The St. Johns herald., 1889-11-21
Religious Liberty.

Quakers and other Dissenters," Mr Henry L. Southwick of Boston states, with the precision of lover of historical truth, facts that will never cease to have a contempor- aneous interest while there remains possibility of oppression through public opinion expressed in legis- lative enactment. These facts have been often examined. It is we'll enough known that very soon after landing on Plymouth Rock the Pilgrims" banished John and Is- real Brown for being Episcopalians {; that they drove out Roger Williams elder of Salem church, for declar- ing "the new and dangerous doc trin" that "the magistrates should restrain crimes and not control opinions ," that Mrs. Hutchinson was also banished for a similar of- fence of dissent; that when the Baptists proclaimed that "Chris- tians ought to tolerate Christians" Obadiah Holmes was whipped for the heresy; that Clark, Crandall, Gorten, and many others were fined or banished; that under the gener- al acts against Quakers they were to be arrested on their entrance to the colony; committed to the house of correction ;" Severely whipped ;" "kept constantly at work and none suffered to converse or speak with them during their inn prisonment; :" that under a still se- verer law, every Quaker returning from punishment should "for the first offense suffer the loss of one ear; for the secend offense the loss of the other ear, and for the third of fense have his tongue bored through with a hot iron;" and that under these and similar laws Mary Dyer, William Robinson, Marmaduke Stevenson, and William Leddra were hanged, while others, men and women, were whipped, branded, and maimed.
 The impartial examination of this record shows that the question back of it was the difference be- tween liberty of conscience" and "license." The political principle asserted was the absolutism of the majority to decide where liberty ends and license begins. This principle is still practically assert ed in our politics-even in our con- stitutions made for the express pur- pose of denying the existence of absolute or inherent right in the majority, And it is curious that these expressions wherever found relate to matters of religion. The constitutions adopted during the first fifty years of the Union tend more and more toward that of Vir- ginia, in which there is no qualifi- cation whatever of Roger Williams declaration that it is the duty of magistrates to restrain crimes, not to control opinions. The rise of Mormonism in the West checked this tendency and caused a reaction toward the opinion that the major ity is absolute judge of what is or what is not religious license. This opinion is expressed in the consti- tuition qualification that liberty of c0nSclence snail not De so con- strued as to excuse acts of licen- tiousness, TOT to justify practices inconsistent with the good order, peace, or safety of the state"
 This limitation is incerted in American constitutions of most re- cent adoption. It may, therefore, be called the more modern view of religious liberty in distinction from the unqualified declartion of the old Virginia bill of rights, but it must not be iorgotton that it is precisely the view for the practical assertion of which the Puritans