Gardiner Meet Mr. Madison

[buc...@exis.net]

PART VI OF A SERIES OF POSTS

Gardiner has clamed some very remarkable things regarding James Madison.
Some of them are the tremendous influence that Luther, Calvin, Blackstone,
Witherspoon, Locke had on Madison. These claims have gone on to the point
of almost saying that anything Madsion uttered, did, thought was nothing
more then one of more of the above had influenced him into saying, doing or
thinking.

The purpose of this particular series of posts is to provide historical
documentation and commentary by others that disagrees with the claims
Gardiner has made.

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Madison disagreed. As a recent Princeton graduate, still very much
under the influence of the pious Dr. Witherspoon, he had distrusted
"encourage[r]s of free enquiry." In a letter to a close friend, he had
called them destroyers of "the most essential Truths" and "Enemies to
serious religion." Yet, even then, Madison had openly wondered whether the
support of civil society required "an Ecclesiastical Establishment" or
whether this might not in fact be "hurtful to a dependant State." Within a
matter of weeks, he wrote back to that same friend to suggest that if his
own sect "the Church of England had been the established and general
Religion in all the Northern Colonies . . . , slavery and Subjection might
and would have been gradually insinuated among us. Union of Religious
Sentiments begets a surprizing confidence and Ecclesiastical Establishments
tend to great ignorance and Corruptoon--]all of which facilitate the
Execution of mischievous Projects." (85) This conviction, firmly held and
vigorously defended, explains why Madison expended great effort at the
Virginia convention in a futile attempt to write disestablishment into that
fledgling state's declaration of rights.(86) A decade later, he would
finally succeed, by steering Jefferson's Bill for Establishing Religious
Freedom through the Virginia legislature;(87) and in 1788, he was prepared
to argue that the very presence of a great "multiplicity of sects" was "the
best and only security for religious liberty in any society."(88) This
argument Madison owed to Hume's close friend and disciple Adam Smith.(89)
[for footnote 85 see POST III ]

FOOTNOTES:
(86). See note 83, above: the original draft of Madison's amendment
included the stipulation "that no man or class of men ought, on account of
religion to be invested with peculiar emoluments or privileges; nor
subjected to any penalties or disabilities unless under colour of religion,
any man disturb the peace, the happiness, or safety of society."
(87)· For a detailed history of the struggle for disestablishment, see
Thomas E. Buckley, S.J., Church and State in Revolutionary Virginia,
'776-'787 (Charlottesville 1977) 1-172· For the aftermath, see Buckley,
"Evangelicals Triumphant: The Baptists' Assault on the Virginia Glebes,
1786--1801,' WMQ 45 (1988): 33-69· For a brief account of the role played
by Madison, see Brant, James Madison I 298- 300, II 343-55· See also PTJ I
525-58: Notes and Proceedings on Discontinuing the Establishment of the
Church of England, 11 October-9 December 1776· and PJM VIII 295--306,
473-74: "Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments." 20 June
1785, and Letter to Thomas Jefferson on 22 January 1786. Madison ends his
discussion of religious matters in the latter with the comment that "the
enacting clauses past without a single alteration, and I flatter myself
have in this Country extinguished for ever the ambitious hope of making
laws for the human mind.
(88). Cf. DSSC III 330 12 June 1788 with The Federalist 51 (351-52), where
Madison advances the same argument.
(89). The Wealth of Nations was first published in 1776 At some point
during the decade that followed, Madison read the work with care. See PJM
VIII 266: Letter to Thomas lefferson on 27 April 1785
SOURCE OF INFORMATION: Republics Ancient and Modern, Inventions of
Prudence: Constituting the American Regime, By Paul A. Rahe, Volume III,
The University of north carolina Press, Chapel Hill & London (1994) pp
51-52

TO BE CONTINUED

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