7262. RELIGION, Toleration.—[further continued].
Three of our papers
have presented us the copy of an act of the
Legislature of New York, which if it has
really passed, will carry us back to the
times of the darkest bigotry and barbarism,
to find a parallel. Its purport is,
that all those who shall hereafter join
in communion with the religious sect of
Shaking Quakers, shall be deemed civilly
dead, their marriages dissolved, and all their
children and property taken out of their
hands. This act being published nakedly in
the papers, without the usual signatures, or
any history of the circumstances of its passage,
I am not without a hope it may have
been a mere abortive attempt. It contrasts
singularly with a cotemporary vote of the
Pennsylvania Legislature, who, on a proposition
to make the belief in God a necessary
qualification for office, rejected it by a great
majority, although assuredly there was not a
single atheist in their body. And you May
remember to have heard that when the act
for Religious Freedom was before the Virginia
Assembly, a motion to insert the name
of Jesus Christ before the phrase, “the author
of our holy religion”, which stood in
the bill, was rejected, although that was the
creed of a great majority of them.—
To Albert Gallatin. Washington ed. vii, 79.
Ford ed., x, 91.
(M.
1817)
