Of course I have fully explained to you, and I do not wish to have any confusion upon that point, that the judges themselves are also representatives of the people, because they are elected by the people, or appointed by those agents of the people who are elected by the people.
I have intentionally repeated, sometimes over and over, rules and reasons, because we must have them in our minds so that they will never be forgotten.
Now as above explained, the citizens of each State are guaranteed the right to go to another State, and exercise in that other State the same rights as the citizens of that State. This is in the spirit of America which gives us all equal opportunity. A citizen of Massachusetts going to the State of Minnesota has the same rights in Minnesota as the citizens of Minnesota have. Minnesota could not discriminate against him because he was a citizen of another State. Of course he could not exercise rights which the citizens of Minnesota were not entitled to, but all rights of the citizens of Minnesota are guaranteed to him while he is in that State.
Now as to the provision which forever bars any religious test as the qualification for any office or place of public trust under the United States. We have already given serious consideration to the great fundamental human privilege which the Constitution guards, the right to worship God according to the dictates of one's conscience. We have already found that regardless of church or creed each person stands before the law equal in our country. The older you grow, the more fully you realize what religion means to a great many people in this world, the more fully you will appreciate the blessing which came to humanity in these provisions of the Constitution. There are some of us who do not belong to any church organization, and yet we are intensely interested, because there was a time when every person was compelled by law to belong to a church organization, to the state church, the state religion. I have already explained that we find solemn statutes enacted by the British Parliament, as an illustration, which provided for a death penalty for those who did not believe in the religion of the state.
There is no religious test which can be made a qualification for any office under the United States; nor for any office for any State in the Union. There should be no individual discrimination in voting for public officials because of the religion or church to which a candidate for office may belong. These are sacred, individual rights. Men must be judged by their conduct, by their character, by their ability, by their capacity to serve the people and their country, not by the religion which one may profess.