1264. CHURCH AND STATE, New York, Pennsylvania and.—
Our sister States
of Pennsylvania and New York have long subsisted
without any establishment at all. The
experiment was new and doubtful when they
made it. It has answered beyond conception.
They flourish infinitely. Religion is well supported;
of various kinds, indeed, but all good
enough; all sufficient to preserve peace and
order; or if a sect arises, whose tenets would
subvert morals, good sense has fair play, and
reasons and laughs it out of doors, without
suffering the State to be troubled with it.
They do not hang more malefactors 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.—
Notes on Virginia. Washington ed. viii, 402.
Ford ed., iii, 265.
(1782)
