XVI. on the part of those sectaries who, disregarding human CHAPTER means, relied on God's miraculous support. But upon what logical basis this movement could find favor with 1802. those who entertained different views, it is not so easy to explain. The result of the French Revolution had tended to confirm the opinion that something more than a proclamation of the rights of man, to wit, general intelligence, virtue and good morals, public and private, afforded the foundation upon which alone a republican government could be sustained. It was also generally admitted, then as now, that religion furnished the only solid support for morality. Such being the case, was it not the bounden duty of the government to provide for public instruction in religion, just as much as for public instruction in letters? Nor did this necessarily imply any infringement upon the rights of conscience, since in New England every one enjoyed, at least to a certain extent, the right of choosing what church he would support. The New England system of common schools had in its origin been intimately connected with the religious establishment. Both grew out of theocratic views. Those views, however, had been long since abandoned; and the public support both of education and religion had been alike placed on mere grounds of human policy, the interest, to wit, which the community has in the intelligence and good morals of its members. And it was significantly remarked that, as out of New England there was no church establishment, so out of New England there was no extensive system of public education. But it was not merely or chiefly in their character of a priesthood that Jefferson detested the New England clergy. The steady front which the Federal opposition continued to present in the states of Massachusetts, New CHAPTER Hampshire, and especially of Connecticut, he ascribed alXVI most entirely to clerical influence; and he held up those 1802. states in his private correspondence as unfortunate priestridden communities, led by the nose by a body of men "who had got a smell of union between church and state," the natural enemies of science and truth associated together in a conspiracy against the liberties of the people; opinions publicly reiterated by the grateful Bishop in a long series of articles, addressed to the Republicans of New England, on the conspiracy of church and state against Christianity and the government of the United States. The clergy of New England, from the commencement of the Revolution, had taken a very active part in politics; and so they continued to do throughout the administration of Jefferson and his successor. This part they took, not in their character of clergymen merely, but rather as men of superior education and intelligence, and of high moral character, placed, by the life-tenure of their parishes, in a position of comparative leisure and independence; circumstances which made them, in conjunction with the lawyers, with whom their relations were intimate and harmonious, as much the natural leaders of New England as the slave-holding planters were natural leaders in Virginia. In the general justice of their views on political affairs, they had no reason to fear comparison with their Virginia rivals; and there is still room for reasonable doubt (the course of events, aided by quarrels among themselves, having deprived them of their establishment, and stripped them of all political power) whether the transfer of the entire guardianship of our politics into the hands of office-seekers and politicians by profession has resulted in any special benefit to the community, however the calling it Republican and Democratic may delight our ears. XVI. Jefferson seems to have considered himself excessively CHAPTER ill treated by the clergy, who were constantly twitting him with his infidel opinions. But it does not very dis- 1802. tinctly appear in what respect the religious bigotry of the clergy was at all worse than Jefferson's political bigotry. They seem, in fact, to have been but varieties of the very same thing. While he took advantage of popular prejudices to hold them up to odium as enemies of popular rights, and thereby to strip them of their power and their position, was it any thing more than a fair retort for them to appeal, in their turn, to popular prejudices, and to hold him up as the enemy of religion, and consequently the enemy of that upon which good morals and social order can alone be securely based, and therefore not fit to be trusted with political power? In that freedom resulting not from mere thoughtlessness or impatience of restraint, but founded upon reflection and investigation, New England then, as now, was very far before the rest of the country; but, however freely some of the New England clergy might speculate in their closets, in matters of practice the great body of them were inclined to carry their conservatism, or what they called the maintenance of "steady habits," considerably further than was consistent with the just and natural progress of society. This disposition, always strong enough in such bodies, had been, of late, greatly re-enforced by that powerful reaction, felt in America as well as in Europe, against the rage for innovation, without stopping to consider to what it would lead, which had made the French Revolution appear, to cotemporary eyes, so strange a mixture of the terrible and the ridiculous. The story of Barruel and Robinson, ascribing the origin of that revolution to a conspiracy of free-thinkers, associated, with Voltaire at their head, for the overthrow of the Chris CHAPTER tian religion, and having affiliated branches in America as XVI. well as in Europe, had found extensive credence; while 1802. the result of that revolution, after twelve years of such ardent aspirations, impassioned hopes, wild commotions, desperate struggles, and civil bloodshed, in a mere military despotism, served to confirm hostility to change, however plausible in theory; and to inspire the idea that the salvation of the country against the horrors of Jacobinism depended upon preserving from rash innovation those venerable institutions under which, thus far, it had grown and prospered. So far, indeed, as related to a public provision for religious teachers-the great instance, according to Jefferson, of the political benightedness of New England— there was something plausible to be said in defense of it, even upon Jefferson's own views. Grant that religion is but another name for superstition, a thing in itself unprofitable and pernicious; yet religion the people will have; and by abolishing all public provision for religious teaching, you are but opening the door to a flood of extravagant fanaticism, the surest safeguard against which is to be found, after all, in a well-educated clergy, from intellectual necessity keeping up, to a great degree, with the progress of the times, and secured by decent and permanent salaries against the perpetual temptation to purchase a precarious support by playing upon the superstitions, and constantly applying fresh stimulus to the excited fancies of their flocks. Such a view of the case, taken by numbers of Federalists who made no pretensions to be themselves religious men, and who indulged personally in great latitude of opinion, was very much strengthened by events already taking place in the South and West, where the abolition of religious establishments had by no means proved an XVI. extinguisher to religious fanaticism. At this very mo- CHAPTER ment one of those revivals was in progress in Kentucky and the other Western settlements which, in the last 1802. fifty years, have produced such remarkable results in America; building up, in place of the religious establishments once supported by law, new volunteer sectarian organizations, certainly in no respect more favorable to freedom of opinion, to reason, or to learning, however they may have exceeded in warmth of piety and glow of feeling. In those Western settlements, where there were very few educated preachers, and little regular provision for public worship, the same religious excitement which had produced in ancient times the passionate orgies with which the worship of Bacchus and Cybele used to be celebrated, displayed itself now, in excesses, under the name of religion, not a whit less extraordinary. Among other things of the like sort, during the two or three years that this excitement was kept up, it was not uncommon to find companies assembled in the woods, some praying and others barking like dogs, employed, to use their own backwoods phraseology, in "treeing the devil." The decent and moderate religionists of New England, where latitudinarian views at this time were extensively prevalent, if not decidedly predominant, were hardly less shocked by these excesses than by Paine's unceremonious treatment of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. Between enthusiastic sectaries on the one side and scoffers on the other, their patience was not a little tried. On the other hand, the Free-thinkers and the sectaries were able to co-operate politically without much difficulty; and many of Jefferson's greatest admirers were to be found among the latter class. Appeals to the reason, like those of Paine, gave but little trouble to men who |