versity Studies, 10th
Series_, II-III, Baltimore, 1892, pp. 35 _et seq._]

[Footnote 93: Poore, I, p. 375.]

[Footnote 94: In England the Toleration Act, I. Will. and Mary, c. 18,
first granted toleration to Dissenters. This was again restricted under
Anne and restored under George I. Since George II. they have been
admitted to all offices. As is well known, however, the restrictions
upon the Catholics and Jews have been done away with only in our
century. In Germany after the scanty concessions of the Peace of
Osnabrueck, a state of affairs similar to that earlier in America was
first created by the Toleration Patent of Joseph II. of 1781, the Edict
of Frederick William II. of July 9, 1788, that which codified the
principles of Frederick the Great, and above all by the Prussian
_Allgemeines Landrecht_ (Teil II, Titel 11, Sec.Sec. 1 _et seq._).]

[Footnote 95: To be sure the carrying out of this right, in the
direction of full political equality to the members of all confessions,
differed in the different states. New York was the first state after
Rhode Island that brought about the separation of church and state.
Virginia followed next in 1785. For some time after in many states
Protestant or at least Christian belief was necessary to obtain office.
And even to-day some states require belief in God, in immortality, and
in a future state of rewards and punishments. Massachusetts declared in
her bill of rights not only the right but the duty of worship, and as
late as 1799 punished neglect of church attendance. In the course of the
nineteenth century these and other restrictions have fallen away except
for a very small part. For the Union the exercise of political rights is
made entirely independent of religious belief by Art. VI of the
Constitution, and also by the famous First Amendment the establishment
of any religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof is forbidden.
On the present condition in the separate states, _cf._ the thorough
discussion by Cooley, Chap. XIII, pp. 541-586; further Ruettiman, _Kirche
und Staat in Nordamerika_ (1871).]

[Footnote 96: "Among the natural rights, some are in their very nature
unalienable, because no equivalent can be given or received for them. Of
this kind are the RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE." Art. IV. Poore, II, 1280.]

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CREATION OF A SYSTEM OF RIGHTS OF MAN AND OF CITIZENS DURING THE
AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

The seventeenth century was a time of reli