The sessions were secret. The difficulties were serious: jealousies between the larger and smaller, the Northern and Southern States; differences of opinioncon cerning the continuation or prohibition of the African slave-trade; the nature and extent of the executive, legislative, and judicial departments of the general government; and especially the power of the United States in relation to the separate States. At times, conciliation of the conflicting interests seemed hopeless, and it was during one of those periods of gloom that Dr. Franklin, then eighty-one years of age, read his remarkable speech in advocacy of seeking wisdom from the Almighty hearer of prayer.

But after four months of patient deliberation and mutual concession, the Constitution was matured and duly signed by all the delegates. It was by no means entirely new, but borrowed wisdom from the experience of the past as laid down in British and American documents of tried statesmanship and legislation; and it is all the better for it. With this qualification we may accept the eulogy of W. E. Gladstone, one of the most learned of English statesmen, who calls the American Constitution "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." Cardinal Gibbons, of Baltimore, in accepting the invitation to attend the centennial celebration of the Constitution at Philadelphia, September, 1887, says: "The Constitution of the United States is worthy of being written in

1

appeared in Washington, 1830. The fifth volume contains Madison's diary of the debates in the Federal Convention, of which he was the most regular attendant and one of the most influential members. "The Madison Papers," purchased by order of Congress after his death, in his eighty-fifth year (June 28, 1836), were first published by Henry D. Gilpin, Washington, 1840, in 3 vols. The Debates of the Federal Convention are contained in vols. II. and III., and the passage quoted above is in vol. II., p. 718 sq., at the close of his introduction to the Debates.

1

1 Or, as he more recently expressed it: "The most remarkable work known to the modern times to have been produced by human intellect at a single stroke, so to speak, in its application to political affairs." See his letter of July 20, 1887, declining, for good reasons, a most flattering invitation to attend the centennial celebration of the Constitution, as the guest of the American people. And yet Gladstone doubted the success of the Union in the civil war.

1

letters of gold. It is a charter by which the liberties of sixty millions of people are secured, and by which, under Providence, the temporal happiness of countless millions yet unborn will be perpetuated." Justice Miller, in his memorial oration (September 17, 1887), finds the chief characteristic of the Constitution in this: That "it is the first successful attempt in the history of the world to lay the deep and broad foundations of a government for millions of people and an unlimited territory in a single written instrument, framed and adopted in one great national effort. This instrument comes nearer than any of political origin to Rousseau's idea of a society founded on a social contract. In its formation, States and individuals, in the possession of equal rights the rights of human nature common to all,—met together and deliberately agreed to give up certain of those rights to government for the better security of others; and that there might be no mistake about this agreement it was reduced to writing, with all the solemnities which give sanction to the pledges of mankind."

ABOLITION OF RELIGIOUS TESTS.

Two provisions in this Constitution bear on the question of religion, and secure its freedom and independence.

1. The Constitution declares, in Article VI., § 3, that all senators and representatives of the United States, and the members of the several State legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several States, "shall be bound, by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution: but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.'

This is negative, and excludes the establishment of any particular church or denomination as the national religion.

1 Cardinal Gibbons made the concluding, Bishop Potter, of New York, the opening prayer at the celebration of September 17, 1887.

? I give the text and punctuation as in the original copy in the Department of State at Washington. Elliot's "Debates," I. 5.

It secures the freedom and independence of the State from ecclesiastical domination and interference.

The clause was proposed by Charles Pinckney, of South Carolina. Roger Sherman "thought it unnecessary, the prevailing liberality being a sufficient security against such tests." Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, and General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina approved the motion, whereupon "the motion was agreed to, nem. con., and then the whole article. North Carolina only, no; and Maryland divided." The clause, however, as we shall see, met with considerable objection afterwards in Massachusetts and North Carolina.

1

Religious tests, whether of dogma or worship, were used by despotic governments, especially in England under the Stuarts, as means of excluding certain classes of persons, otherwise qualified, from public offices and their emoluments. Blackstone defends such tests as means of selfpreservation, but is opposed to prosecution.' They were enforced in all American colonies, except in Rhode Island. The early settlers came from Europe to seek freedom for themselves, and then inconsistently denied it to others, from fear of losing the monopoly. In Massachusetts, Congregationalists had exclusive control; in Virginia the Church of England, for a century and a half. Even in the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania toleration was limited by the Toleration Act of 1689, contrary to the design of William Penn; and all legislators, judges, and public officers had to declare and

1 This is the information on the subject given by Madison in the “Debates of the Federal Convention," in the fifth and last vol. of Elliot's " Debates," p. 498. In the official "Journal of the Federal Convention," Elliot, vol. I., p. 277, it is simply stated that the clause, "but no religious test," etc., passed unanimously in the affirmative.

266

Commentaries on the Laws of England,” Book IV. 59 and 439. Blackstone advocates limited toleration, and says (IV. 52): "Certainly our ancestors were mistaken in their plans of compulsion and intolerance. The sin of schism, as such, is by no means the object of temporal coercion and punishThe magistrate is bound to protect the established church.

ment.

But, this point being once secured, all persecution for diversity of opinions, however ridiculous or absurd they may be, is contrary to every principle of sound policy and civil freedom."

subscribe their disbelief in transubstantiation, the adoration of the Virgin Mary and other saints, and the sacrifice of the Romish mass, as "superstitious and idolatrous," and their belief in the Holy Trinity and the divine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. This test was in force from 1703 till the time of the Revolution, when, through the influence of Benjamin Franklin, it was removed from the State Constitution framed by the Convention of 1776. In Rhode Island, the Roman Catholics were deprived for a time of the right of voting, but this disqualification was no part of the original colonial charter, and is inconsistent with "the soul-liberty" of Roger Williams, the founder of that State.

The framers of the Federal Constitution, remembering the persecution of dissenters and nonconformists in the mother country and in several American colonies, cut the poisonous tree of persecution by the root, and substituted for specific religious tests a simple oath or solemn affirmation.

The discontent with state-churchism and its injustice toward dissenting convictions was one of the remote causes of the American Revolution.

THE FIRST AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION.

2. More important than this clause is the first amendment, which may be called the Magna Charta of religious freedom in the United States.1

The first amendment provides that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

This amendment is positive and protective, and consti

1 It is a serious defect of the two best histories of the American Constitution by George Ticknor Curtis (New York, Harper & Bro., 1854 and 1858, 2 vols.), and by George Bancroft (New York, D. Appleton & Co., third ed., 1883, 2 vols.), that they do not embrace a history of the amendments, which for our purpose is the most important.

tutes a bill of rights. It prevents not only the establishment of a particular church, as the exclusive state-religion, but it expressly guarantees at the same time to all the churches the full liberty of religion in its public exercise, and forbids Congress ever to abridge this liberty. Religious liberty is regarded as one of the fundamental and inalienable rights of an American citizen, and is associated with the liberty of speech and of the press, the right of peaceable assembly and of petition.

A large number of the most valuable provisions of the Magna Charta, which the clergy, the barons, and freemen of England wrung from the despotism of King John in 1215, and of the Bill of Rights, which was enacted against the despotism of the Stuarts in 1688, consist of the solemn recognitions of limitations upon the power of the Crown and the power of Parliament, such as the writ of habeas corpus, the right of trial by jury, the protection of life, liberty, and property from arbitrary spoliation, the right of petition, the right to bear arms, freedom of commerce. Several of these provisions are literally inserted among the amendments to our Constitution. But it was left for America to abolish forever the tyranny of a state-religion, and to secure the most sacred of all rights and liberties to all her citizens-the liberty of religion and the free exercise thereof.

The United States furnishes the first example in history of a government deliberately depriving itself of all legislative control over religion, which was justly regarded by all older governments as the chief support of public morality, order, peace, and prosperity. But it was an act of wisdom and justice rather than self-denial. Congress was shut up to this course by the previous history of the American colonies and the actual condition of things at the time of the formation of the national government. The Constitution did not create a nation, nor its religion and institutions. It found them already existing, and was framed for the purpose of protecting them under a republican form of government, in a rule of the people, by the people, and for the people.