me common in his immediate
neighborhood, and it aroused him to earnest and open opposition; nor did
that opposition cease till years afterward, when freedom of conscience
was established by law in Virginia, largely by his labors and influence.
Even in 1774, when all the colonies were girding themselves for the
coming revolutionary conflict, he turned aside from a discussion of the
momentous question of the hour, in a letter to his friend[3] in
Philadelphia, and exclaimed with unwonted heat:--

"But away with politics!... That diabolical, hell-conceived
principle of persecution rages among some; and, to their eternal
infamy, the clergy can furnish their quota of imps for such
purposes. There are at this time in the adjacent country not less
than five or six well-meaning men in close jail for publishing
their religious sentiments, which in the main are very orthodox. I
have neither patience to hear, talk, or think of anything relative
to this matter; for I have squabbled and scolded, abused and
ridiculed so long about it to little purpose that I am without
common patience."

These are stronger terms than the mild-tempered Madison often indulged
in. But he felt strongly. Probably he, no more than many other wiser and
older men, understood what was to be the end of the political struggle
which was getting so earnest; but evidently in his mind it was religious
rather than civil liberty which was to be guarded. "If the Church of
England," he says in the same letter, "had been the established and
general religion in all the Northern colonies, as it has been among us
here, and uninterrupted harmony had prevailed throughout the continent,
it is clear to me that slavery and subjection might and would have been
gradually insinuated among us."

He congratulated his friend that they had not permitted the tea-ships to
break cargo in Philadelphia; and Boston, he hoped, would "conduct
matters with as much discretion as they seem to do with boldness." These
things were interesting and important; but "away with politics! Let me
address you as a student and philosopher, and not as a patriot." Shut
off from any contact with the stirring incidents of that year in the
towns of the coast, he lost something of the sense of proportion. To a
young student, solitary, ill in body, perhaps a trifle morbid in mind, a
little discontented that all the learning gained at Princeton could find
no bette