Page:Records of the Life of the Rev. John Murray.djvu/220

210 dictate a mode of worship to another; that, in that respect, every man stood upon a perfect equality; and they believed that the paucity of their numbers, and the prejudices of their enemies, had pointed them out as proper objects for the first essay of religious tyranny; hence they rather chose to seek redress from the great law, made by the people, to govern the Legislature, than from the Legislature itself; believing they should betray the freedom of their country, if they timidly shrunk from a trial, upon the great principles of the constitution, indeed they seemed to consider themselves as the Hamdens of our religious world.

In the course of the month of September, 1785, a writ of review was again served, and the final decision was referred, and deferred, until the June of 1786, when a conclusive verdict was obtained in favour of the plaintiffs. Mr. Murray was then in the state of Connecticut. We transcribe an extract from a letter, which wafted to the eye and ear of the promulgator intelligence of the emancipation of his adherents.

"Last Tuesday our party with their cloud of witnesses were present, and called out at the bar of the Supreme Judicial Court. The cause was opened by Mr. Bradbury, and replied to by Mr. Hitchborne; the court adjourned to the succeeding morning. I arrived just in season to hear it taken up by Mr. Parsons, and closed by Mr. Sullivan. I wish for an opportunity to render my acknowledgments to this gentleman. He displayed upon this day an eloquence, not less than Roman. The judges summed up the whole. The first was ambiguous, the second was so trammelled, and inarticulate, as to be scarcely understood; but the remaining three, have acquired a glory which will be as lasting as time. The conduct of Judge Dana attracted particular notice. You may remember he heretofore laboured against us; there appeared a disposition to traverse our counsel; in his comments on the constitution, those parts, which made for us, he turned against us; he asserted the tax was not persecuting, but legal; religious societies were bodies corporate, or meant to be so; sect and denomination were promiscuously used and synonimous: and the whole was delivered with a sententious gravity, the result of faculties, laboriously cultivated by experience and study. But a revolution had now passed in his mind, and when he noticed that article in the constitution, which directs monies to be applied to the teacher of his own religious sect, he said, the whole cause depended upon the construction of that clause. He had heretofore been of opinion, it meant teachers of bodies corporate; he then thought otherwise; as the constitution was meant for a liberal purpose, its construction should be of a most liberal kind; it meant, in