 all “teachers of the Christian religion.” In an effort to disarm Madison, Mason and other opponents, Henry’s draft permitted citizens who did not want to register their affiliation with a particular denomination to allocate their taxes to secular institutions of learning. Meanwhile, the House passed the Episcopal incorporation act; Madison reversed his earlier opposition and voted for it in the hope that its passage would cool the Episcopalians’ ardor for Henry’s general assessment.
While Henry’s religious assessments bill was pending, Madison and his supporters helped to maneuver him out of the Assembly and into the governorship. On November 17, Henry accepted and went home to Southside Virginia to prepare his family for the move to Richmond. On Christmas Eve, eight delegates who had supported the incorporation bill changed sides and voted with Madison to postpone final consideration of the assessment bill until November, 1785 so that the measure could be circulated for public consideration, ”that the sense of the people might be better called forth.”(Madison to George Mason, July 14, 1826.)
As a practical matter, the delay engineered by Madison probably would have caused Henry’s religious assessment bill to die in any event, but Madison insured its defeat — and added immeasurably to the philosophical underpinnings of religious liberty — by taking advantage of the hiatus to draft one of the most remarkable and influential documents in American history: his “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments.”
Madison drafted the Memorial and Remonstrance because George Mason and other opponents of Henry’s assessment bill thought a petition outlining the arguments against the bill should be drawn up and circulated for public signatures, and that Madison was the best person to draft such a document. Mason apparently paid to have Madison’s draft printed and distributed. The tactic was entirely successful: over the next twelve months Madison’s petition and others garnered thousands of signatures, and when the Assembly convened in 1785 Henry’s bill was easily defeated. A few months later Madison completed the rout of the establishment forces by successfully arguing for the passage of Jefferson’s Statute of Religious Freedom. We can only imagine Madison’s pleasure in writing the good news to Jefferson in Paris, exulting that its passage meant that Virginia had “extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind.” (Koch 30) Jefferson’s own delight also must have been extreme, because he later decreed that his grave marker at Monticello would memorialize him only as “Author of the Declaration of Independence, Founder of the University of Virginia, and Author of the Virginia Bill of Religious Liberty.”
Madison’s Remonstrance systematically posits fifteen numbered and rather eclectic points in opposition to the clergy tax. If Madison’s arguments were rendered in the “bullets” typical of a Power Point™ presentation, they might read as follows:
1. As an “unalienable” and fundamental natural right, religion is a matter between man and God, and therefore is not subject to civil authority.
2. Since religion is not subservient to government, it cannot be subservient to the legislature, which is a government institution.
3. A clergy tax may seem innocuous, but it is the first step on a slippery slope that ends in the loss of liberty.
4. If all men are truly equal, a religious tax discriminates against non-believers.
5. Anyone who thinks that government officials are competent to judge matters of religious truth is arrogant or stupid, or both.
6. Religion does not need the support of human laws; to the contrary, it has flourished despite opposition from them; God will take care of religion without our help.
7. Government involvement actually injures religion because it leads to “pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, and in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”•
8. A just government can exist without a religious establishment.
9. A religious tax is unfaithful to Ameri