accordingly separated
from the state, not only in South Carolina, but in all the states in
which it had hitherto been upheld by the authority of the British
government; and in the constitutions of New Jersey, Georgia, and the two
Carolinas, no less than in those of Delaware and Pennsylvania, it was
explicitly provided that no man should be obliged to pay any church rate
or attend any religious service save according to his own free and
unhampered will.

[Sidenote: Church and state in Virginia.]

The case of Virginia was peculiar. At first the Church of England had
taken deep root there because of the considerable immigration of members
of the Cavalier party after the downfall of Charles I. Most of the great
statesmen of Virginia in the Revolution--such as Washington, Madison,
Mason, Jefferson, Pendleton, Henry, the Lees, and the Randolphs--were
descendants of Cavaliers and members of the Church of England. But for a
long time the Episcopal clergy had been falling into discredit. Many of
them were appointed by the British government and ordained by the
Bishop of London, and they were affected by the irreligious
listlessness and low moral tone of the English church in the eighteenth
century. The Virginia legislature thought it necessary to pass special
laws prohibiting these clergymen from drunkenness and riotous living. It
was said that they spent more time in hunting foxes and betting on
race-horses than in conducting religious services or visiting the sick;
and according to Bishop Meade, many dissolute parsons, discarded from
the church in England as unworthy, were yet thought fit to be presented
with livings in Virginia. To this general character of the clergy there
were many exceptions. There were many excellent clergymen, especially
among the native Virginians, whose appointment depended to some extent
upon the repute in which they were held by their neighbours. But on the
whole the system was such as to illustrate all the worst vices of a
church supported by the temporal power. The Revolution achieved the
discomfiture of a clergy already thus deservedly discredited. The
parsons mostly embraced the cause of the crown, but failed to carry
their congregations with them, and thus they found themselves arrayed in
hopeless antagonism to popular sentiment in a state which contained
perhaps fewer Tories in proportion to its population than any other of
the thirteen.

[Sidenote: Madison and the Religious Freedom Act, 178