tiplied efforts at
certainty, by saids and afore-saids, by ors and by ands, to make them
more plain, are really rendered more perplexed and incomprehensible, not
only to common readers, but to the lawyers themselves. We were
employed in this work from that time to February, 1779, when we met at
Williamsburg; that is to say, Mr. Pendleton, Mr. Wythe, and myself; and
meeting day by day, we examined critically our several parts, sentence
by sentence, scrutinizing and amending, until we had agreed on the
whole. We then returned home, had fair copies made of our several parts,
which were reported to the General Assembly, June 18, 1779, by Mr.
Wythe and myself, Mr. Pendleton's residence being distant, and he having
authorized us by letter to declare his approbation. We had, in this
work, brought so much of the Common law as it was thought necessary to
alter, all the British statutes from _Magna Charta_ to the present day,
and all the laws of Virginia, from the establishment of our legislature
in the 4th Jac. I. to the present time, which we thought should be
retained, within the compass of one hundred and twenty-six bills,
making a printed folio of ninety pages only. Some bills were taken out,
occasionally, from time to time, and passed; but the main body of the
work was not entered on by the legislature, until after the general
peace, in 1785, when, by the unwearied exertions of Mr. Madison, in
opposition to the endless quibbles, chicaneries, perversions, vexations,
and delays of lawyers and demi-lawyers, most of the bills were passed by
the legislature, with little alteration.

The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which
had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the
latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with
some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular
proposition proved, that its protection of opinion was meant to be
universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from
the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed,
by inserting the words 'Jesus Christ,' so that it should read, 'a
departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our
religion;' the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that
they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew
and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of
every denomination.