ARTICLE IX.- EDUCATION.

SECTION 1. Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

Ratified 1889.

Religious liberty.

Rights to be enforced.

Illustration of conferring political rewards for embracing Christianity.

Treatment of unbelievers of principle.

Adams's exclamation.

NORTH DAKOTA.

ARTICLE 1.- DECLARATION OF RIGHTS.

SECTION 4. The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall be forever guaranteed in this State, and no person shall be rendered incompetent to be a witness or juror on account of his opinion on matters of religious belief; but the liberty of conscience hereby secured shall not be so construed as to excuse acts of licentiousness, or justify practices inconsistent with the peace or safety of this State.

SECTION 24. To guard against transgressions of the high powers which we have delegated, we declare that everything in this article is excepted out of the general powers of government, and shall forever remain inviolate.

but an atheist, never unless he compromises his manhood by becoming a hypocrite and perjurer by swearing that he believes in God (when he does not), and then he is rewarded by having all disqualifications removed! This contemptible way of gaining accessions to Christianity from the servile classes has ever been a characteristic of state religion; in fact, is a necessary

consequence of its existence. Gibbon, in relating how state Christianity first obtained the ascendancy in the Roman empire, says:

"The exact balance of the two religions [paganism and Christianity] continued but a moment; and the piercing eye of ambition and avarice soon discovered that the profession of Christianity might contribute to the interest of the present as well as of a future life. The hopes of wealth and honors, the example of an emperor, his exhortations, his irresistible smiles, diffused conviction among the venal and obsequious crowds which usually fill the apartments of a palace. The cities which signalized a forward zeal by the voluntary destruction of their temples, were distinguished by municipal privileges, and rewarded with popular donatives; and the new capital of the East gloried in the singular advantage that Constantinople was never profaned by the worship of idols. As the lower ranks of society are governed by imitation, the conversion of those who possessed any eminence of birth, of power, or of riches, was soon followed by dependent multitudes. The salvation of the common people was purchased at an easy rate, if it be true that, in one year, twelve thousand men were baptized at Rome, besides a proportionable number of women and children, and that a white garment, with twenty pieces of gold, had been promised by the emperor to every convert."

The unbeliever, however, who will not compromise principle for any reward, not even the highest office in the land, is rewarded by being placed politically beneath the level of hypocrites and the basest felons! No wonder that John Adams wrote to Jefferson that "we think ourselves possessed, or at least we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases," and then said, " yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact! " Mr. John Stuart Mill, in discoursing on this subject, in his essay Liberty," writes as follows:

"On

ARTICLE VIII. EDUCATION.

SECTION 152. All colleges, universities, and other educational institutions, for the support of which lands have been granted to this State, or which are supported by a public tax, shall remain under the absolute and exclusive control of the State. No money raised for the support of the public schools of the State shall be appropriated to or used for the support of any sectarian school.

School funds not to be used

for sectarian purposes.

An apt ap

Penalties

for expres sion of opinion.

American

cases.

Unjust legal doctrine.

"It will be said that we do not now put to death the introducers of new opinions; we are not like our fathers who slew the prophets, we even build sepulchers to them. It is true we no longer put heretics to death; plication of and the amount of penal infliction which modern feeling would probably scripture. tolerate, even against the most obnoxious opinions, is not sufficient to extirpate them. But let us not flatter ourselves that we are yet free from the stain even of legal persecution. Penalties for opinion, or at least for its expression, still exist by law; and their enforcement is not, even in these times, so unexampled as to make it at all incredible that they may some day be revived in full force. In the year 1857, at the summer assizes of the county of Cornwall, an unfortunate man said to be of unexceptionable conduct in all relations of life, was sentenced to twenty-one months' imprisonment for uttering, and writing on a gate, some offensive words concerning Christianity. [A number of instances also might be cited in the United States, notably, People v. Ruggles, 8 Johnson (New York), 290; State v. Chandler, 2 Harrington (Delaware), 553; Updegraph v. Commonwealth, 11 Sergeant and Rawle (Pennsylvania), 394; and Commonwealth v. Kneeland, 20 Pickering (Massachusetts), 206.] Within a month of the same time, at the Old Bailey, two persons, on two separate occasions, were rejected as jurymen, and one of them grossly insulted by the judge and by one of the counsel, because they honestly declared that they had no theological belief; and a third, a foreigner, for the same reason was denied justice against a thief. This refusal of redress took place in virtue of the legal doctrine that no person can be allowed to give evidence in a court of justice, who does not profess belief in a God (any god is sufficient) and in a future state; which is equivalent to declaring such persons to be outlaws, excluded from the protection of the tribunals; who may not only be robbed or assaulted with impunity, if no one but themselves, or persons of similar opinions, be present, but any one else may be robbed or assaulted with impunity, if the proof of the fact depends on their evidence. The assumption on which this is grounded, is that the oath is worthless, of a person who does not believe in a future state; a proposition which betokens much ignorance of history in those who assent to it (since it is historically true that a large proportion of infidels in all ages have been persons of distinguished integrity and honor); and would be maintained by no one who had the smallest conception of how many of the persons in greatest repute with the world, both for virtues and attainments, are well known, at least to their intimates, to be unbelievers. The rule, besides, is suicidal, and cuts away its own foundation. Under pretense that atheists must be liars, it admits the testimony of all atheists who are willing to lie, and rejects only those who brave the obloquy of publicly confessing a detested creed rather than affirm a falsehood. A rule thus self-convicted of absurdity so far as regards its professed purpose, can be kept in force only as a badge of hatred, a relic of persecution a persecution, too, having the peculiarity that the qualification for undergoing it, is the being clearly proved not to deserve it. The rule and the theory it implies, are hardly less insulting to believers than to in- of hatred. fidels. For if he who does not believe in the future state necessarily lies, it follows that they who do believe are only prevented from lying, if pre- ing rule. vented they are, by the fear of hell. We will not do the authors and abettors of the rule the injury of supposing that the conception which they have formed of Christian virtue is drawn from their own consciousness,

Characteristic of infidels.

A contradictory doc

trine.

A badge

An insult

Perfect "toleration" secured.

Ratified 1851.

Amended 1906.

Religious

rights.

Religious tests prohibited.

Funds held in trust.

Relics of persecution.

Present dangers.

Modern bigotry.

Religious

liberty.

ARTICLE XVI. COMPACT WITH THE UNITED STATES.

SECTION 203. The following article shall be irrevocable without the consent of the United States and the people of this State:

First, perfect toleration of religious sentiment shall be secured, and no inhabitant of this State shall ever be molested in person or property on account of his or her mode of religious worship.

OHIO.

ARTICLE 1.- BILL OF RIGHTS.

SECTION 7. All men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience. No person shall be compelled to attend, erect, or support any place of worship, or maintain any form of worship, against his consent, and no preference shall be given by law to any religious society, nor shall any interference with the rights of conscience be permitted. No religious test shall be required as a qualification for office, nor shall any person be incompetent to be a witness on account of his religious belief; but nothing herein shall be construed to dispense with oaths and affirmations. Religion, morality, and knowledge, however, being essential to good government, it shall be the duty of the General Assembly to pass suitable laws to protect every religious denomination in the peaceable enjoyment of its own mode of public worship, and to encourage schools and the means of instruction.

ARTICLE VI.- EDUCATION.

SECTION 1. The principal of all funds arising from the sale or other disposition of lands or other property, granted or intrusted to this State for educational and religious purposes, shall forever be preserved inviolate and undiminished; and the income arising therefrom

"These, indeed, are but rags and remnants of persecution, and may be thought to be not so much an indication of the wish to persecute, as an example of that very frequent infirmity of English minds, which makes them take a preposterous pleasure in the assertion of a bad principle, when they are no longer bad enough to desire to carry it really into practice. But unhappily there is no security in the state of the public mind, that the suspension of worse forms of legal persecution, which has lasted for about the space of a generation, will continue. In this age the quiet surface of routine is as often ruffled by attempts to resuscitate past evils, as to introduce new benefits. What is boasted of at the present time as the revival of religion, is always, in narrow and uncultivated minds, at least as much the revival of bigotry; and where there is the strong, permanent leaven of intolerance in the feelings of a people, which at all times abides in the middle classes of this country, it needs but little to provoke them into actively persecuting those whom they have never ceased to think proper objects of persecution."

Religious liberty must be absolute; for the same logic that would give the state the power to require belief in God, would give it the power to require belief in any other doctrine to which the majority might take a fancy.

shall be faithfully applied to the specific objects of the original grants or appropriations.

SECTION 2. The General Assembly shall make such provisions, by taxation or otherwise, as, with the interest arising from the school trust fund, will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the State; but no religious or other sect or sects shall ever have any exclusive right to or control of any part of the school funds of this State.

OKLAHOMA.

School funds not to be under sectarian

control.

Ratified Sept. 17, 1907.

ARTICLE 1.- FEDERAL RELATIONS.

SECTION 2. Perfect toleration of religious sentiment shall be secured, and no inhabitant of the State shall ever be molested in person or property on account of his or her mode of religious worship; and no religious test shall be required for the exercise of civil or political rights.

Perfect "toleration" guaranteed. Religious test forbidden.

ARTICLE II. BILL OF RIGHTS.

SECTION 5. No public money or property shall ever be appropriated, applied, donated, or used, directly or indirectly, for the use, benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion, or for the use, benefit, or support of any priest, preacher, minister, or other religious teacher or dignitary, or sectarian institution as such.

Public

funds not to

be used for sectarian purposes.

OREGON.

Ratified Nov. 9, 1857.

ARTICLE 1.- BILL OF RIGHTS.

SECTION 2. All men shall be secured in their natural right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own con

sciences.

SECTION 3. No law shall, in any case whatever, control the free exercise and enjoyment of religious opinions, or interfere with the rights of conscience.

Religious

SECTION 4. No religious test shall be required as a qualification test profor any office of trust or profit.

SECTION 5. No money shall be drawn from the treasury for the benefit of any religious or theological institution, nor shall any money be appropriated for the payment of any religious service, in either house of the Legislative Assembly.

SECTION 6. No person shall be rendered incompetent as a witness or juror in consequence of his opinions on matters of religion, nor be questioned in any court of justice touching his religious belief to affect the weight of his testimony.

hibited.

Public funds not to

be used for sectarian

uses.

Adminis tration of

oaths.

Class leg. islation for. bidden.

Ratified

Dec. 16, 1873.

Religious liberty.

Religious disability.

School funds not to

go to any

sectarian

school.

SECTION 7. The mode of administering an oath or affirmation shall be such as may be most consistent with, and binding upon, the conscience of the person to whom such oath or affirmation may be administered.

SECTION 21. No law shall be passed granting to any citizen or class of citizens privileges or immunities which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens.

PENNSYLVANIA.

ARTICLE 1. DECLARATION OF RIGHTS.

SECTION 3. All men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences; no man can of right be compelled to attend, erect, or support any place of worship, or to maintain any ministry, against his consent; no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience, and no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious establishments or modes of worship. SECTION 4. No person who acknowledges the being of a God and a future state of rewards and punishments shall, on account of his religious sentiments, be disqualified to hold any office or place of trust or profit under this commonwealth.

ARTICLE X.- EDUCATION.

SECTION 2. No money raised for the support of the public schools of the commonwealth shall be appropriated to or used for the support of any sectarian school.

Separation of church

and state to be absolute.

PHILIPPINES.

[From Public Laws Passed by the Philippine Commission," volume i, 1903.] PRESIDENT'S INSTRUCTION TO THE COMMISSION.

(Signed by William McKinley.)

That no form of religion and no minister of religion shall be forced upon any community or upon any citizen of the islands; that, upon the other hand, no minister of religion shall be interfered with or molested in following his calling, and that the separation between state and church shall be real, entire, and absolute.

The main body of the laws which regulate the rights and obligations of the people should be maintained with as little interference as possible. Changes made should be mainly in procedure and in the criminal laws to secure speedy and impartial trials, and at the same time effective administration and respect for individual rights.