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We the subscribers , citizens of the said Commonwealth, having taken into serious consideration, a Bill printed by order of the last Session of General Assembly, entitled “A Bill establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion,” and conceiving that the same if finally armed with the sanctions of a law, will be a dangerous abuse of power, are bound as faithful members of a free State to remonstrate against it, and to declare the reasons by which we are determined. We remonstrate against the said Bill,

Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, “that religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.” The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also, because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator.
Few men, so well equipped intellectually as was Madison, have, by reason of the characteristics of their equipment, been so dependent for success upon the conditions amid which they have been placed. Madison was preeminently what may be called a cabinet statesman. He was better as a thinker than as an actor.

James Madison had the constructive quality, and was a master of principles of government; but in the practical application of those principles which he himself had formulated and shaped, if not created, he was not fitted to excel, unless possibly when the current of events was running smoothly. Never was a ruler less fitted to hold the helm in troubled times, and it was hard fortune for him to receive from his friend and predecessor the bequest of a