The ♦separation of Church and State was therefore a practical necessity, based on causes which were deeply rooted in the life of the people. It was almost a forced step on the way of development, not an enthusiastic outburst in favor of an abstract principle. This is why the ground which was then gained was never lost again, why there was no reaction and no reversion to the former order of a religious establishment as happened in France after the great revolution which began in 1789. The moderate, self-restrained liberalism of the colonists held its own after the struggle was over and kept on progressing slowly. The violent radicalism of the older country went so far that many steps had to be retraced, and the fight of separating Church and State had to be fought out all over again in our own time, more than a century after all religion was abolished during the reign of terror. A letter sent by an unnamed German Jew on behalf of himself and his brethren to the President of the Continental Congress, in which the wretched condition of the Jews in Germany at that time is depicted, and their desire to become subjects of the thirteen provinces is expressed, appeared in the _Deutsches Museum_ of June, 1783, and four years later a separate edition of it was published under the title, _Schreiben eines deutschen Juden an den Nord Amerikanischen Präsidenten_.[14] As there is no record of its reception or discussion in America, it probably attracted very little attention. The same is also true of the letter which Jonas Phillips (b. in Rhenish Prussia, 1736; d. in New York, Jan. 28, 1803), of Philadelphia, sent to the Federal Convention in relation to the removal of the test oath in Pennsylvania which discriminated against Jews and those who did not subscribe to Christian doctrines (Sept. 7, 1787). When the fundamental law of the land was adopted there were no exciting debates about the question of religious liberty. The clause abolishing religious tests in the Federal Constitution passed almost unanimously; the State of North Carolina alone voted against it, and as there were hardly any Jews there at that time, the fear of the Roman Catholics was the only cause for the illiberal stand taken by its representatives. The extent of that fear can be understood from the fact that when the State Convention of North Carolina to adopt the Federal Constitution convened in Hillsborough, in July, 1788, pamphlets were circulated “pointing out in all seriousness the danger of the Pope being elected President should the Constitution be adopted.” (See Hühner, _Religious Liberty in North Carolina_, “Publications,” XVI, p. 42). The time for religious liberty as well as for independence in national affairs had come and was accepted as a matter of course, and it is the exceptional glory of the American Revolution that all the liberties won were retained and the young nation was enabled to continue on the way of progress unhindered by