To top Bishop's insult,—as it was regarded by every friend of the Standing Order,—came in the following spring Jefferson's displacement of Elizur Goodrich, President Adams's appointee as collector of the port of New Haven, and the substitution of Samuel Bishop. President Jefferson considered himself at liberty to make this change; and all the more so because President Adams had made the appointment as one of his last official acts, when he must have known it would have been unacceptable to the incoming Republican administration. The merchants of New Haven immediately united in a petition to President Jefferson, in which they declared that Samuel Bishop was too old to perform the duties of the office, and, moreover, not acquainted with accounts. Assuming that his son Abraham would assist him, they denounced the latter as "entirely destitute of public confidence, so conspicuous for his enmity to commerce and opposition to order, so odious to his fellow citizens, that we presume his warmest partizans would not have hazarded a recommendation of him." Notwithstanding this protest the appointment was continued, the President pointing out the honors bestowed upon the father and the care with which he, Jefferson, had investigated the case before acting upon it. Reproving the authorities for so long excluding the Republicans entirely from office, Jefferson expressed his regret at finding upon his accession to the presidency not even a "moderate participation in office in the hands of the majority." He further stated that when such a situation was in some measure relieved he would be only too glad to make the question "Is he capable? Is he honest? Is he faithful to the Constitution?" the only tests for obtaining and holding office. Samuel Bishop died in 1803, and the collector ship was then bestowed upon his son, who held it until his death in 1829.
In Connecticut the two political parties prepared for conflict. The Republicans desired a new constitution and disestablishment. The old constitutional and religious debates were opened and fiercely fought out in pamphlet, press, sermon, and political oration. Noah Webster replied to the "Extent and Power of Political Delusion" by "A Rod for the Fool's Back." John Leland published his famous Hartford speech as "A Blow at the Root, a fashionable Fast-Day Sermon," and his "High Flying Churchman," as contributions in behalf of civil and religious liberty. Abraham Bishop took up the latter topic in his "Wallingford Address, Proofs of a Conspiracy Against Christianity and the Government of the United States," published in 1802, as well as in his "Extent and Power of Political Delusion" of 1800. A fair type of Mr. Bishop's style and treatment is shown in his "Connecticut Republicanism," a campaign document, wherein he sets forth his opinion of the union of Church and State. [o]
In his campaign document under the title "Connecticut Republicanism"
Bishop declared:
Christianity has suffered more by the attempts to unite church and state than by all the deistical writings, yet the men who denounce them are pronounced atheists and no proof of their atheism is required but their opposition to Federal measures…. Church and state cannot be better served than by keeping them distinct and by placing them where they ought to be, above, instead of beneath the control of men who care no more for either of them than they can turn to their personal benefit. The self-styled friends of order have in all nations been the cause of all the convulsions and distresses which have agitated the world…. The clergyman preaches politics, the civilian prates of orthodoxy, and if any man refuse to join their coalition they endeavor to hunt him down to the tune "The Church is in danger."… In 1787 this visible intolerance had abated in New England; there was no written law in force that none but church-members should be free burgesses: yet the avowed charge of Christ's church was in our law-books, some nice points of theology were settled in our statutes and the common law of church and state was in full force…. The Trinitarian doctrine is established by laws, and the denial of it is placed in the rank of felony. Though we have ceased to transplant from town to town Quakers, New Lights, and Baptists; yet the dissenters from our prevailing denominations are even at this moment praying for a repeal of those laws which abridge the rights of conscience.
* * * * *
Break the league of church and state which first subjugates your consciences, then treating your understanding like galley slaves, robs you of religion and civil freedom…. Thirty thousand freemen are against the union of church and state. Thirty thousand more men, deprived of voting because they are not rich or learned enough, are ready to join them. [201]
In his "Wallingford Address," Bishop exclaims "The clerical politician is a useless preacher; the political Christian is a dangerous statesman." On the title page of this address appeared the epigram, "Our statesmen to the Constitution; our Clergy to the Bible." The unfortunately irreverent parallel which Bishop drew between the Saviour of the world and the leader of the national Republican party, or of the democracy or common people, gave to the epigram an evil significance not intended, and to its author a reputation not wholly deserved.
David Daggett, a prominent New Haven Federalist and lawyer, [p] tried in "Facts are Stubborn Things" to refute the charge that the people were priest-ridden, the legislature arbitrary and tyrannical, the clergy bigots. In the course of his argument he gives an account of the reception of a Baptist petition which, voicing the smouldering discontent that was kept burning by the certificate law, had been presented to the legislature. Daggett charged the Republicans with instituting the custom of holding their party meetings in Hartford and New Haven at the time of the meeting of the Assembly in those cities, and of making the political gathering a means of directing what topics should be brought up for discussion in the House of Representatives, and what discussed in their party organ the "American Mercury." Daggett accused the Republicans of purposely choosing subjects of discussion of an inflammable character, and declared that it was in Babcock's paper (so called from its editor) that the Baptist petition originated, which, circulated through the state, received some three thousand signatures, "many of whom doubtless sought the public good." [202] The petition was presented for trial in 1802 and a day set for its hearing, upon which Mr. Pierpont Edwards and Mr. Gideon Granger were to advocate it. The gentlemen, according to Mr. Daggett's account, did not appear, and of course no trial was held. Instead, the Assembly referred it to a committee of eighteen from the two houses. Mr. Daggett insisted that "it was thoroughly canvassed, and every gentleman professed himself entirely satisfied that there was no ground of complaint which the Legislature could remove, except John T. Peters, Esq., who declared that nothing short of an entire repeal of the law for the support of religion would accord with his idea."
The truth of the matter was that the committee were chiefly Federalists. Mr. Peters was a Republican. In their answer to the petition, the committee assumed that it "was an equitable principle, that every member of the society should, in some way, contribute to the support of religious institutions and so the complaint of those who declined to support any such institution was invalid." If there was ground for complaint because of sequestration of property for the benefit of Presbyterians only, the committee failed to find any such cause, and if such existed, the proper channel of appeal was through the courts. All other complaints in the petition were considered to be answered by the assumption that the legislature had the right, on the ground of utility, to compel contributions for the support of religion, schools, and courts, whether or not every individual taxpayer had need of them. The next year, 1803, the petition gained a hearing, but that was all. It continued to be presented at every session of the Assembly, and was first heard by both houses in 1815. It was finally withdrawn at the session that passed the bill for the new constitution of 1818.
As one of the preliminary steps in the education of the people in Republican principles and aims, John Strong of Norwich in 1804 founded the "True Republican," thus giving a second paper for the dissemination of Republican opinions. From 1792 the "Phenix or Windham Herald" had been dealing telling blows at the Establishment and at the courts of law through a discussion in its columns carried on by Judge Swift, the inveterate foe of the union of Church and State, and a lawyer, frank to avow that partiality existed in the administration of justice. Though both the paper and the judge were strongly Federal in their politics, they were both materially helping the Republican advocates of reform. From the Windham press came, also, a republication of "A Review of the Ecclesiastical Establishments of Europe," edited by R. Huntington, with special reference to the bearing of its arguments upon the conditions existing in Connecticut, where illustration could be found of the absurdities and dangers that the book had been originally written to expose. In 1803 John Leland, representing forty-two Baptist clergymen, twenty licensed exhorters, four thousand communicants, and twenty thousand attendants, sent out another plea for disestablishment in his "Van Tromp lowering his Peak with a Broadside, containing a Plea for the Baptists of Connecticut." In it he urges that thirteen states have already granted religious liberty, and that many of them have formed newer constitutions since the Revolution. Such should also be the case in Connecticut. Moreover, it could readily be accomplished at the small cost of five cents per man. Such a small sum would pay the expenses of a convention to formulate a constitution and another to ratify it, while five cents more per person would furnish every citizen with a copy of the proposed document, so that each could decide for himself upon the constitutionality of any measure proposed, and would no longer be obliged to read pamphlet after pamphlet or column after column in the newspaper to determine its validity. [203]