USA > Virginia > The history of the Virginia federal convention of 1788, with some account of eminent Virginians of that era who were members of the body, Vol. II > Part 9
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arise under the law "for recruiting this State's quota of men to serve in the Continental army," any sum they may direct for the purpose of procuring a statue of General Washington.
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that in case of refusal or unreasonable delay of due reparation the said delegates be instructed to urge that the sanction of Congress be given to the just policy of retaining so much of the debts due from the citizens of this Commonwealth to British subjects as will fully repair the losses sustained by the infraction of the treaty aforesaid." A motion was then made to amend the amendment by adding to the end thereof: "and in order to enable the said delegates to proceed therein with greater preci- sion and effect, the Executive be requested to take immediate measures for obtaining and transmitting to them all just claims of the citizens of this Commonwealth under the treaty aforesaid." The question was put on the amendment to the amendment, and reasonable as it appears to us, and merely executive as it was, it was lost by a majority of twenty-two-Madison for the first time in his life calling out for the ayes and noes. Those who voted to sustain the amendment were Alexander White, Madi- son, Marshall, Wilson C. Nicholas, Archibald Stuart, Watkins, Thornton, Francis Corbin, Gaskins, Thomas Walke, Allen, and Matthews, and those who voted in the negative were Patrick Henry, Strother, Joseph Jones, Richardson, Thomas Smith, Isaac Coles, and Edmund Ruffin. The rejection of this amend- ment, which purported on its face to procure the materials neces- sary for conclusive action in the premises, can only be explained on the supposition that it came from a suspicious quarter, and that the delay consequent upon making inquiries would result in the defeat of the scheme for obtaining reparation from the British Government.
The question was then put upon the amendment, and was lost by seventeen votes; Alexander White, Madison, Marshall, Nicho- las, Strother, Watkins, King, Thornton, Corbin, Gaskins, Ronald, Walke, Allen, and Matthews in the affirmative, and Patrick Henry, Joseph Jones, Thomas Smith, Coles, Riddick, and Ruffin in the negative. The rejection of this amendment by the so- called opponents of the treaty, who would be anxious to arm Congress with full power on the subject, seems to be susceptible of but one explanation, and that is, that it proceeded from a hostile source, and was designed to convey a menace that would disgust some of the friends of the original resolution.
All the resolutions were then severally agreed to, and a com- mittee, consisting of General Matthews, Judge Tazewell, Judge
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Stuart, and Jones (of King George), were appointed to prepare a bill in pursuance of the third resolution relating to escheats and forfeitures by British subjects. When we regard the wanton destruction of our property during the war by the British, and by the Tories in their ranks, in violation of all the rules of warfare observed among civilized nations, and our utter inability to retaliate upon them, the abduction of our slaves in open defiance of the articles of capitulation at York, and the positive refusal of General Carleton to deliver up to our own citizens their slaves and other property in his possession when claimed by them in person and with full proofs.in the city of New York, according to the express provisions of the definitive treaty, and the retention of the forts by the British, who might at any moment involve Virginia in a bloody and expensive war with all the Indians of the Northwest and West, we may 'safely pro- . nounce the conduct of our fathers in relation to the treaty to have been not only temperate and legitimate, but in the highest degree gallant and honorable. 79
An engrossed bill on the 25th of June came up on its passage, directing the sales of the public lands in and near the city of Richmond, and was decided by ayes and noes (recorded in the Journal). The question which excited debate had not so much a reference to the intrinsic merits of the bill as to the mode and time of sale. A rider was offered directing that all lands sold for certificates should be sold at private sale and before the Ist of October next. The object of the rider was to make a good bargain for the Commonwealth by enabling her to affix a round price for lands when paid in certificates, and if the lands should not be sold for certificates, then to obtain ready money at the public sale. As certificates abounded, and there was but little cash in the treasury, such artifices were not then deemed dis-
19 The case of Thomas Walke, who was a member of the present Assembly, and also of the present Convention, was singularly hard. Carleton not only refused to give up his negroes, who were then in the city of New York, but sent them off before his face to a British colony, not for the purpose of manumitting them, but of selling them for the benefit of British officers. Yet Walke might not only have been called upon, as probably was, to pay a British debt which he had already paid in pursuance of law, but to pay it in coin. See the report of the com- mittee, House Journal, June 14, 1784.
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honorable, as Patrick Henry, Madison, Grayson, Stuart, Strother, Joseph Jones, Richardson, Coles, William White, Watkins, Wilson, Ronald, and Matthews voted with the majority; while Alexander White, Nicholas, Thomas Smith, Thornton, Temple, Corbin, Eyre, Gaskins, Ruffin, and Allen opposed the bill.
The last topic of the session which required a deliberate record of the opinions of the members on the Journal was the amendment of the several laws concerning marriage. In the Colony no marriage ceremony performed by any other than a minister of the Established Church was valid in law; and as the dissenters had increased to such an extent at the period of the Revolution as to compose, in the opinion of a competent judge, a moiety of the population, it was plain that an amendment of the law was demanded, not only on the faith of the doctrine laid down in the sixteenth article of the Declaration of Rights, but on the still stronger ground of public necessity. Of the ministers of the Episcopal Church who held the livings at the beginning of the war, a large majority had disappeared before its close. One of them entered the military service and attained to the rank of major-general. Another also entered the service and became a colonel.80 Some of the ministers had taken to secular pursuits; and there were large districts of territory where no minister of the Established Church had ever been seen. To limit the performance of the ceremony of marriage to such men was virtually to interdict it altogether, and to work not only great temporary inconvenience in a new country, but the most permanent and most disastrous results to society; and hence, even before the modification of the old law, some of the patriot chiefs recommended the policy of having the ceremony performed by a clergyman of any religious per- suasion, and of trusting to the Assembly to make it valid.$1 On
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8) Bishop Meade says that at the beginning of the war the Episcopal Church had ninety-one clergymen officiating in one hundred and sixty- four churches and chapels; at its close only twenty-eight ministers were found laboring in the less desolate parishes of the State. (Old Churches, Ministers, &c., Vol. I, 17.) Muhlenburg and Charles Mynn Thurston were the military priests. Muhlenburg was a member of the December Convention of 1775, and Thurston was a member of all the Conventions except that of May, 1776.
81 Patrick Henry gave this advice. 7
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the 28th of June the engrossed bill to amend the several acts of Assembly concerning marriage came up on its passage, and, though far from being what it ought to be, made some necessary and important alterations of the existing laws. It passed the House of Delegates by a vote of fifty to thirty-ascertained by ayes and noes. White, who stood on the frontier of religious freedom, opposed the bill, and, demanding the ayes and noes, was sustained by Ronald, who voted for the bill, but who believed that it had gone too far on the road of reform. Those who voted in the affirmative were W. C. Nicholas, John Trigg, Archi- bald Stuart, Strother, Watkins, Joseph Jones (of Dinwiddie), Richardson, Thomas Smith, William White, Logan, Benjamin Wilson, Ronald, Edmunds (of Sussex), and Briggs, and those who voted in the negative were Alexander White, William Gray- son, Coles, Corbin, Ruffin, Allen, and Matthews. Two days later the House adjourned.
The second session of the present General Assembly, which was held on the 19th day of October, 1784, was as remarkable for its deliberations on questions connected with religion as on those which were purely political. John Tyler, who had been nominated by Patrick Henry for the Chair in the spring of 1783, and had been elected by a large majority over Richard Henry Lee, and had been nominated by Richard Lee, and unanimously elected, at the first session of the present Assembly, held over as Speaker of the House of Delegates, and John Beckley, who had succeeded Edmund Randolph as Clerk of the House, still held that position.82 As was usual, when the same Assembly held two sessions in a single year, there was much difficulty in obtaining a quorum, and it was not until the 30th that the House of Delegates could proceed to business. On that day the stand - ing committees were appointed; and it is instructive to read the
82 The majority of Tyler over R. H. Lee was forty-one. The rule of the House of Delegates in the sessions of the same Assembly was that the Speaker and the Clerk held over, but the term of the other officers ended with an adjournment. If the Speaker at the second session was not forthcoming, a substitute was elected to serve until he made his appearance. Thus, at the October session of 1783, on the declination of George Carrington and Charles Carter, of Stafford, Mann Page, of Spotsylvania, was elected to fill the chair until the arrival of Tyler, who was detained by indisposition.
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names of the eminent men who were placed at their head. Nor- vell, the colleague of Robert Carter Nicholas in the Convention of 1776, and long known in the councils both of the Colony and the Commonwealth, presided in the Committee of Religion; Patrick Henry, another member of the Convention of 1776, presided in the Committee of Privileges and Elections; Henry Tazewell, another member of the Convention of 1776, presided in the Committee of Propositions and Grievances; Madison, another member of the same body, presided in the Committee of Courts of Justice; Richard Lee, another member of the same body, presided in the Committee of Claims; and Matthews, who was a gallant officer of the Revolution, who was subsequently long Speaker of the House, and whose name, conferred on one of our counties, is fresh in our times, presided in the Committee of Commerce.
It would not be uninteresting to record at length the legisla- tion of the State concerning the Episcopal Church since the Revolution, and to present the exact position which it held in respect of other denominations at the beginning of the present session; but we must perform this office in a summary manner. At the first session of the Assembly in October, 1776, an act was passed which declared "that all such laws which rendered criminal the maintaining any opinions on matters of religion, forbearing to repair to church, or the exercising any mode of worship whatsoever, or which prescribes punishments for the same, shall henceforth be of no force or validity in this Com- monwealth," and "that. all dissenters, of whatever denomina- tion, from the said Church shall be totally free from all levies, taxes, and impositions whatever toward supporting and main- taining the said Church, as it now is or may hereafter be estab- lished, or its ministers." The act further provides that the ves- tries of the different parishes shall levy and assess upon the titha- ables, including dissenters, as before, all the salaries and arrearages due the ministers up to the Ist of the ensuing January. These assessments are also directed where the vestries, counting upon them, have made engagements, and former provisions for the poor are directed to be continued, conformist and dissenting tithables contributing. The fourth section reserves to the Epis- copal Church her glebe lands held at the time, her churches and chapels built or then contracted for, and all books, ornaments,
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and decorations used in worship; also all arrearages of money or tobacco then due, and the perpetual benefit and enjoyment of all private donations. The act closes with directions for taking a list of tithables, and enacts that the old law of Twenty- second of George the Second, for the payment and support of the clergy, should be "suspended " until the termination of the next General Assembly. That body continued, by successive . acts, to supend the old law until the session commencing Octo- ber, 1779, when it repealed it entirely, declaring that this and "all and every act or acts providing salaries for the ministers, and authorizing vestries to levy the same, shall be and the same are hereby repealed." The former provisions, however, are made for arrearages of salary, the performance of engagements, and the support of the poor. And thus the case mainly stood until the first session of 1784.83
On the 25th of June, of the year last mentioned, the House of Delegates, just before its adjournment, postponed the con- sideration of a bill to incorporate the Episcopal Church until the second Monday of November following, when the House would again resolve itself into committee on the subject. This interval afforded an opportunity to those who were opposed to the measure of presenting their views to the House. Accordingly several petitions were offered on the subject of a connection of the Church with the State, and of grievances which then existed on the score of religion. On the 11th of November a memorial from sundry Baptist associations held at Dover was presented, complaining of several acts in force which they believed to be repugnant to religious liberty, especially the marriage and vestry act. The following day a memorial from the Presbyterian Church was presented, setting forth that they felt much uneasi- ness at the continuance of their grievances, which they com- plained of in a memorial presented at the last session of Assem- bly, increased by a prospect of addition to them by certain exceptionable measures said to be proposed to the Legislature;
83 A succinct and accurate abstract of the laws concerning the Church to this date, by John Esten Cooke, Esq., may be seen in Bishop Meade's Old Churches, &c., Vol. II, 437, and in Foote's Sketches of Virginia (first series), 319, et seq. Those who wish to consult the acts in full will refer to Hening's Statutes at Large. The parliamen- tary record of the acts will be found in the Journals.
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that they disapproved of all acts incorporating the clergy of any society independent of their own, or any interference of the Legislature in the spiritual concerns of religion, and that a general assessment for its support ought, they think, to be extended to those who profess the public worship of the Deity and are comprised within the Declaration of Rights. On the 16th the memorial of the Presbyterians, presented at the last session, was referred to the Committee of the Whole.&# On the 20th the petition of certain citizens of Lunenburg, Mecklen- burg, and Amelia was presented, praying that a general assess- ment for the support of religion be laid, and that an act should pass incorporating the Episcopal Church. On the Ist of Decem- ber a petition was presented of certain citizens of Rockbridge expressive of their hostility to assessments for the support of religion, and declaring that such legislation was impolitic, unequal, and beyond the rightful sphere of the Assembly, and that religion ought to be left to its own superior and successful influence over the minds of men. These were the only expres- sions of the public will which were recorded on the Journal of the House; but it is probable that, as the subject had long engaged the attention of the people, especially during the past summer, each member considered himself fully instructed upon it without the formality of a petition.
On the 11th of November the House resolved itself into com- mittee to take the whole subject into consideration, and General Matthews reported, as the opinion of the committee, that the people of this Commonwealth, according to their respective abilities, ought to pay a moderate tax or contribution annually for the support of the Christian religion, or of some Christian Church, denomination, or connection of Christians, or of some form of Christian worship. The question upon agreeing with the report of the committee was then taken, and it was agreed with by a vote of forty-seven to thirty-two. As usual, we record the names and votes of the members who were also mem - bers of the present Convention: In the affirmative were Patrick Henry, Jones (of Dinwiddie), King, Thomas Smith, Coles,
84 This and the other memorials of the Presbytery of Hanover, which are written with great ability, may be found in Foote, Vol. I, 319, et seq.
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Thornton, William White, Corbin, Wills Riddick, Eyre, Gas- kins, Thomas Walke, Allen, and Edmunds (of Sussex), and in the negative were James Madison, Wilson C. Nicholas, Zacha- riah Johnston, Archibald Stuart, Strother, Richardson, Clen- denin, Humphreys, and Matthews.85 A committee was ordered to prepare and bring in a bill in pursuance of the resolution, and Patrick Henry, Corbin, Jones (of King George), Coles, Norvell, Wray, Jones (of Dinwiddie), Carter H. Harrison, Henry Taze- well, and Prentis were placed upon it.
It has happened unfortunately for Virginia that, while her religious history has been recorded in minute detail by skilful and zealous sectarians, her political history, from the Declaration of Independence to the present day, has remained wholly uncer- tain.86 Hence, her policy in religious matters at an important epoch has been imperfectly understood; and the patriotic and enlightened men who controlled her early councils have been blamed by one class of sectarians for not having gone far enough in reforming our religious institutions, and by another class as having gone too far. And it is mainly in a political aspect that all her enactments on the subject of religion ought to be viewed. Of these perplexing religious questions the observance of a plain maxim will lead us safely through the maze. On the sub- ject of religion, as on every other, the will of the constituent is the rule of the representative. What was the will of the people
85 Among the ayes were Henry Tazewell, Edmunds (of Brunswick), Nicholas Cabell, Carter H. Harrison, Edward Carrington, Jones (of King George), Richard Lee, and Joseph Prentis, and among the noes were Spencer Roane, Jacob Morton, John Breckenridge, William Rus- sell, and Richard Bland Lee.
86 Burk and his successors stop at the siege of York, as does Charles Campbell. Howison alone embraces the period of which I am now writing, and he candidly tells us that a very general outline only is within the scope of his work. His authorities for this date are Foote's Sketches, The Literary and Evangelical Magazine of the Late Dr. John H. Rice, and Wirt's Life of Henry-all excellent in their proper place ; but it seems to me that the true history of our religious measures cannot be fully known without a perpetual reference to the Journals. I do not pretend to supply the omissions of preceding writers farther than is necessary to put the conduct of the members of the Assembly of 1784, who were also members of the present Convention, in its proper light.
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on the subject of assessments ? The proposition to lay an assessment had been for several years before them, and it was well known that the question would probably be decided by the present Assembly. Memorials expressive of that will were laid before the House of Delegates. Of all these there were two only that opposed the policy of assessments-the memorial of certain citizens of Rockbridge, which only in part related to the subject of religion,87 and the memorial from the Baptist asso- ciations at Dover.
Even the Baptist memorial did not expressly object to an assessment, but laid the burden of its prayer on the marriage and vestry acts; 83 while the citizens of Lunenburg, Mecklen- burg, and Amelia, the Episcopal, the Methodist Episcopal, and the Presbyterian Churches favored the measure. 89 There was then a preponderating majority of the people, as well as of the intelligence and wealth of the State, inclined to such a policy. The proposed scheme was also in entire unison with the six- teenth section of the Declaration of Rights, as that section simply declares that all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience; and the bill enacted, at a time when there was neither a Jew nor an infidel in the State, that each individual called upon to pay the assessment might, if he pleased, apply it to a Christian Church, or to the public schools in his own county. The question, then, arises whether the statesmen of 1784 manifested any lack of liberality or good sense in allowing the people, at their own
87 House Journal, December 1, 1784. The other topic of the petition was the calling of a convention.
88 House Journal, November II, 1784.
89 The Presbyterian memorial did not object to the principle of an assessment, but prayed that it should be extended to the Jew and the Mohammedan as well as the Christian, or (in its own words) on the most liberal plan. See the memorial at length in Foote's Sketches, Vol. I, 337. In the following year a very different view was taken in the memorial of the Presbytery of Hanover, which was drawn with extraordinary ability by Graham, who doubtless drafted the petition of the Rockbridge people, presented at the present session of the Assembly.
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solicitation, to tax themselves for the purpose of religious or general instruction, as they might at the time of giving in their lists deem proper.
But it is a great mistake to suppose that the assessment was a religious question at all. It was strictly meant as a matter of police. It had no religious obligation whatever. So far as it may be supposed to have any religious bearing, it was merely permissive. It instructed the tax-gatherer to receive a certain sum of money from a given individual and pay it to any religious society that individual might choose to name, or to appropriate it to the education fund of his county. It was substantially a tax in favor of education, with an alternative that allowed a different application of the money if the tax-payer so pleased. It was this option alone which imparted to the measure a religious aspect, and it was in the power of the tax-payer to deprive it of that aspect at his own will and pleasure. It had no more connection with Church and State than the law has which punishes the infraction of Sunday, which prevents a congrega- tion from being disturbed in time of public worship, or which hangs a man who slays a parson.
There was yet another view of this question that presented itself most favorably to the far-seeing friends of religious free- dom, which has been wholly overlooked by those who have con- demned assessments with such extreme severity. By requiring every person to pay a certain sum towards the religious or literary instruction of his neighbors, the act might indirectly tend, so far as it exerted any religious influence at all, to strengthen, and even to multiply, the various sects in the com- munity, and thus, by dividing the people into schisms, establish a more powerful barrier than law against the ascendancy of any one denomination. Even at this day it is the opinion of our most philosophic statesmen that the greatest obstacle to the establishment of a single church in the State is to be found, not so much in positive law-constitutional or statute-as in the infinite multiplicity of sects. Should a sect include a majority of the people, it may repeal the law and even amend the Consti- tution; and it is more probable that such a sect might obtain a share in the government than that all the various sects should unite in stripping themselves of their equal privileges and posi-
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tion in the eye of the law and subject themselves to the authori- tative and arbitrary rule of a rival denomination. 90
On the 17th of November the House of Delegates resolved itself into committee on the subject of religion, and when the committee rose General Matthews reported two resolutions, one of which declared that so much of the memorial of the Hanover Presbytery and of the Baptist associations as prays that the laws regulating the celebration of marriages and relative to the construction of vestries was reasonable; and the second, that acts ought to pass for the incorporation of all religious societies which may apply for the same. The first resolution, having been read a second time, was agreed to by the House without a division. On the second resolution there was a difference of opinion, and a vote was taken upon it by ayes and noes, which resulted in its passage by the large majority of thirty nine. Alexander White demanded that the names of the members be recorded in the Journal, and was seconded by Carter Henry Harrison. Those who voted in the affirmative were Patrick Henry, Archibald Stuart, Watkins, Joseph Jones (of Dinwiddie), King, Richardson, Thomas Smith, Coles, Humphreys, Temple, Wills Riddick, Corbin, Littleton Eyre, Gaskins, Ruffin, Allen, Briggs, and Matthews,91 and those who voted in the negative
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