Religious Liberty and Government
The Constitution regards the conscience of the Jew as sacred as that of the Christian, and gives no more authority to adopt a measure affecting the conscience of a solitary individual than that of a whole community.—Report of House of Representatives, 1830. Among all the religious persecution with which almost every page of modern history is stained, no victim ever suffered but for the violation of what government denominated the law of God.—United States Senate Report, 1829. If the principle is once established that religion, or religious observances, shall be interwoven with our legislative acts, we must pursue it to its ultimatum.—United States Senate Report, 1829. Let the national Legislature once perform an act which involves the decision of a religious controversy, and it will have passed its legitimate bounds. The precedent will then be established, and the foundation laid, for that usurpation of the divine prerogative in this country which has been the desolating scourge to the fairest portions of the Old World.—United States Senate Report, 1829.