(This communication was published by Benjamin Franklin in the American Remembrance; was reprinted in many European publications; and the revolting practice universally condemned in Europe and America).
[pg 156]
CHAPTER X.—The End and After the War.
The General Assembly of the new Commonwealth, made up of the delegates of the Fifth Virginia Colonial Convention, met at Williamsburg, October 7, 1776.
To Donald McDonald and his friends, the most important pending legislation involved the old religious contentions, this time waged by Dissenters, who, finding themselves in the majority, demanded the enactment of laws effectively severing church and state; and repealing all existing revenue measures for the support of the Established Church. Their fight was led by Jefferson, a member of the Established Church, who was much more an advocate of severance of church and state than a churchman. The opposition was led by Edmund Pendleton and John Page.
Donald McDonald, Lewis Craig and Charles Marshall were present as Dissenter lobbyists; while several rich planters and a couple of bishops argued and pleaded with the members and before committees that the proposed measures were not only attacks upon the church but an assailment of the Protestant faith.
As liberalism and equality were at the time in the saddle, the advocates of severance were successful. Laws were passed removing all civil disabilities because of religious belief; placing all sects upon the same footing and taxing only Conformists for the support of Conformist churches.
Emboldened by their successes, the advocates of equal rights introduced bills abolishing entails and the existing statute of descent. Under the English law of primogeniture, [pg 157] bolstered by local statutes since the organization of the colony, the family plantation had descended to the eldest son, the law prohibiting its sale or encumbrance. All such laws were attacked and repealed, upon the ground that they established and maintained an aristocracy.
As this legislative action placed all freeholders upon the same footing, civil and religious, Donald McDonald’s long continued labors in Williamsburg were at an end and he and his fellow laborers returned home.
There, he was made to feel that he was an old man. All able-bodied men of the community were away; either in the new State militia or the Continental Line service. He, however, was still able to preach, and most effectively, to the women, the children and his more or less afflicted comrades among the men.