164 



QUERY XVII. 



The different religions received into that state? 



The first settlers in this country were emigrants from 

 England, of the English church, just at a point of time 

 when it was flushed with complete victory over the 

 religious of all other persuasions. Possessed, as they 

 became, of the powers of making, administering, and 

 executing the laws, they showed equal intolerance in 

 this country with the Presbyterian brethren, who had 

 emigrated to the northern government. The poor 

 Quakers were flying from persecution in England. 

 They cast their eyes on these new countries as asylums 

 of civil and religious freedom; but they found them 

 free only for the reigning sect. Several acts of the 

 Virginia assembly of 1659, 1662 and 1693, had made it 

 penal in parents to refuse to have their children bap- 

 tized ; ha«i prohibited the unlawful assembling of Qua- 

 kers; had made it penal for any n)aster of a vessel to 

 bring a Quaker into the state; had ordered those al- 

 ready hei;e, and such as should come thereafter, to be 

 imprisoned till they should abjure the country ; pro- 

 vided a milder punishment for their first and second 

 return, but death for their third; had inhibited all per- 

 sons from sufl^ering their meetinos in or near their 



I o o 



houses, entertaining them individually, or disposing of 

 books which supported their tenets. If no execution 

 took place here, as did in New-England, it was not 

 owing to the moderation of the church, or spirit of the 

 legislature, as may be inferred from the law itself; but 

 to historical circumstances which have not been handed 

 down to us. The Anglicans retained full possession of 

 the country about a century. Other opinions began 

 then to creep in, and the great care of the government 

 to support their own church, having begotten an equal 

 degree of indolence in its clergy, two thirds of the peo- 

 ple had become dissenters at the commencement of 

 the present revolution. The laws indeed were still 

 oppressive on them, but the spirit of the one party 



