[From his undated essay “Monopolies, Perpetuities, Corporations, Ecclesiastical Endowments.”]

The danger of silent accumulations and encroachments by ecclesiastical bodies have not sufficiently engaged attention in the United States. They have the noble merit of first unshackling the conscience from persecuting laws, and of establishing among religious sects a legal equality. If some of the states have not embraced this just and this truly Christian principle in its proper latitude, all of them present examples by which the most enlightened states of the old world may be instructed; and there is one state at least, Virginia, where religious liberty is placed on its true foundation, and is defined in its full latitude. The general principle is contained in her declaration of rights, prefixed to her Constitution; but it is unfolded and defined, in its precise extent, in the act of the Legislature, usually named the Religious Bill, which passed into a law in the year 1786. Here the separation between the authority of human laws, and the natural rights of man excepted from the grant on which all political authority is founded, is traced as distinctly as words can admit, and the limits to this authority established with as much solemnity as the forms of legislation can express. The formal appeal to the sense of the community, and a deliberate sanction of a vast majority, comprizing every sect of Christians in the state. This act is a true standard of religious liberty: its principle the great barrier against usurpations on the rights of conscience. As long as it is respected and no longer, these will be safe. Every provision for them short of this principle, will be found to leave crevices at least through which bigotry may introduce persecution; a monster that feeding and thriving on its own venom, gradually swells to a size and strength overwhelming all laws divine and human.

Ye States of America, which retain in your constitutions or codes, any aberration from the sacred principle of religious liberty, by giving to Caesar what belongs to God, or joining together what God has put asunder, hasten to revise and purify your systems, and make the example of your country as pure and compleat, in what relates to the freedom of the mind and its allegiance to its maker, as in what belongs to the legitimate objects of political and civil institutions.

Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States, the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history. (See the cases in which negatives were put by J.M. on two bills passed by Congress and his signature withheld from another. See also attempt in Kentucky; for example, where it was proposed to exempt Houses of Worship from taxes.) [In 1811 Madison vetoed a bill incorporating an Episcopal church in Alexandria and a bill setting aside some public land in Mississippi for a Baptist church which had been built by mistake on federal land. In both vetoes Madison wrote that the bills violated the article in the Constitution which declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.” See A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, ed. James D. Richardson, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1896), 489-490.]

The most notable attempt was that in Virginia to establish a general assessment for the support of all Christian sects. This was proposed in the year [1784] by Patrick Henry and supported by all his eloquence, aided by the remaining prejudices of the Sect which before the Revolution had been established by law. The progress of the measure was arrested by urging that the respect due to the people required in so extraordinary a case an appeal to their deliberate will. The bill was accordingly printed and published with that view. At the instance of Col: George Nicholas, Col: George Mason and others, the memorial and remonstrance against it was drawn up (which see) and printed copies of it circulated through the state, to be signed by the people at large. It met with the approbation of the Baptists, the Presbyterians, the Quakers, and the few Roman Catholics, universally; of the Methodists in part; and even of not a few of the Sect formerly established by law. When the Legislature assembled, the number of copies and signatures prescribed displayed such an overwhelming opposition of the people that the proposed plan of a general assessment was crushed under it; and advantage taken of the crisis to carry through the Legislature: the Bill above referred to establishing religious liberty. In the course of the opposition to the bill in the House of Delegates, which was warm and strenuous from some of the minority, an experiment was made on the reverence entertained for the name and sanctity of the Saviour, by proposing to insert the words “Jesus Christ” after the words “our lord” in the preamble, the object of which, would have been, to imply a restriction of the liberty defined in the Bill to those professing his religion only. The amendment was discussed, and rejected by a vote of [__] against [__] (see letter of J.M. to Mr. Jefferson dated _____). [Madison did not fill in the blank spaces.] The opponents of the amendment having turned the feeling, as well as judgment of the House against it, by successfully contending that the better proof of reverence for that holy name would be not to profane it by making it a topic of legislative discussion, and particularly by making his religion the means of abridging the natural and equal rights of all men, in defiance of his own declaration that his Kingdom was not of this world. This view of the subject was much enforced by the circumstance that it was espoused by some members who were particularly distinguished by their reputed piety and Christian zeal.

But besides the danger of a direct mixture of religion and civil government, there is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity [forever] by ecclesiastical corporations. The power of all corporations, ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses. A warning on this subject is emphatically given in the example of the various charitable establishments in Great Britain the management of which has been lately scrutinized. The excessive wealth of ecclesiastical corporations and the misuse of it in many countries of Europe has long been a topic of complaint. In some of them the Church has amassed half perhaps the property of the nation. When the reformation took place, an event promoted if not caused, by that disordered state of things, how enormous were the treasures of religious societies, and how gross the corruptions engendered by them; so enormous and so gross as to produce in the cabinets and councils of the Protestant states a disregard, of all the pleas of the interested party drawn from the sanction of the law, and the sacredness of property held in religious trust. The history of England during the period of the reformation offers a sufficient illustration for the present purpose.

Are the United States duly awake to the tendency of the precedents they are establishing, in the multiplied incorporation of religious congregations with the faculty of acquiring and holding property real as well as personal? Do not many of these acts give this faculty, without limit either as to time or as to amount? And must not bodies, perpetual in their existence,and which may be always gaining, without ever losing, speedily gain more than is useful, and in time more than is safe? Are there not already examples in the U.S. of ecclesiastical wealth equally beyond its object and the foresight of those who laid the foundation of it? In the U.S. there is a double motive for fixing the limits in this case, because wealth may increase not only from additional gifts, but from exorbitant advance in the value of the primitive one. In grants of vacant lands, and of lands in the vicinity of growing towns and cities the increase of value is often such as if foreseen, would essentially controul the liberality confirming them. The people of the united States own their independence and their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying [seeing ahead] in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprised in the precedent. Let them exert the same wisdom, in watching against every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and growing up from small beginnings. ( Obsta principiis [oppose it from its beginnings]. See the treatise of Father Paul on beneficiary matters.

Is the appointment of chaplains to the two houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom?

In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the United States forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does not this involve the principle of a national establishment, applicable to a provision for a religious worship for the constituent, as well as of the representative body, approved by the majority, and conducted by ministers of religion paid by the entire nation.

The establishment of the chaplainship to Congress is a palpable [easily noticeable] violation of equal rights, as well as of constitutional principles. The tenants of the chaplains elected shut the door of worship against the members whose creeds and consciences forbid a participation in that of the majority. To say nothing of other sects, this is the case with that of Roman Catholics and Quakers who have always had members in one or both of the legislative branches. Could a Catholic clergyman ever hope to be appointed a chaplain? To say that his religious principles are obnoxious or that his sect is small, is to lift the evil at once and exhibit in its naked deformity the doctrine that religious truth is to be tested by numbers, or that the major sects have a right to govern the minor.

If religion consist in voluntary acts of individuals singly, or voluntarily associated, and it be proper that public functionaries, as well as their constituents should discharge their religious duties, let them like there constituents, do so at their own expence. How small a contribution from each member of Congress would suffice for the purpose? How just would it be in its principle? How noble in its exemplary sacrifice to the genius of the Constitution; and the divine right of conscience? Why should the expence of a religious worship be allowed for the legislature, be paid by the public, more than that for the executive or judiciary branch of the government?

Were the establishment to be tried by its fruits, are not the daily devotions conducted by these legal ecclesiastics, already degenerating into a scanty attendance, and a tiresome formality?

Rather than let this step beyond the landmarks of power have the effect of a legitimate precedent, it will be better to apply to it the legal aphorism de minimis non curat lex [the law has no concern for the very small]: or to class it cum “maculis quas aut incuria fudit, aut humana parum cavit natura [with faults which human nature either has scattered around through negligence or has guarded against too little].

Better also to disarm in the same way, the precedent of chaplainships for the army and navy, than erect them into a political authority in matters of religion. The object of this establishment is seducing; the motive to it is laudable. But is it not safer to adhere to a right principle, and trust to its consequences, than confide in the reasoning however specious in favor of a wrong one. Look through the armies and navies of the world, and say whether in the appointment of their ministers of religion, the spiritual interest of the flocks or the temporal interest of the shepherds, be most in view: whether here, as elsewhere the political care of religion, is not nominal more than a real aid. If the spirit of armies be devout, the spirit out of the armies will never be less so; and a failure of religious instruction and exhortation from a voluntary source within or without, will rarely happen; and if such be not the spirit of armies, the official services of their teacher are not likely to produce it. It is more likely to flow from the labours of a spontaneous zeal. The armies of the Puritans had their appointed chaplains, but without these there would have been no lack of public devotion to that devout age.

The case of navies with insulated crews may be less within the scope of these reflections. But it is not entirely so. The chance of a devout officer, might be of a much worth to religion, as the service of an ordinary chaplain, were it admitted that religion has a real interest in the latter. But we are always to keep in mind that it is safer to trust the consequences of a right principle, than reasonings in support of a bad one.

Religious proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgivings and fasts are shoots from the same root with the legislative acts reviewed.

Although recommendations only, they imply a religious agency, making no part of the trust delegated to political rulers.

The objections to them are 1. that governments ought not to interpose in relation to those subject to their authority but in cases where they can do it with effect. An advisory government is a contradiction in terms. 2. The members of a government, as such, can in no sense, be regarded as possessing an advisory trust from their constituents in their religious capacities. They cannot form an ecclesiastical assembly, convocation, council, or synod, and as such issue decrees of injunctions addressed to the faith or the consciences of the people. In their individual capacities, as distinct from their official station, they might unite in recommendations of any sort whatever, in the same manner as any other individuals might do. But then their recommendations ought to express the true character from which they emanate. 3. They seem to imply and certainly nourish the erronious idea of a national religion. The idea just as it related to the Jewish nation under a theocracy having been improperly adopted by so many nations which have embraced Christianity, is too apt to lurk in the bosoms even of Americans, who in general are aware of the distinction between religious and political societies. The idea also of a union of all to form one nation under one government in acts of devotion to the God of all is an imposing idea. But reason and the principles of the Christian religion require that [if] all the individuals composing a nation were of the same precise creed and wished to unite in a universal act of religion at the same time, the union ought to be effected through their religious not of their political representatives. In a nation composed of various sects, some alienated widely from others, and where no agreement could take place through the former, the interposition of the latter is doubly wrong. 4. The tendency of the practice, to narrow the recommendation to the standard of the predominant sect. The first (see if this was the first) proclamation of General Washington dated January 1, 1795, recommending a day of thanksgiving, embraced all who believed in a Supreme Ruler of the Universe. That of Mr. Adams called for a Christian worship. Many private letters reproached the proclamations issued by James Madison for using general terms, used in that of President Washington; and some of them for not inserting particulars according with the faith of certain Christian sects. The practice if not strictly guarded naturally terminates in a conformity to the creed of the majority and a single sect, if amounting to a majority. 5. The last and not the least objection is the liability of the practice to subserviency to political views; to the scandal of religion, as well as the increase of party animosities. Candid or incautious politicians will not always disown such views. In truth it is difficult to frame such a religious proclamation generally suggested by a political state of things, without referring to them in terms having some bearing on party questions. The proclamation of President Washington which was issued just after the suppression of the insurrection in Pennsylvania and at a time when the public mind was divided on several topics, was so construed by many. Of this the Secretary of State himself, Edmund Randolph seems to have had an anticipation.

The original draught of that instrument filed in the Department of State (See copies of these papers in the files of J.M.) [is] in the handwriting of Mr. Hamilton the Secretary of the Treasury. It appears that several slight alterations only had been made at the suggestion of the Secretary of State; and in a marginal note in his hand, it is remarked that “In short this proclamation ought to savour as much as possible of religion, and not too much of having a political object.” In a subjoined note in the hand of Mr. Hamilton, this remark is answered by the counter-remark that, “A proclamation of a Government which is a national act, naturally embraces objects which are political.” So naturally, is the idea of policy associated with religion, whatever be the mode or the occasion, when a function of the latter is assumed by those in power.

During the administration of Mr. Jefferson no religious proclamation was issued. It being understood that his successor [James Madison] was disinclined to such interpositions of the Executive, and by some supposed moreover that they might originate with more propriety with the legislative body, a resolution was passed requesting him to issue a proclamation. See the resolution in the Journals of Congress.

It was thought not proper to refuse a compliance altogether; but a form and language were employed, which were meant to deaden as much as possible any claim of political right to enjoin [command] religious observances by resting these expressly on the voluntary compliance of individuals, and even by limiting the recommendation to such as wished simultaneous as well as voluntary performance of a religious act on the occasion.

[Note: James Madison’s essay, as partially printed above, has been slightly edited for the sake of making it more easily read. In general, Madison’s spelling and punctuation have been retained; however, many words which he began with capital letters, in the middle of a sentence have had that initial letter reduced to lower case. Moreover, nearly all abbreviations have been spelled in full: for example, the symbol & has been spelled “and”; the abbreviation Xn has been spelled “Christian.” Further information relating to Madison’s essay can be obtained by requesting a photocopy of it from the Library of Congress or by ordering the microfilm edition of the James Madison Papers, reel 26, series 2, volume 8, folio pages 2215-2220, through the inter library loan system of an academic or public library. The essay is also found in the William and Mary Quarterly , 3:555; and, in the book America's Real Religion] .

Copyright 1997 Gene Garman