Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/926

858 faith. Here let us stop." The same thought was conveyed by Jefferson, in his first inaugural address, in the apothegm, "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none."

The policy of non-intervention embraced matters of religion as well as of politics. By the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States, Congress was expressly forbidden to make any law "respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This inhibition against governmental interference with religious opinions and practices was in its spirit extended to the intercourse of the United States with foreign nations. In Article IX. of the treaty between the United States and Tripoli, which was concluded on November 4, 1796, during the administration of Washington, we find this significant declaration: "As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity of Mussulmen; it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries." With the omission of the introductory phrase, a similar declaration was inserted in the treaty with Tripoli of 1805, and in the treaties with Algiers of 1815 and 1816. A stipulation less broad in its tolerance appears in Article XXIX. of the treaty between the United States and China, signed at Tientsin, June 18, 1858. This article, after reciting that the principles of the Christian religion are "recognized as teaching men to do good, and to do to others as they would have others do to them," provides that "any person, whether citizen of the United States or Chinese convert, who, according to these tenets, peaceably teach and practise the principles of Christianity, shall in no case be interfered with or molested." By Article IV., however, of the Burlingame treaty of 1868, this stipulation is mentioned as an introduction to the declaration that it is "further agreed that citizens of the United States in China of every religious persuasion, and Chinese subjects in the United States, shall enjoy entire liberty of conscience, and shall be exempt from all disability or persecution on account of their religious faith or worship in either country." In harmony with this principle was the simple declaration in the treaty with Siam of 1856, and in the treaty with Japan of 1858, that Americans in those countries should "be allowed the free exercise of their religion." They were to be protected, not as the adherents or the propagandists