ise
of it according to the dictates of conscience;" and that "no man or
class of men ought, on account of religion, to be invested with peculiar
emoluments or privileges, nor subjected to any penalties or
disabilities, unless, under color of religion, the preservation of
equal liberty and the existence of the state be manifestly endangered."
This distinction between the assertion of a right and the promise to
grant a privilege only needed to be pointed out. But Mr. Madison
evidently meant more; he meant not only that religious freedom should be
assured, but that an Established Church, which, as we have already seen,
he believed to be dangerous to liberty, should be prohibited. Possibly
the convention was not quite ready for this latter step; or possibly its
members thought that, as the greater includes the less, should freedom
of conscience be established a state church would be impossible, and the
article might therefore be stripped of supererogation and verbiage. At
any rate, it was reduced one half, and finally adopted in this simpler
form: "That religion, or the duty we owe to our Creator, and the manner
of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by
force or violence; and, therefore, all men are equally entitled to the
free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience." Thus
it stands to this day in the Bill of Rights of Virginia, and of other
States which subsequently made it their own, possessing for us the
personal interest of being the first public work of the coming
statesman.

Madison was thenceforth for the next forty years a public man. Of the
first Assembly under the new Constitution he was elected a member. For
the next session also he was a candidate, but failed to be returned for
a reason as creditable to him as it was uncommon then, whatever it may
be now, in Virginia. "The sentiments and manners of the parent nation,"
Mr. Rives says, still prevailed in Virginia, "and the modes of
canvassing for popular votes in that country were generally practiced.
The people not only tolerated, but expected and even required, to be
courted and treated. No candidate who neglected those attentions could
be elected." But the times, Mr. Madison thought, seemed "to favor a more
chaste mode of conducting elections," and he "determined to attempt, by
an example, to introduce it." He failed signally; "the sentiments and
manners of the parent nation" were too much for him. He solicit