestant religion is hereby constituted and declared to be the established religion of this state." But the condition of society was stronger than the constitution, and this declaration proved but the shadow of a system that was vanishing. In 1778, the test oath and the partaking of the communion according to the forms of the Epis

copal church ceased to be required as conditions for holding office.

The separation of the church and the state by the estab lishment of religious equality was followed by the wonderful result that it was approved of everywhere, always, and by all. The old Anglican church, which became known as the Protesttant Episcopal, wished to preserve its endowments and might complain of their impairment; but it preferred ever after to take care of itself, and was glad to share in that equality which dispelled the dread of episcopal tyranny, and left it free to perfect its organization according to its own desires. The Roman Catholic eagerly accepted in America his place as an equal with Protestants, and found contentment and hope in his new relations. The rigid Presbyterians in America supported religious freedom; true to the spirit of the great English dissenter who hated all laws

To stretch the conscience, and to bind
The native freedom of the mind.

In Virginia, where alone there was an arduous struggle in the legislature, the presbytery of Hanover demanded the disestablishment of the Anglican church and the civil equality of every denomination; it was supported by the voices of Baptists and Quakers and all the sects that had sprung from the people; and, after a contest of eight weeks, the measure was carried, by the activity of Jefferson, in an assembly of which the majority were Protestant Episcopalians. Nor was this demand by Presbyterians for equality confined to Virginia, where they were in a minority; it was from Witherspoon of New Jersey that Madison imbibed the lesson of perfect freedom in matters of conscience. When the constitution of that state was framed by a convention composed chiefly of Presbyterians, they established perfect liberty of conscience, without the blemish of a test. Free-thinkers might have been content with toleration, but religious conviction would accept nothing less than equality. The more profound was faith, the more it scorned to admit a connection with the state; for, such a connection being inherently vicious, the state might more readily form an alliance with error than with truth, with despotism over mind than with freedom. The determination to leave truth to her

own strength, and religious worship to the conscience and voluntary act of the worshipper, was the natural outflow of religious feeling.

The constitution of Georgia declared that "estates shall not be entailed, and, when a person dies intestate, his or her estate shall be divided equally among the children." The same principle prevailed essentially in other states, in conformity to their laws and their manners. But in Virginia a system of entails, enforced with a rigor unknown in the old country, had tended to make the possession of great estates, especially to the east of the Blue Ridge, the privilege of the first-born. In England the courts of law permitted entails to be docked by fine and recovery; in 1705, Virginia prohibited all such innovations, and the tenure could be changed by nothing less than a special statute. In 1727 it was further enacted that slaves might be attached to the soil, and be entailed with it. These measures riveted a hereditary aristocracy, founded not on learning or talent or moral worth or public service, but on the possession of land and slaves. It was to perfect the republican institutions of Virginia by breaking down this aristocracy that Jefferson was summoned from the national congress to the assembly of his native state. On the twelfth of October 1776, he obtained leave to bring in a bill for the abolishment of entails; and, against the opposition of Edmund Pendleton who was no friend to innovations, all donees in tail, by the act of this first republican legislature of Virginia, were vested with the absolute dominion of the property entailed.

To complete the reform, it was necessary to change the rules of descent, so that the lands of an intestate might be divided equally among his representatives; and this was effected through a committee of which Jefferson, Pendleton, and Wythe were the active members, and which was charged with the revision of the common law, the British statutes still valid in the state, and the criminal statutes of Virginia. The new law of descent was the work of Jefferson; and the candid historian of Virginia approves the graceful symmetry of the act which abolished primogeniture, and directed property into "the channels which the head and heart of every sane man would be prone to choose."