Fluent Essays

111 N O T E S O N T H E S T A T E O F V I R G I N I A | 7 1 7 3. This land; i.e., Virginia, as opposed to the “northern government,” or colonies, referred to below. 4. Refuges. 5. I.e., swear to leave. 6. Distributing. “Inhibited”: prohibited. “Suffering their meetings”: hosting their religious ser vices. 7. Jefferson is referring to Article XVI of Virginia’s Declaration of Rights ( adopted June 12, 1776, by the "fth Virginia Convention). 8. I.e., the Constitution of Virginia ( adopted June 29, 1776, by the Fifth Virginia Convention) incorporates the entire Declaration of Rights. Query XVII [religion] The "rst settlers in this country3 were emigrants from Eng land, of the En glish church, just at a point of time when it was dushed 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 showed equal intolerance in this country with their Presbyterian brethren, who had emigrated to the northern government. The poor Quakers were dying from persecution in Eng land. They cast their eyes on these new countries as asy- lums4 of civil and religious freedom; but they found them free only for the reigning sect. Several acts of the Virginia assembly of 1659, 1662, and 1693, had made it penal in parents to refuse to have their children baptized; had prohibited the unlawful assembling of Quakers; had made it penal for any master of a vessel to bring a Quaker into the state; had ordered those already here, and such as should come thereafter, to be imprisoned till they should abjure5 the country; provided a milder punishment for their "rst and sec- ond return, but death for their third; had inhibited all persons from suffer- ing their meetings in or near their houses, entertaining them individually, or disposing6 of books which supported their tenets. If no capital execution took place here, as did in New- Eng land, it was not owing to the moderation of the church, or spirit of the legislature, as may be inferred from the law itself; but to historical circumstances which have not been handed down to us. The Anglicans retained full possession of the country about a century. Other opinions began then to creep in, and the great care of the govern- ment to support their own church, having begotten an equal degree of indo- lence in its clergy, two- thirds of the people had become dissenters at the commencement of the pres ent revolution. The laws indeed were still oppres- sive on them, but the spirit of the one party had subsided into moderation, and of the other had risen to a degree of determination which commanded res pect. The pres ent state of our laws on the subject of religion is this. The con- vention of May 1776, in their declaration of rights, declared it to be a truth, and a natu ral right, that the exercise of religion should be free;7 but when they proceeded to form on that declaration the ordinance of government, instead of taking up every princi ple declared in the bill of rights, and guard- ing it by legislative sanction, they passed over that which asserted our reli- gious rights, leaving them as they found them.8 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 main- taining any opinions in matters of religion, the forbearing to repair to church, and the exercising any mode of worship; and suspended the laws giving sala- ries to the clergy, which suspension was made perpetual in October 1779. 7 1 8 | T H O M A S J E F F E R S O N 9. That is, chapter 1 of the "rst year (1558–59) of the reign of Elizabeth. 1. On the burning of a heretic (Latin). 2. Furneaux passim [Jefferson’s note]. Philip Furneaux (1726–1783), En glish minister and author of Letters to the Honorable Mr.  Justice Blackstone, Concerning His Exposition of the Act of Toleration, and Some Positions Relative to Religious Liberty, in His Celebrated Commentar- ies on the Laws of Eng land (1770). “Passim,” Latin for “ here and there,” means Jefferson is cit- ing vari ous parts of Furneaux’s work. 3. I.e., leave them unrestrained. Statutory oppressions in religion being thus wiped away, we remain at pres- ent under those only imposed by the common law, or by our own acts of assembly. At the common law, heresy was a capital offense, punishable by burning. Its de"nition was left to the ecclesiastical judges, before whom the conviction was, till the statute of the 1 El. c. 1.9 circumscribed it, by declar- ing, that nothing should be deemed heresy, but what had been so determined by authority of the canonical scriptures, or by one of the four "rst general councils, or by some other council having for the grounds of their declara- tion the express and plain words of the scriptures. Heresy, thus circum- scribed, being an offense at the common law, our act of assembly of October 1777, c. 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.1 By our own act of assembly of 1705, c. 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 "rst offense by incapacity to hold any of"ce or employment ecclesiastical, civil, or military; on the second by disability to sue, to take any gift or legacy, to be guardian, executor, or admin- istrator, 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 guard- ianship, this being taken away, they may of course be severed from him, and put, by the authority of a court, into more orthodox hands. This is a sum- mary 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 suf"ciently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws2 But our rulers can have authority over such natu ral rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injuri- ous 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 "x him obsti- nately in his errors, but will not cure them. Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error. Give a loose to them,3 they will support the true religion, by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natu ral enemies of error, and of error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free inquiry, Chris tian ity could never have been introduced. Had not free inquiry been indulged, at the æra of the reformation, the corruptions of Chris tian ity could not have been N O T E S O N T H E S T A T E O F V I R G I N I A | 7 1 9 4. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), Italian astrono- mer and physicist. 5. René Descartes (1596–1650), French scien- tist and phi los o pher. 6. Formulated by the En glish mathematician and physicist Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727). 7. In classical my thol ogy, a highwayman who either streched or cut off the legs of his captors to "t their bodies into his iron bed. 8. Critic of morals or customs (Latin). purged away. If it be restrained now, the pres ent corruptions will be pro- tected, and new ones encouraged. Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potato as an article of food. Government is just as infallible too when it "xes systems in physics. Galileo4 was sent to the Inquisition for af"rming that the earth was a sphere: the government had declared it to be as dat as a trencher, and Galileo was obliged to abjure his error. This error however at length prevailed, the earth became a globe, and Descartes5 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 Newtonian6 princi ple of gravitation is now more "rmly established, on the basis of reason, than it would be were the government to step in, and to make it an article of necessary faith. Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has ded 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 gov- erned by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desir- able? No more than of face and stature. Introduce the bed of Procrustes7 then, and as 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 of"ce of a Censor morum8 over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of inno- cent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Chris tian ity, have been burnt, tortured, "ned, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. Let us redect that it is inhabited by a thousand mil- lions of people. That these profess prob ably a thousand dif fer ent systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free inquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves. But every state, says an inquisitor, has established some religion. No two, say I, have established the same. Is this a proof of the infallibility of establishments? Our sister states of Penn- sylvania and New York, however, have long subsisted without any establish- ment at all. The experiment was new and doubtful when they made it. It has answered beyond conception. They dourish in"nitely. Religion is well supported; of vari ous kinds, indeed, but all good enough; all suf"cient to preserve peace and order: or if a sect arises, whose tenets would subvert mor- als, good sense has fair play, and reasons and laughs it out of doors, without 7 2 0 | T H O M A S J E F F E R S O N 9. Farmer. suffering the state to be troubled with it. They do not hang more malefac- tors than we do. They are not more disturbed with religious dissensions. On the contrary, their harmony is unparalleled, and can be ascribed to nothing but their unbounded tolerance, because there is no other circumstance in which they differ from every nation on earth. They have made the happy discovery, that the way to silence religious disputes, is to take no notice of them. Let us too give this experiment fair play, and get rid, while we may, of those tyrannical laws. It is true, we are as yet secured against them by the spirit of the times. I doubt whether the people of this country would suffer an execution for heresy, or a three years’ imprisonment for not comprehend- ing the mysteries of the Trinity. But is the spirit of the people an infallible, a permanent reliance? Is it government? Is this the kind of protection we receive in return for the rights we give up? Besides, the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated, that the time for "xing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the con- clusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due res pect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion. Query XIX [manufactures] We never had an interior trade of any importance. Our exterior commerce has suffered very much from the beginning of the pres ent contest. During this time we have manufactured within our families the most necessary arti- cles of clothing. Those of cotton will bear some comparison with the same kinds of manufacture in Eu rope; but those of wool, dax and hemp are very coarse, unsightly, and unpleasant: and such is our attachment to agricul- ture, and such our preference for foreign manufactures, that be it wise or unwise, our people will certainly return as soon as they can, to the raising raw materials, and exchanging them for "ner manufactures than they are able to execute themselves. The po liti cal œconomists of Eu rope have established it as a princi ple that every state should endeavour to manufacture for itself: and this princi ple, like many others, we transfer to Amer i ca, without calculating the difference of circumstance which should often produce a difference of result. In Eu rope the lands are either cultivated, or locked up against the cultivator. Manu- facture must therefore be resorted to of necessity not of choice, to support the surplus of their people. But we have an immensity of land courting the industry of the husbandman.9 Is it best then that all our citizens should be