Note 374 — Chapter XXVI

The laws, in some of our States, which make clergymen ineligible to certain civil offices, are unjust, and inconsistent with our republican institutions. Every man has equal civil rights, and the exclusion of any class of men from the enjoyment of any of those rights, is an odious proscription. It is, indeed, desirable, that no clergyman should accept a civil office, because his duties as a minister of the Gospel ought to be sufficient to occupy his mind. But he has a right, as a citizen, to be elected to any office; and to exclude him is an assumption of the power to establish a national religion, for if a man may be excluded from office, because he is a minister, he may, by the same authority, be invested with office, because he is a minister. It is remarkable, that those who clamor so loudly against church and state, do not see any inconsistency in the exclusion of clergymen, as such, from office.