short, I don't see how we can accomplish our wish in this matter. The prince has uttered reproaches to me that our clergy are striving to obtain a mastery over conscience."*

This was in 1577. In the next year the authorities of Middelburg, in Zeeland, attempted a persecution of the Anabaptists in their midst. This the prince at once arrested. He wrote to the magistrates reminding them that these peaceful burghers were always perfectly willing to bear their share of the common burdens, that their word was as good as an oath, and that as to the matter of military service, although their principles forbade them to bear arms, they had ever been ready to provide and pay for substitutes. "We declare to you, therefore," said he, "that you have no right to trouble yourselves with any man's conscience so long as nothing is done to cause private harm or public scandal. We therefore expressly ordain that you desist from molesting these Baptists, from offering hindrance to their handicraft and daily trade by which they can earn bread for their wives and children, and that you permit them henceforth to open their shops and to do their work according to the custom of former days. Beware, therefore, of disobedience and of resistance to the ordinance which we now establish."+

Thus did William of Orange protect even the members of this poor and despised sect. His influence was effectual, for we hear little more of any attempts at their persecution in the Dutch Republic.‡

* Motley, iii. 206. Brandt's "History of the Reformation," sec. 1, b. xi. pp. 588, 589. † Motley, iii. 334. Brandt, i. 609,610.

In Holland, the Mennonites, or Anabaptists, were exempted from military service in 1575, from taking an oath in 1585, and from ac

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Some eighty-five years after this last event, a governor of the colony which the Dutch West India Company had planted on the Hudson River, in America, began on his own account a persecution of some harmless Quakers who had been driven from Massachusetts. An appeal was made to the home authorities at Amsterdam, who extinguished it at once by a letter containing these memorable words: "At least the consciences of men ought to remain free. Let every one remain free as long as he is modest, moderate, his political conduct irreproachable, and as long as he does not offend others or oppose the government. This maxim of moderation has always been the guide of our magistrates in this city; and the consequence has been that people have flocked from every land to this asylum. Tread thus in their steps, and we doubt not you will be blessed." In this manner did the principles of toleration established by William in Holland bear their fruits in America, twenty years before the great English Quaker carried them to Pennsylvania.†

cepting any public office in 1617. In Zeeland, freedom from military service and oaths was granted them in 1577, but there, at a later day, and also in Frisia, they paid a heavy poll-tax for the military exemption. Barclay's "Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth," p. 608. How they were burned at the stake in Protestant England we shall see in due time.

*Brodhead's "History of New York," i. 707.

+ Penn himself fully appreciated the religious liberty which existed in the Dutch Republic. In 1686, a century after the death of William of Orange, he published a treatise entitled “A Persuasive to Moderation," an argument for liberty of conscience to all church dissenters. In this work he gives an illustration of what real liberty can accomplish. "Holland, that bog of the world, neither sea nor dry land, now the rival of the tallest monarchs, not by conquests, marriage, or accession of royal blood, the usual way to empire, but

Passing over still another century, we come to the time when, having thrown off the authority of Great Britain, the thirteen American colonies adopted state constitutions. Of all the thirteen, two, and two only— Virginia and New York-embodied in their great charters of freedom guarantees for religious liberty.

But even the action of Virginia, much as it is deserving of praise, falls somewhat behind the action of New York. The other states retained religious tests for their officials, or in some form made religious discriminations. Virginia, in 1776, issued a Declaration of Rights, which, it is claimed, formed part of her Constitution, laying down the principle, "That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and, therefore, all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practise Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other." These were novel sentiments in that region, and bore fruit in time; still, the state retained its established church until 1785, and in various other ways fell short of practising full religious liberty.*

by her own superlative clemency and industry, for the one was the effect of the other. She cherished her people, whatsoever were their opinions, as the reasonable stock of the country, the heads and hands of her trade and wealth; and making them easy on the main point, their conscience, she became great by them. This made her fill up with people, and they filled her with riches and strength."

* See "Proceedings of American Historical Society," iii. No. 1, p. 205. Even in Rhode Island, founded by Roger Williams, Roman Catholics were deprived of the suffrage, under a statute which was passed in 1719, and not repealed until 1783. See Repealing act,

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New York, however, in its first Constitution, adopted in 1777, proceeded at the outset to do away with the established church, repealing all such parts of the common law and all such statutes of the province "as may be construed to establish or maintain any particular denomination of Christians or their ministers."* Then followed a section much broader and more explicit than that in the Virginia Declaration of Rights-a section which, it is believed, entitles New York to the honor of being the first organized government of the world to assert by constitutional provision the principle of perfect religious freedom. It reads as follows: "And whereas, we are required by the benevolent principles of rational liberty, not only to expel civil tyranny, but also to guard against that spiritual oppression and intolerance wherewith the bigotry and ambition of weak and wicked priests and princes have scourged mankind, this convention doth further, in the name and by the authority of the good people of this state, ordain, determine, and declare that the free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever hereafter be allowed within this state to all mankind."+

Thomas Jefferson, to whom Virginia is chiefly indebted for her religious liberty, derived his religious as well as his political ideas from the philosophers of France. But the men who framed this constitutional

"Mass. Hist. Coll.," 3d series, v. 243. However, as there were no Catholics in Rhode Island, this law did not interfere with the practical religious liberty that always existed in that colony. If the state had adopted a Constitution when the others did, it doubtless would have been as liberal as was that of New York.

*Section 35.

+ Section 38.

provision for New York, which has since spread over most of the United States, and lies at the base of American religious liberty, were not freethinkers, although they believed in freedom of thought. Their Dutch ancestors had practised religious toleration, they expanded toleration into liberty, and in this form transmitted to posterity the heritage which Holland had sent across the sea a century and a half before.*

How far the example of Holland influenced the statesmen who, at a later date, placed in the Federal Constitution its guarantees of religious liberty can be shown by very high authority. This instrument, as originally adopted in 1787, contains a provision † that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." By an amendment, added in 1791, Congress is prohibited from making any law "respecting an establishment of relig ion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

James Madison, of Virginia, was the chief advocate of this amendment in Congress. Writing about it, some

*The first Constitution of Maryland, 1776, provided for a belief in the Christian religion as a qualification for office. In 1868 this was changed to a "belief in the existence of God." The first Constitution of Massachusetts, 1790, contained the same provision as that of Maryland. It was struck out by an amendment in 1822, but the state church was retained until 1833. The first constitutions of New Jersey and North Carolina restricted office-holding to Protestant believers in the Bible. This was modified in New Jersey in 1844, and in North Carolina in 1868, so as to limit the test to a belief in God. The only religious disabilities now existing in any of the United States are the exclusion of atheists from office in New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee, and the exclusion of clergymen in Delaware, Maryland, and Tennessee. + Article vi.