Religious Rights in America
UNITED STATES SENATE REPORT, 1829: "What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights; they were not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as rights of which the government can not deprive any portion of her citizens, however small. Despotic power may invade those rights, but justice still confirms them. 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 of the fairest portions of the Old World. Our Constitution recognizes no other power than that of persuasion for enforcing religious observances."