MADISON'S VIEWS OF TOLERATION.
Religious liberty was a matter that strongly enlisted his feelings. When it was proposed that, under the new Constitution, all men should enjoy the fullest toleration in the exercise of his religion, according to the dictates of his conscience, Madison pointed out that this provision did not go to the root of the matter. The free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience, is something which every man may demand as a right, not something for which he must ask as a privilege. To grant to the state the power of tolerating is implicitly to grant to it the power of prohibiting; whereas Madison would deny to it any jurisdiction whatever in the matter of religion. The clause in the Bill of Rights, as finally adopted, at his suggestion, accordingly declares “that all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.” The incident not only illustrates Madison’s liberality of spirit, but also his precision and forethought in so drawing up an instrument as to make it mean all that it was intended to mean.—Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography, vol. 4, page 165.