CHAPTER XXII.

VIRGINIA CONTINUed.

Po

RELIGION is the vital principle, the primum mobile, the test of the true worth and greatness, both of nations and individuals; whatever may be the characteristic stamp or feature of their religion, such will be the characteristic stamp or feature of their character and government. pery and Episcopacy are as incompatible with a republican government, as the religion of Methodism and Quakerism are with absolute monarchy. Impressed with the truth of this remark, I have endeavoured to illustrate the true stamp of the religious character of the several colonies of America, by unfolding that religious character which they severally brought out from Europe and planted as the basis of the rising colony; whenever this has been doubtful, I have passed it over in silence. In the history of the early settlement of Virginia, it appears that a rigid Episcopacy, interwoven with the rigid principles of monarchy, was the stamp of the religion of this colony. It may be of some use in this place, to illustrate more fully the religious character of Virginia, down to the period of the American revolution, by the following extract from Mr. Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, page 218.

"The first settlers in this country [colony] were emigrants from England, of the English church, just at a point of time when it was flushed with complete victory over the religious of all other persuasions.* Possessed, as they became, of the powers of making, administering, and executing the laws, they shewed equal intolerance in this country, with their Presbyterian brethren, who had emigrated to the northern

See the reigns of Queen Elizabeth, and James I. in the incipient stages of this work.

had been the most numerous; and by this majority, they now were able to fix the seat of government where they chose, which was at Bath; in order to correct this evil, which the crown had hitherto ordered to be corrected, but which order was not regarded, the governor managed so as to prorogue the assembly, and then call a meeting of the assembly, at such time and place as would render it difficult for the eastern counties, whose representation was too numerous, to attend; this plan succeeded, and the house at this session reduced these counties from the number of five, to the number of two representatives each, agreeable to the standard of the other counties, and thus fixed the seat of government. Great heat arose out of this finesse, the party aggrieved carried their complaints to the king; the governor explained to his majesty, and finally the change went into future operation, without any thing further or more serious arising out of it. This question was soon lost in a question of land-jobbing, in which Henry M'Culloch, and others, attempted to swindle his majesty out of about sixty thousand acres of land, and finally succeeded.

In 1744, the defence of the sea-coast claimed the attention of the assembly; the war, then commenced between England and Spain, led them to realise their defenceless situation. At the mouth of Clarendon River, stood Fort Johnson, and three other forts had been erected upon the coast, yet a Spanish privateer landed at Brunswick, and began to plunder the town. Alarmed for their safety, they rallied a force, and commenced so brisk an attack upon the privateer, that she was blown up and destroyed, and the town relieved.

declared in the bill of rights, and guarding it by legislative sanctions, they passed over that which asserted our religious rights, leaving them as they found them. The same convention, however, when they met as a member of the General Assembly in October, 1776, repealed all acts of parliament which had rendered criminal the maintaining any opinions in matters of religion, the forbearing to repair to church, and the exercising any mode of worship; and suspended the laws giving salaries to the clergy, which suspension was made perpetual in October, 1779. Statutory oppressions in religion being thus wiped away, we remain at present under those only imposed by the common law, or by our own acts of assembly. At the common law, heresy was a capital offence, punishable by burning. Its definition was left to the Ecclesiastical judges, before whom the conviction was, till the statute of the 1 Eliz. ch. 1. circumscribed it by declaring, that nothing should be deemed heresy, but what had been so determined by authority of the canonical scriptures, or by one of the four first general councils, or by other council having for the grounds of their declaration the express and plain words of the scriptures. Heresy, thus circumscribed, being an offence at the common law, our act of assembly of October, 1777, ch. 17. gives cognizance of it to the general court, by declaring, that the jurisdiction of that court shall be general in all matters at the common law. The execution is by the writ De hæretico comburendo. By our own act of assembly of 1705, ch. 30. if a person brought up in the christian religion denies the being of a God, or the Trinity, or asserts there are more gods than one, or denies the Christian religion to be true, or the scriptures to be of divine authority, he is punishable on the first offence by incapacity to hold any office or employment, ecclesiastical, civil, or military; on the second, by disability to sue, to take any gift, or legacy, to be guardian, executor, or administrator,

The rights of conscience not submit. We are anThe legitimate powers of

and by three years imprisonment without bail. A father's right to the custody of his own children being founded in law on his right of guardianship, this being taken away, they may of course be severed from him, and put by the authority of the court, into more orthodox hands. This is a summary view of that religious slavery, under which a people have been willing to remain, who have lavished their lives and fortunes for the establishment of their civil freedom. *The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have no authority over such natural rights, only as we have submitted to them. we never submitted, we could swerable for them to our God. government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say, there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. If it be said, his testimony in a court of justice cannot be relied on, reject it then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint may make him worse by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer man. It may fix him, obstinately in his errors, but will not cure them. Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion, by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free enquiry, christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free enquiry been indulged at the æra of the reformation, the corruptions of christianity could not have been purged away. If it be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged.

"Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in just such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France, the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potatoe as an article of food. Government is just as infallible too, when it fixes systems in physics. Galileo was sent to the inquisition for affirming that the earth was a sphere; the government had declared it to be as flat as a trencher, and Galileo was obliged to abjure his error. This error however at length prevailed, the earth became a globe, and Descartes declared it was whirled round its axis by a vortex. The government in which he lived was wise enough to see that this was no question of civil jurisdiction, or we should all have been involved by authority in vortices. In fact the vortices have been exploded, and the Newtonian principle of gravitation is now more firmly established, on the basis of reason, than it would be, were the government to step in and make it an article of necessary faith. Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It is error alone which needs the support of government; truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion; whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion so desiraable? No more than of face and statue. Introduce the bed of Procrustes then, and there is danger that the large men may beat the small, make us all of a size, by lopping the former, and stretching the latter. Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion; the several sects perform the office of a censor morum, (censors) over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of chistianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one step towards uniformity. What has