Protestant brethren in the colonies, in favor of our open and their own secret enemies, whose intrigues for several years past have been wholly exercised in sapping the foundations of civil and religious liberty” (id. p. 38). The petition to the king represents as one of the obstacles to a restoration of harmony between the colonists and the crown the act “for extending the limits of Quebec, abolishing the English and restoring the French laws, whereby great numbers of British Frenchmen [sic] are subjected to the latter, and establishing an absolute government and the Roman Catholic religion throughout those vast regions that border on the westerly and northerly boundaries of the free Protestant English settlements” (id. p. 47); reminds the monarch that “we were born the heirs of freedom, and ever enjoyed our right under the auspices of your royal ancestors, whose family was seated on the British throne to rescue and secure a pious and gallant nation from the popery and despotism of a superstitious and inexorable tyrant”; and adjures him “for the honor of Almighty God, whose pure religion our enemies are undermining,” and “as the loving father of your whole people, connected by the same bonds of law, loyalty, faith, and blood,” to withstand the ministerial plan (id. p. 49).
The terrific arraignment of the Roman Catholic religion made in these various state papers will show to what an extent the colonists were unfavorably disposed toward that faith at the inception of the Revolutionary struggle. The fourth and last address, however, adopted remains to be noticed, and in this appears the first indication of that
spirit of universal religious liberty and toleration which afterwards became one of the main animating impulses of the American system of government. The Journal, unfortunately, does not disclose the name of the wise and just man who drew up this document, but the internal evidence points to John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, who afterwards prepared the Articles of Confederation (1 Secret Journ., p. 290). Oct. 21, Thomas Cushing of Massachusetts, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, and Mr. Dickinson were appointed a committee to prepare an address to the inhabitants of Quebec, and, as adopted, this urges the Canadians to make common cause with the other colonists, setting before them their rights as British subjects, and saying: “What is offered to you by the late act of Parliament in their place? Liberty of conscience in your religion? No. God gave it to you; and the temporal powers with which you have been and are connected firmly stipulated for your enjoyment of it. If laws, divine and human, could secure it against the despotic caprices of wicked men, it was secured before” (1 Journ., p. 42). The address then imagines the president, Montesquieu, urging his countrymen to unite with the English colonists, and concludes: “We are too well acquainted with the liberality of sentiment distinguishing your nation to imagine that difference of religion will prejudice you against a hearty amity with us. You know that the transcendent nature of freedom elevates those who unite in her cause above all such low-minded infirmities. The Swiss cantons furnish a memorable proof of this truth. Their union is composed of Roman Catholic and Protestant
states, living in the utmost concord and peace with one another, and thereby enabled, ever since they bravely vindicated their freedom, to defy and defeat every tyrant that has invaded them” (id. p. 44).
May 10, 1775, another Congress met. Blood had been shed; it was seen the sword must decide the event; and from this time the American Congress may be said to have remained in permanent session until the government under the Constitution was inaugurated. May 26, 1775, John Jay, Samuel Adams, and Silas Deane were appointed a committee to draught a letter to the people of Canada, which, as adopted, urged them to unite with the other colonists, declaring “the fate of the Protestant and Catholic colonies to be strongly linked together”; and adding: “The enjoyment of your very religion, on the present system, depends on a legislature in which you have no share and over which you have no control; and your priests are exposed to expulsion, banishment, and ruin whenever their wealth and possessions furnish sufficient temptation” (id. p. 75). This failing, Congress came closer by directing Robert Livingston, Robert Treat Paine, and J. Langdon, Nov. 8, 1775, to proceed to Canada, and there use their utmost efforts to procure the assistance of the Canadians in Gen. Schuyler’s operations, and to induce them to enter into a union with the other colonies, the instructions mentioning as one inducement to be held out: “And you may and are hereby empowered farther to declare that we hold sacred the rights of conscience, and shall never molest them in the
free enjoyment of their religion” (id. p. 170). This also failing, a third effort was made to the same end by appointing Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton—the latter not a member of Congress at the time, but selected as a Roman Catholic (2 Ramsay Hist. U. S., p. 65)—commissioners to Canada, May 20, 1776, instructing them: “You are farther to declare that we hold sacred the rights of conscience, and may promise to the whole people, solemnly in our name, the free and undisturbed exercise of their religion; and, to the clergy, the full, perfect, and peaceable possession and enjoyment of all their estates; that the government of everything relating to their religion and clergy shall be left entirely in the hands of the good people of that province and such legislature as they shall constitute; provided, however, that all other denominations of Christians be equally entitled to hold offices, and enjoy civil privileges and the free exercise of their religion, and be totally exempt from the payment of any tithes or taxes for the support of any religion” (1 Journ., p. 290). This failed in turn, but the fathers were long loath to relinquish their hopes of the accession of Canada. The Articles of Confederation provided that “Canada, acceding to this confederation, and joining in the measures of the United States, shall be admitted into and entitled to all the advantages of this Union; but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine States” (art. 11); and guaranteed that each State should be protected in its religion by the common strength of all (art.
3). It is further memorable that the King of France co-operated with the Americans in the attempt to secure the accession of Canada to the Union, and that in accordance with the royal instructions the Count d’Estaing published an address on the 28th of October, 1778, in his majesty’s name, to the Canadian French, adjuring them by every tie of lineage and religion to make common cause with the United States. The priests, in particular, were besought to use their influence to this end, and reminded that they might become a power in a new government, and not be dependent on “sovereigns whom force has imposed on them, and whose political indulgence will be lessened proportionally as those sovereigns shall have less to fear” (2 Pitk. U. S., p. 68). This, however, like all the invitations of the American Congress, was in vain. The contemporary fact was—and no doubt the British crown officers took care to have it well known throughout Canada—that while England was enacting laws to exempt the Canadians from her anti-Catholic statutes, and to indulge them with full liberty of conscience in their ancestral Catholic faith, the American Congress was solemnly resolving and declaring “that we think the legislature of Great Britain is not authorized by the constitution to establish a religion fraught with sanguinary and impious tenets in any quarter of the globe.” “Nor can we suppress our astonishment that a British Parliament should ever consent to establish in that country a religion that has deluged England in blood, and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder, and rebellion throughout every part of the world.” So sharp a contrast had a powerful effect
on the sixty-five thousand Roman Catholics who then inhabited Canada, according to Stokes (View, p. 30), and is, in all human probability, the reason why that extensive country is not a part of the United States to-day. That invaluable contemporary authority, Dr. Ramsay, assures us that the predilections of the Canadian masses were in favor of a union with the other colonies, but “the legal privileges which the Roman Catholic clergy enjoyed made them averse to a change, lest they should be endangered by a more intimate connection with their Protestant neighbors.”
The founders of the republic seem early to have perceived the mistake of yielding to what they termed in their first overture to Canada “the low-minded infirmity” of religious prejudice, and the severe recoil of that error in this case had much to do with their subsequent prohibition of religious tests.
Recurring now to the States, we find a religious test prescribed as a qualification to office in a number of the early constitutions. The New Jersey constitution of July 2, 1776, provides “that no Protestant inhabitant of this colony shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil right merely on account of his religious principles; but that all persons professing a belief in the faith of any Protestant sect, who shall demean themselves peaceably under the government as hereby established, shall be capable of being elected into any office of profit, or trust, or being a member of either branch of the legislature, and shall fully and freely enjoy every privilege and immunity enjoyed by others their fellow-subjects” (art. 19). The North Carolina constitution of