George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

‘ [225] debate: errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is

Chap. X.} 1779.

permitted freely to contradict them.’

It was therefore proposed to be enacted by the general assembly: ‘No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his belief; but all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion; and the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities. And we do declare that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind.’¹

These enunciations of Jefferson on the freedom of conscience expressed the forming convictions of the people of the United States; the enactment was delayed that the great decree, which made the leap from an established church to the largest liberty of faith and public worship, might be adopted with all the solemnity of calm and careful deliberation and popular approval. Who would wish that a state which used its independent right of initiating and establishing laws by abolishing the privileges of primogeniture, by cutting off entails, by forbidding the slave-trade, and by presenting the principle of freedom in religion as the inherent and inalienable possession of spiritual being, should have remained without the attribute of original legislation?

The British expedition to the Chesapeake, after

May 30.

its return to New York, joined a detachment conducted by Clinton himself forty miles up the Hudson