The Recent Attempt to Defeat the Constitutional Provisions in Favor of Religious Freedom, Considered in Reference to the Trust Conveyances of Hanover Street Church
Boston: Sold by Hilliard, Gray, and Co. and by Bowles and Dearborn, 1828. Second Edition. A pamphlet by the Federalist lawyer John Lowell (1769-1840) on the "Orthodox" party’s attempt to use property law to bypass the evolving religious protections of the Massachusetts Constitution. Lowell decries the "ingenious attempt" of the clergy—specifically Lyman Beecher—to bind church property to rigid Trinitarian creeds through restrictive "Trust Deeds." He further argues that these legal instruments were a "trap" designed to prevent future generations from exercising their constitutional right to freedom of conscience. The pamphlet is a masterful defense of Religious Liberalism, warning that such "dead hand" control over property threatened to return the Commonwealth to a state of ecclesiastical tyranny. A foundational text for the study of American Jurisprudence, the disestablishment of the state church in Massachusetts (which wasn't finalized until 1833), and the intellectual history of Boston Unitarianism.
Original string-bound folded sheets, 24 pp. Top edge uncut; droplet stain to the lower spine. Item #14642
Price: $75.00