 France; accordingly, he participated vicariously in the remarkable events that unfolded, primarily through regular but painfully slow correspondence with Madison.
Two controversial and interrelated religious issues confronted the 1784 Virginia Assembly. Supporters of the Anglican Church, which had been renamed as the Protestant Episcopal Church, recognized that tax support for religion, which they favored, was becoming increasingly problematical, but they put greater hope in having the church incorporated by the Assembly, a move that would confirm its title to enormous tracts of land assigned to the church during the colonial period. The Baptists and Presbyterians found this idea abhorrent, arguing that it would invest the Episcopal Church with property that conceptually belonged to everyone, but they had different opinions about what the Assembly should do. The Baptists wanted government to eschew all involvement with religion, but many Presbyterians preferred a plural establishment whereby religious taxes would be distributed proportionately among the various Protestant denominations. Madison thought both proposals “obnoxious.”
Patrick Henry, who like most of his contemporaries believed that virtue could not exist without religion, supported the Presbyterian position as being in the best interests of the state. With the assistance of John Blair Smith, a Presbyterian clergyman who had founded Hampden-Sydney College (and who, like Madison, had studied at Princeton under John Witherspoon), Henry drafted a resolution that called for both “the inalienable rights of conscience” and “an equal share of the protection and favor of government to all denominations of Christians.” (Mayer 360) He proposed that the Assembly draft legislation imposing “a moderate tax or contribution, annually, for the support of the Christian religion . . .” The motion passed, and Henry himself was appointed to head the drafting committee, which produced a bill imposing a “general assessment,” the proceeds of which would be distributed among 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 