The majority of the arguments above employed, on the subject of penal laws in matters of opinion, are equally applicable to tests, religious and political. The distinction, between prizes and penalties, between greater and less, has little tendency to change the state of the question, if we have already proved that any discouragement extended to the curiosity of intellect, and any authoritative countenance afforded to one set of opinions in preference to another, is in its own nature unjust, and evidently hostile to the general welfare.
Leaving out of the consideration religious tests, as being fully comprehended in the preceding discussion, let us attend for a moment to an article which has had its advocates among men of considerable liberality, the supposed propriety of political tests. 'Shall we have no federal oaths, no oaths of fidelity to the nation, the law and the republic? How in that case shall we distinguish between the enemies and the friends of freedom?'
Certainly there cannot be a method devised for this purpose at once more iniquitous and ineffectual than a federal oath. What is the language that, in strictness of interpretation, belongs to the act of the legislature imposing this oath? To one party it says, 'We know that you are our friends;Chapter he oath, as it relates to you, we acknowledge to be superfluous; nevertheless you must take it, as a cover to our indirect purposes, in imposing it upon persons whose views are less unequivocal than yours.' To the other party it says, 'It is vehemently suspected that you are hostile to the cause in which we are engaged: this suspicion is either true or false; if false, we ought not to suspect you, and much less ought we to put you to this corrupting and nugatory purgation; if true, you will either candidly confess your difference, or dishonestly prevaricate: be candid, and we will indignantly banish you; be dishonest, and we will receive you as bosom-friends.'