at
remarkable constitution which Locke prepared for North Carolina and that
went into force there in 1669, and which agrees so little with the
tenets of his _Two Treatises on Government_, is based upon the principle
not, it is true, of full equality of rights, but of toleration of
Dissenters, and also of Jews and heathen.[84] It was permitted every
seven persons of any religion to form a church or communion of
faith.[85] No compulsion in matters of religion was exercised, except
that every inhabitant when seventeen years of age had to declare to
which communion he belonged and to be registered in some church,
otherwise he stood outside of the protection of the law.[86] All
violence toward any religious assembly was strictly prohibited.[87] It
was not the principle of political liberty that lay on Locke's heart,
but the opening of a way to full religious liberty. In spite of the fact
that in his treatise _On Civil Government_ there is not a word upon the
right of conscience, which he had so energetically defended in his
celebrated _Letters on Toleration_, the constitution of North Carolina
shows that in his practical plans it held the first place. And so with
Locke also liberty of conscience was brought forward as the first and
most sacred right, overshadowing all others. This philosopher, who held
freedom to be man's inalienable gift from nature, established servitude
and slavery under the government he organized without hesitation, but
religious toleration he carried through with great energy in this new
feudal state.

Of the other colonies New Jersey had proclaimed extensive toleration in
1664, and New York in 1665.[88] In the latter, which had already
declared under Dutch rule in favor of liberal principles in religious
matters, it was ordered in 1683 that no one who believed on Jesus Christ
should on any pretext whatever be molested because of difference of
opinion. In the same year William Penn conferred a constitution with
democratic basis upon the colony granted to him by the Crown and which
he had named after his father Pennsylvania, in which it was declared
that no one who believed on God should in any way be forced to take part
in any religious worship or be otherwise molested,[89] and in the
constitution, which Penn later (1701) established and which remained in
force until 1776, he emphasized above all that even when a people were
endowed with the greatest civil liberties they could not be truly happy,
unle