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1628. CONSCIENCE, Rights of.—[continued].

A right to take the side
which every man's conscience approves in a
civil contest is too precious a right, and too
favorable to the preservation of liberty not
to be protected by all its well informed
friends. The Assembly of Virginia have
given sanction to this right in several of their
laws, discriminating honorably those who took
side against us, before the Declaration of Independence,
from those who remained among
us, and strove to injure us by their treacheries.—
To Mrs. Sprowle. Ford ed., iv, 66.
(P. 1785)