Contrast the importance of religion to the civil state, as indicated by the sovereign holding the religious crosier, with James Madison's belief (p. 417) that the civil government should be completely impartial to religion. Why do you think that Madison and Hobbes disagreed on this issue?
How would nonviolent civil disobedience of the kind advocated by Martin Luther King Jr. in Letter from Birmingham Jail (p. 425) fit into Hobbes's Leviathan state? Is it possible to disagree with a sovereign without rejecting his or her sovereignty?
Compare the abstract "Sovereign" in this etching with the "Liberty" figure in Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People" (p. 494). How do both images create allegories through their central figures?
WRITING ABOUT THE TEXT
Examine the rhetorical power of images using the frontispiece of Leviathan and one other image from this book. Explain how images can frame arguments and make assertions visually, and compare this to other ways of making the same arguments.
Define "sovereignty" as you believe it should apply to societies and governments. From where do you think governments draw their legitimate authority? Compare your view to the Hobbesian view portrayed in the frontispiece.
Analyze the use of a particular set of symbols (i.e., crowns, military implements, religious icons) in both the upper and the lower portion of the frontispiece. Explain how these symbols work with the larger symbolic structure of the work.
james madison
Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments
[1785]
JAMES MADISON (1 751-1 836) wore many hats during the founding of the United States of America, and he did more to shape and ratify the Constitution than any other person in the Republic. He led the charge for a Constitutional Convention in 1787 to revise the Articles of Confederation, and he wrote the initial document that delegates used as a working draft. When the Convention ended, Madison joined Alexander Hamilton to write the Federalist Papers, which refuted the arguments of the many colonists who felt that the government created by the Constitution was too powerful and would lead to the kind of tyranny they experienced under British rule. As soon as the Constitution was ratified, Madison became the legislative force behind the Bill of Rights. Once the new government was in place, Madison served for many years as a leader in the House of Representatives before becoming Thomas Jefferson's secretary of state and then, finally, the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to1817.
Before Madison ever became involved in national politics, however, he served as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, to which he was first elected in 1776 at the age of twenty-five. During his first term he became an ally of Thomas Jefferson, and the two worked on Jefferson's signature piece of legislation in the Virginia assembly, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom—a radical document for its time. It disestablished the Anglican Church in Virginia, guaranteed full religious freedom to all citizens, and called for a complete separation of church and state. The statute was defeated in 1779 and, soon after, Jefferson was appointed the United States Minister to France, where he remained until 1789.
In 1785, however, Madison had an opportunity to revive Jefferson's religious freedom bill when Patrick Henry, then governor of Virginia, introduced a bill to use tax revenues to subsidize churches and other religious organizations. Henry's bill was cross-denominational—it allowed taxpayers to direct their tax subsidies to the religious organization of their choice—but it violated the strict church-state separation that both Madison and Jefferson believed to be essential to a free society. Madison successfully led the opposition to Henry's bill and then brought Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom back to the floor, where it passed by a wide margin.
In the midst of the Virginia debate over a religious tax, Madison wrote a brief pamphlet for the general public—who could pressure their representatives in Congress— outlining his views. "Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments" is a reminder ("memorial") to Virginians of the tyrannies they experienced under the
European system of state religions, and a "remonstrance," or forcible protest, against any kind of mixing of church and state. For Madison, the only position that a civil government can take towards religion is "non-cognizance," that is, not recognizing religion at all. When the state does this, Madison believed, religious ideas can circulate in an intellectual free market where the best ones will naturally flourish.
"Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments" is organized like a legislative resolution, with a series of clauses giving the rationale for the resolution (each beginning with "because") and a final, succinct statement of the main point. You'll notice that certain nouns are capitalized and others are not; while eighteenth-century usage dictated this punctuation, it was falling into disuse and used haphazardly by the time Madison wrote "Memorial." The pamphlet helped Madison secure passage of Jefferson's Declaration of Religious Freedom in Virginia, and it is one of our clearest glimpses of how Madison, the principle author of both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, conceived of the relationship between church and state in a free republic.
To the Honorable the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia
We the subscribers, citizens of the said Commonwealth, having taken into serious consideration, a Bill printed by order of the last Session of General Assembly, entitled "A Bill establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion,"[183]and conceiving that the same if finally armed with the sanctions of a law, will be a dangerous abuse of power, are bound as faithful members of a free State to remonstrate against it, and to declare the reasons by which we are determined. We remonstrate against the said Bill,
1. Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, "that religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence." The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also, because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.[184] Before any man
2. Civil Society: the portion of society that is subject to the law or the regulation of the state.
can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governour of the Universe.[185] And if a member of Civil Society, do it with a saving of his allegiance to the Universal Sovereign. We maintain therefore that in matters of Religion, no man's right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance.[186] True it is, that no other rule exists, by which any question which may divide a Society, can be ultimately determined, but the will of the majority; but it is also true that the majority may trespass on the rights of the minority.
Because Religion be exempt from the authority of the Society at large, still less can it be subject to that of the Legislative Body. The latter are but the creatures and vicegerents of the former. Their jurisdiction is both derivative and limited: it is limited with regard to the co-ordinate departments, more necessarily is it limited with regard to the constituents. The preservation of a free Government requires not merely, that the metes and bounds[187] which separate each department of power be invariably maintained; but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the rights of the people. The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their authority, and are Tyrants. The People who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves.