The bill which was some days ago introduced into the Senate, by Mr. Van Buren, to exempt the Society of Friends, and the people called Shakers, from the performance of militia duty, and also from the payment of all commutation therefor, was on Wednesday taken up in the Senate, and passed, 18 to 10.

The debate it produced was short but animated— Mr. Van Buren, in opening it, stated, that he had so frequently explained his views on that subject, on former occasions, that any considerations he might urge was familiar to a great proportion of the Senate. That he hoped the time had now arrived when an end would be put to the petty warfare which had for some time been carrying on under the authority of our laws, upon the religious scruples of a highly respectable class of our fellow-citizens. That it was well known, that the persons embraced by the provisions of the biil entertained conscientious objections agains bearing arms—that those objections formed a part of their religious creed—that no one doubted their sincerity,—that by the constitution those scruples were so far regarded as to exempt them from bearing arms, on the payment of such commutation as the state might enact. Mr. Van Buren said that it had always been his opinion that that commutation ought never to be exacted in time of peace; that the priviledge secured to them by the constitution was virtually denied, by exacting a fine at their hands for the enjoyment of religious freedom; that whatever might be proper in a state of war, when the lives and entire liberties of our citizens were at stake, that was no justifiable inducement to infringe on what they considered the extent of religious freedom, on the sole ground of their being excused from attending on regimental and company parades. Mr. Van Buren further urged, that such proceedings were peculiarly objectionable in a government like ours, a government confessedly the freest, if not the only free one, in the world; a government under which the rights of conscience, and especially in matters of religion, was, and had from its formation been, an object of peculiar solicitude; that he thought it derogatory to the character of our political institutions, and unwise in any respect, to continue any longer the controversy which had been carried on between the state and a portion of its citizens, distinguished for their morality, their temperance, and their industry. He stated, that he was informed, that in many cases their property under the existing laws was sacrificed; and that in some instances, their bodies had been, and were now imprisoned for the fine; that in one county alone, fourteen of our fellow citizens were deprived of their liberty for adhering to their conscientious scruples; that he confessed he felt a strong solicitude that so unpleasant a circumstance as the imprisonment of a citizen for the nonpayment of $4, arising from a sense of religious duty, should be removed as soon as practicable. He further urged, that there were many considerations of pure interest in favor of the exemption; one of which he would detain the committee by stating—that they not only supported their own poor, but contributed of their means as much as the rest of our citizens, to support the poor of all other denominations. Mr. Van Buren thought that by that alone they more than compensated for this exemption, if compensation was even proper.