body also. Had they so existed, as to be capable of separ
rate destruction, which species of murder would have been
entitled to the first degree of guilt? Estimate mind without body, and body without mind. Behold an ideot! Let
not those pretend to religion, who would poison or murder
mind, but not poison or murder the body of an ideot. Do
they perpetrate the first crime, to prove that they will abstain from the second?
The long stationary state of political science, previous to the American revolution, must have been owing to some peculiar cause, which enabled other sciences to outstrip it. And there is no cause so peculiar to political science, as a legal prohibition of discussion. Mind, as to this science, was fettered; as to others, free. The commencement of the American revolution, knocked off these fetters, political science bounded forward, and a government was formed, which is at this moment the solitary political object of universal commendation. Few prefer even the government under which they live, to ours; none, any other.
The opinions in several state constitutions, in favour of mental emancipation, being so construed as to expose mind to legislative fetters, the good sense of mankind had in this, as in many other instances, preceded precept in exploding errour. Political prosecutions for opinion had become as obsolete as those for witchcraft, before the general constitution obeyed publick opinion, by declaring their inconsistency with free government; and before the sedition law endeavoured to drive political science into a retrocession of centuries, for the sake of reviving them.
The third section of the third article of the general constitution, had been deeply rooted in the natural right of free utterance, before the publick solicitude required its farther security, by the third amendment. The utterance of any opinions could not constitute treason. Irreverence expressed for our constitution and government; falsehood or reasoning to bring into contempt and overturn them; were not thought politically criminal. Instead of being
