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By Root 2085 0

the cause of religious freedom; and to encourage public education. Madison supported many of these projects, and in 1784 circumstances conspired to enable him to move forward on the one cause to which he and Jefferson were most deeply committed: the separation of church and state. The occasion was the introduction of a bill, supported by Patrick Henry, to provide a general public subsidy to all teachers (ministers) of the Christian religion. The measure would enable all of Virginia’s churches to recover from the ravages and impoverishment of the war. But the idea of a subsidy violated not only Madison’s notion of conscience, but also the beliefs of radical Protestant sects, such as the Baptists, who opposed public support for religion in general. Madison drafted his Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments as a petition against the general assessment bill. Along with other petitions circulated by the Baptists and others, the assembly was put on notice concerning the unpopularity of a general assessment. The bill was defeated, and in the wake of its defeat, Madison easily secured passage of Jefferson’s Statute for Religious Freedom, requiring the effective disestablishment of religion in the nation’s most populous province.

—Thomas Jefferson—

NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA (EXCERPTS)

1784

Query XIII (excerpt)

The constitution of the State and its several characters?

... IT IS UNNECESSARY, HOWEVER, to glean up the several instances of injury, as scattered through American and British history, and the more especially as, by passing on to the accession of the present king, we shall find specimens of them all, aggravated, multiplied and crowded within a small compass of time, so as to evince a fixed design of considering our rights natural, conventional and chartered as mere nullities. The following is an epitome of the first sixteen years of his reign: The colonies were taxed internally and externally; their essential interests sacrificed to individuals in Great Britain; their legislatures suspended; charters annulled; trials by juries taken away; their persons subjected to transportation across the Atlantic, and to trial before foreign judicatories; their supplications for redress thought beneath answer; themselves published as cowards in the councils of their mother country and courts of Europe ; armed troops sent among them to enforce submission to these violences; and actual hostilities commenced against them. No alternative was presented but resistance, or unconditional submission. Between these could be no hesitation. They closed in the appeal to arms. They declared themselves independent states. They confederated together into one great republic; thus securing to every State the benefit of an union of their whole force. In each State separately a new form of government was established. Of ours particularly the following are the outlines: The executive powers are lodged in the hands of a governor, chosen annually, and incapable of acting more then three years in seven. He is assisted by a council of eight members. The judiciary powers are divided among several courts, as will be hereafter explained. Legislation is exercised by two houses of assembly, the one called the house of Delegates, composed of two members from each county, chosen annually by the citizens, possessing an estate for life in one hundred acres of uninhabited land, or twenty-five acres with a house on it, or in a house or lot in some town: the other called the Senate, consisting of twenty-four members, chosen quadrenially by the same electors, who for this purpose are distributed into twenty-four districts. The concurrence of both houses is necesary to the passage of a law. They have the appointment of the governor and council, the judges of the superior courts, auditors, attorney-general, treasurer, register of the land office, and delegates to Congress. As the dismemberment of the State had never had its confirmation, but, on the contrary, had always been the subject of protestation and complaint, that it might never be in