MR. GLADSTONE AND MARYLAND TOLERATION.
It was supposed that Mr. Gladstone had been so triumphantly refuted, as a polemic, that he would take a prudent refuge in silence. At a moment when neighboring nations were rent with religious dissensions, and when England needed repose from, rather than fuel added to, her internal agitations, a statesman and ex-premier of the British Empire assumes the rôle of a religious agitator and accuser, and startles, as well as offends, the public sense of appropriateness by his useless and baseless indictment against the Catholic Church, to which England owes all that is glorious in her constitution and in her history; against English Catholics in particular, his fellow-subjects, who of all others, by their loyalty and Christian faith and virtues, can preserve the liberties and the institutions of their country, now threatened alike by infidel corruption, Protestant indifference, and communistic malice; and against that saintly and illustrious pontiff whose hand is only raised to bless, whose lips breathe unfaltering prayer, and whose voice and pen have never ceased to announce and defend the eternal truths of religion, to uphold morality, and to refute the crying errors and evils of our times. The unanswerable refutations which Mr. Gladstone’s attacks elicited from Cardinal Manning, Bishops Ullathorne and Vaughan, Drs. Newman and Capel, and Canon Neville, not to speak of the Italian work of Mgr. Nardi and the rebukes administered by the periodical press, had, it was believed, even by impartial Protestants, effectually driven this new champion of the old No-popery party in England from the field of polemics. But, like all new recruits, the ex-premier seems incapable of realizing defeat, or perhaps is anxious, at least, to retire with the honors of war.
Not content with the serial publication of his three tracts, he has just now republished them in one volume, with a Preface, under the title of Rome and the Newest Fashions in Religion—a title as unbecoming the gravity of his subjects as it is unsupported by the contents of the work. The preface to the republication not only reiterates his accusations on all points, but the author, not satisfied with his new part as theologian, essays the rôle of historical critic, and thus gives prominence to a historical question of deep interest and of especial importance to the Catholics of this country.
The same animus which inspired Mr. Gladstone’s attacks against the church, against his Catholic fellow-countrymen, and against the most august and venerable personage in Christendom, has also induced him to deny to the Catholic founders of Maryland the honorable renown, accorded to them heretofore by historians with singular unanimity, of having, when in power, practised religious toleration towards all Christian sects, and secured freedom of conscience, not only by their unwavering action and practice, but also by giving it the stability and sanctions of statute law. This is certainly the only phase in this celebrated controversy upon which it remains for Mr. Gladstone to be answered.
His Eminence Cardinal Manning, in The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil Allegiance, at page 88 (New York edition), writes:
“For the same reasons I deplore the haste, I must say the passion, which carried away so large a mind to affirm or to imply that the church of this day would, if she could, use torture, and force, and coercion in matters of religious belief.… In the year 1830 the Catholics of Belgium were in a vast majority, but they did not use their political power to constrain the faith or conscience of any man. The ‘Four Liberties’ of Belgium were the work of Catholics. This is the most recent example of what Catholics would do if they were in possession of power. But there is one more ancient and more homely for us Englishmen. It is found at a date when the old traditions of the Catholic Church were still vigorous in the minds of men.… If the modern spirit had any share in producing the constitution of Belgium, it certainly had no share in producing the constitution of Maryland. Lord Baltimore, who had been Secretary of State under James I., in 1633 emigrated to the American plantations, where, through Lord Stafford’s influence, he had obtained a grant of land.… They named their new country Maryland, and there they settled. The oath of the governor was in these terms: ‘I will not, by myself or any other, directly or indirectly, molest any person professing to believe in Jesus Christ, for or in respect of religion.’ Lord Baltimore invited the Puritans of Massachusetts—who, like himself, had renounced their country for conscience’ sake—to come into Maryland. In 1649, when active persecution had sprung up again in England, the Council of Maryland, on the 21st of April, passed this statute; ‘And whereas the forcing of the conscience in matters of religion hath frequently fallen out to be of dangerous consequence in the commonwealth where it has been practised, and for the more quiet and peaceable government of the province, and the better to preserve mutual love and amity among the inhabitants, no person within the province professing to believe in Jesus Christ shall be anyways troubled, molested, or discountenanced for his or her religion, or in the free exercise thereof.’ The Episcopalians and Protestants fled from Virginia into Maryland. Such was the commonwealth founded by a Catholic upon the broad moral law I have here laid down—that faith is an act of the will, and that to force men to profess what they do not believe is contrary to the law of God, and that to generate faith by force is morally impossible.”
Mr. Gladstone, in his Vaticanism, page 96, replies to the above as follows:
“It appears to me that Archbishop Manning has completely misapprehended the history of the settlement of Maryland and the establishment of toleration there for all believers in the Holy Trinity. It was a wise measure, for which the two Lords Baltimore, father and son, deserve the highest honor. But the measure was really defensive; and its main and very legitimate purpose plainly was to secure the free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion. Immigration into the colony was by the charter free; and only by this and other popular provisions could the territory have been extricated from the grasp of its neighbors in Virginia, who claimed it as their own. It was apprehended that the Puritans would flood it, as they did; and it seemed certain that but for this excellent provision the handful of Roman Catholic founders would have been unable to hold their ground. The facts are given in Bancroft’s History of the United States, vol. i., chap. vii.”
Again, in his Preface to Rome and the Newest Fashions in Religion, page viii., Mr. Gladstone writes:
“It has long been customary to quote the case of Maryland in proof that, more than two centuries ago, the Roman Catholic Church, where power was in its hands, could use it for the purposes of toleration. Archbishop Manning has repeated the boast, and with very large exaggeration.
“I have already shown from Bancroft’s History that in the case of Maryland there was no question of a merciful use of power towards others, but simply of a wise and defensive prudence with respect to themselves—that is to say, so far as the tolerant legislation of the colony was the work of Roman Catholics. But it does not appear to have been their work. By the fourth article of the charter we find that no church could be consecrated there except according to the laws of the church at home. The tenth article guaranteed to the colonists generally ‘all privileges, franchises, and liberties of this our kingdom of England.’ It was in 1649 that the Maryland Act of Toleration was passed, which, however, prescribed the punishment of death for any one who denied the Trinity. Of the small legislative body which passed it, two-thirds appear to have been Protestant, the recorded numbers being sixteen and eight respectively. The colony was open to the immigration of Puritans and all Protestants, and any permanent and successful oppression by a handful of Roman Catholics was altogether impossible. But the colonial act seems to have been an echo of the order of the House of Commons at home, on the 27th of October, 1645, that the inhabitants of the Summer Islands, and such others as shall join themselves to them, ‘shall without any molestation or trouble have and enjoy the liberty of their consciences in matters of God’s worship’; and of a British ordinance of 1647.
“Upon the whole, then, the picture of Maryland legislation is a gratifying one; but the historic theory which assigns the credit of it to the Roman Church has little foundation in fact.”
Let us first test Mr. Gladstone’s accuracy and consistency as a historical critic. He begins by alleging that the Maryland Toleration Act was a measure of defensive prudence in the interests of the Catholics themselves, and that “its main and very legitimate purpose plainly was to secure the free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion.” He then asserts that this act of toleration was not the work of the Catholics at all, but of a Protestant majority in the legislature which passed it. We have, then, here presented the extraordinary picture of an alleged Protestant legislature passing a law which was really intended to protect Catholics against Protestant ascendency and apprehended Protestant persecution, and whose “main and very legitimate purpose was to secure the free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion.” Surely, the Protestants of that day were liberal and generous, especially as it was an age of persecution, when not only were Catholics hunted down both in England and her Virginia and New England colonies, but even Protestants of different sects were relentlessly persecuting each other. And in what proper sense can they be said to have been Protestants with whom it was “a very legitimate purpose” to legislate in the express interests of Roman Catholics?
Mr. Gladstone also states that the Toleration Act was passed in the apprehension of an influx of Puritans, and to protect the colony “from the grasp of its neighbors in Virginia”; whereas his favorite author, Mr. Bancroft, informs Mr. Gladstone that Lord Baltimore invited both the Episcopalians of Virginia and the Puritans of New England into his domains, offering a gift of lands as an inducement; and it is a historical fact that numbers of them accepted the invitation.
Again, Mr. Gladstone, while apparently treating the Toleration Act as a Catholic measure, animadverts with evident disapproval on that feature in it which “prescribed the punishment of death for any one who denied the Trinity,” and then immediately he claims that the legislature which passed the act was a Protestant body—“two-thirds,” he writes, “appear to have been Protestants”—thus imposing upon his Protestant friends the odium of inflicting death for the exercise of conscience and religious belief; and that, too, not upon Papists, as they were not included in the punishment.
Mr. Gladstone, in The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil Allegiance (page 83), expressing no doubt the common sentiments of Protestants since the time of Luther and Henry VIII., uses these irreverent words in regard to the Blessed Virgin Mary, that peerless and immaculate Lady whom four-fifths of the Christian world venerate as the Mother of God:
“The sinlessness of the Virgin Mary and the personal infallibility of the Pope are the characteristic dogmas of modern Romanism.… Both rest on pious fiction and fraud; both present a refined idolatry by clothing a pure humble woman and a mortal sinful man with divine attributes. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which exempts the Virgin Mary from sin and guilt, perverts Christianism into Marianism.… The worship of a woman is virtually substituted for the worship of Christ.”
And yet with such sentiments, in which doubtless the Protestants of Maryland in 1649 concurred, he attributes to, and claims for, those Protestants who, he says, constituted two-thirds of the Maryland Colonial Legislature in 1649, the passage of a law which enacted “that whosoever shall use or utter any reproachful words or speeches concerning the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Saviour, … shall for the first offence forfeit five pounds sterling, or, if not able to pay, be publicly whipped and imprisoned during pleasure, etc.; for the second offence, ten pounds, etc.; and for the third shall forfeit all his lands and goods, and be banished from the province.”
The following anecdote, related by the Protestant Bozman,[98] is quite pertinent to our subject and to our cause:
“And in the time of the Long Parliament when the differences between the Lord Baltimore and Colonell Samuel Matthews, as agent for the colony of Virginia, were depending before a committee of that parliament for the navy, that clause in the sayd law, concerning the Virgin Mary, was at that committee objected as an exception against his lordship; whereupon a worthy member of the sayd committee stood up and sayd, that he wondered that any such exception should be taken against his lordship; for (says hee) doth not the Scripture say, that all generations shall call her blessed? (The author here cites in the margin, ‘Lu. i. 48.’) And the committee insisted no more on that exception.”
The authorities relied upon by Mr. Gladstone, besides Bancroft, whom we shall presently refer to, are Maryland Toleration, by the Rev. Ethan Allen, and Maryland not a Catholic Colony, by E. D. N. The former is a pamphlet of sixty-four pages addressed by the author, a Protestant minister, to his brethren in the ministry in 1855, is purely a sectarian tract, hostile to every Catholic view and interest, and partisan in spirit and in matter. The latter is a few pages of printed matter, consisting of three newspaper articles published last year in the Daily Pioneer of St. Paul, Minnesota, and recently reprinted in the North-Western Chronicle of the same place, the editor of which states that the author of the letters is the Rev. Edward D. Neill, also a Protestant minister, and president of Macalester College. The letters of “E. D. N.” were sharply and ably replied to by Mr. William Markoe, formerly an Episcopal minister, now a member of the Catholic Church. The letters of “E. D. N.” are more sectarian than historical, and cannot be quoted in a controversy in which such names as Chalmers, Bancroft, McSherry, Bozman, etc., figure. The attack of “E. D. N.” on the personal character of Lord Baltimore is enough to condemn his effort.
But Mr. Gladstone’s principal author is Bancroft, from whose pages he claims to have shown that “in the case of Maryland there was no question of a merciful use of power towards others, but simply of a wise and defensive prudence with respect to themselves.” Motives of self-interest are thus substituted for those of benevolence and mercy. If this were correctly stated, why does Mr. Gladstone state that the Act of Toleration was a measure “for which the two Lords Baltimore, father and son, deserve the highest honor”? But our task is now to inquire how far his author sustains Mr. Gladstone in denying to the Catholics of Maryland, who enacted religious toleration, all motives of benevolence and mercy.
Mr. Bancroft, on the contrary, asserts that the “new government [of Maryland] was erected on a foundation as extraordinary as its results were benevolent.”[99] In speaking of Lord Baltimore, the founder of Maryland, its chief statesman and law-giver, he extols his moderation, sincerity of character, and disinterestedness,[100] and proceeds to say:
“Calvert deserves to be ranked among the most wise and benevolent law-givers of all ages. He was the first in the history of the Christian world to seek for religious security and peace by the practice of justice, and not by the exercise of power; to plan the establishment of popular institutions with the enjoyment of liberty of conscience; to advance the career of civilization by recognizing the rightful equality of all Christian sects. The asylum of Papists was the spot where, in a remote corner of the world, on the banks of rivers which, as yet, had hardly been explored, the mild forbearance of a proprietary adopted religious freedom as the basis of the state.”[101]
Referring to the act of taking possession of their new homes in Maryland by the Catholic pilgrims, the same author says, thereby “religious liberty obtained a home, its only home in the wide world, at the humble village which bore the name of St. Mary’s.”[102] And speaking of the progress of the colony, he further says: “Under the mild institutions and munificence of Baltimore the dreary wilderness soon bloomed with swarming life and activity of prosperous settlements; the Roman Catholics who were oppressed by the laws of England were sure to find a peaceful asylum in the quiet harbors of the Chesapeake; and there, too, Protestants were sheltered against Protestant intolerance.”[103] Such, in fine, is the repeated language of an author whom Mr. Gladstone refers to in proof of his assertion that toleration in Maryland was simply a measure of self-defence.
Chalmers bears the following testimony to the same point: “He” (Lord Baltimore) “laid the foundation of his province upon the broad basis of security to property and of freedom of religion, granting, in absolute fee, fifty acres of land to every emigrant; establishing Christianity according to the old common law, of which it is a part, without allowing pre-eminence to any particular sect. The wisdom of his choice soon converted a dreary wilderness into a prosperous colony.”[104]
And Judge Story, with the history of the colony from its beginning and the charter before him, adds the weight of judicial approval in the following words: “It is certainly very honorable to the liberality and public spirit of the proprietary that he should have introduced into his fundamental policy the doctrine of general toleration and equality among Christian sects (for he does not appear to have gone further), and have thus given the earliest example of a legislator inviting his subjects to the free indulgence of religious opinion. This was anterior to the settlement of Rhode Island, and therefore merits the enviable rank of being the first recognition among the colonists of the glorious and indefeasible rights of conscience.”[105]
But there is another view, clearly sustained by an important and certain chain of facts, which has never occurred to the historical writers on Maryland toleration, at least in this connection, though they give the facts upon which the view is based, and which wholly destroys the theory of Mr. Gladstone and his authorities. The latter may dispute in regard to the merits and motives of the statute of 1649, but they do not touch the real question. It is an incontestable fact that the religious toleration which historians have so much extolled in the Catholic colonists and founders of Maryland did not originate with, or derive its existence from, that law of 1649, but, on the contrary, it existed long anterior to, and independent of, it. This great feature in the Catholic government of Maryland had been established by the Catholic lord-proprietary, his lieutenant-governor, agents, and colonists, and faithfully practised for fifteen years prior to the Toleration Act of 1649. From 1634 to 1649 it had been enforced with unwavering firmness and protected with exalted benevolence. This important fact is utterly ignored by Mr. Gladstone and his authors, the Rev. Ethan Allen and the Rev. Edward D. Neill, but the facts related by Bancroft, and indeed by all historians, prove it beyond a question. Bancroft records that the very “foundations” of the colony were laid upon the “basis” of religious toleration, and throughout the eulogiums pronounced by him on the religious toleration of Maryland, which we have quoted above, refers entirely to the period of the fifteen years preceding the passage of the act of 1649. The Toleration Act was nothing else than the declaration of the existing state of things and of the long and cherished policy and practice of the colony—a formal sanction and statutory enactment of the existing common law of the province.
Before proceeding to demonstrate this fact, we will briefly examine how far Mr. Bancroft sustains the theory or views of Mr. Gladstone in regard to the act itself. After extolling the motives and conduct of the Catholics of Maryland in establishing religious toleration, as we have remarked above, during the fifteen years preceding the passage of the act, Mr. Bancroft refers to that statute in terms of highest praise. He barely hints at the possibility that a foresight, on the part of the colonists, of impending dangers to themselves from threatened or apprehended Protestant ascendency and persecution, might have entered among the motives which induced them to pass that act; but he nowhere asserts the fact, nor does he allege anything beyond conjecture for the possibility of the motive. Indeed, his mode of expressing himself indicates that, though he thought it possible, his own impression was that such motive did not suggest in part even the passage of the act; for he writes: “As if, with a foresight of impending danger and an earnest desire to stay its approach, the Roman Catholics of Maryland, with the earnest concurrence of their governor and of the proprietary, determined to place upon their statute-book an act for the religious freedom which had ever been sacred on their soil.” Compare this with the language of Mr. Gladstone, who excludes every motive but that of self-interest, and refers to Bancroft in support of his view, but does not quote his language. Mr. Bancroft, on the other hand, after quoting from the statute, exclaims, such was “its sublime tenor.”
Mr. Griffith does not agree with the suggestion that a sense of fear or apprehension entered into the motives of the Maryland lawgivers, and says: “That this liberty did not proceed from fear of others, on the one hand, or licentious dispositions in the government, on the other, is sufficiently evident from the penalties prescribed against blasphemy, swearing, drunkenness, and Sabbath-breaking, by the preceding sections of the act, and proviso, at the end, that such exercise of religion did not molest or conspire against the proprietary or his government.”[106]
Let us now proceed to examine still further whether Maryland was a Catholic colony, whether it was by Catholics that religious toleration was established there, and whether it had its origin in the act of 1649 or in the long previous practice and persistent generosity and mercy of the Catholic rulers of the province. It is true that while the territory afterwards granted to Lord Baltimore was subject to the Virginia charter, a settlement of Episcopalians was made on Kent Island; but they were very few in numbers, always adhered to Virginia rather than to Maryland in their sympathies, were so turbulent and disloyal that Governor Calvert had to reduce them by force of arms, and no one has ever pretended that they founded a State. We will show what relation they had in point of numbers and political influence to the colony, and that they did not form even the slightest element of power in the founding of the province.
Maryland was founded alone by the Catholic Lord Baltimore and his colonists. Such is the voice of history. It is rather disingenuous in the reverend authors of the pamphlets mentioned by Mr. Gladstone that upon so flimsy a circumstance they assert that Maryland was not settled first by Catholics. Their voices are drowned by the concurrent voice of tradition and of history. It is only the reassertion of the pretensions of these zealous sectarians by so respectable a person as Mr. Gladstone, and that, too, in one of the most remarkable controversies of the age, that renders a recurrence to the historical authorities and their results at all desirable or necessary.
The colony of Maryland was conceived in the spirit of liberty. It was the flight of English Catholics from Protestant persecution in their native country. The state of the penal laws in England against Catholics at this period is too well known. The zealous Protestant Bozman writes that they “contained severities enough to keep them [the Catholics] in all due subjection.”
It was at this hour of their extremest suffering that the Catholics of England found a friend and leader in Sir George Calvert, who held important trusts under the governments of James and Charles, and enjoyed the confidence of his sovereigns and of his country. “In an age when religious controversy still continued to be active, when increasing divisions among Protestants were spreading a general alarm, his mind sought relief from controversy in the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church, and, preferring the avowal of his opinions to the emoluments of office, he resigned his place and openly professed his conversion.”[107] Even after this he was advanced to the peerage under the title of Lord Baltimore—an Irish title—and was appointed one of the principal secretaries under James I. His positions in the government gave him not only an acquaintance with American colonization, but an official connection with it. Of these he now availed himself to provide an asylum abroad for his fellow-Catholics from the relentless persecution they were suffering at home. His first effort was to found a Catholic colony on the shores of Newfoundland. A settlement was begun. Avalon was the name it received, and twice did Lord Baltimore cross the ocean to visit his cherished cradle of liberty. Baffled by political difficulties, the severity of the climate, and an ungenerous soil, he abandoned the endeavor. That his motive all along was to found a place of refuge for Catholics from persecution is certain from the time and circumstances under which the enterprise was undertaken, as well as from the testimony of historians. Oldmixon says: “This gentleman [Lord Baltimore], being of the Romish religion, was uneasy at home, and had the same reason to leave the kingdom as those gentlemen had who went to New England, to enjoy the liberty of his conscience.”[108] Bozman writes that “by their [the Puritans’] clamors for a vigorous execution of the laws against Papists, it became now necessary for them [the Catholics] also to look about for a place of refuge.”[109] The same writer also refers to a MS. in the British Museum, written by Lord Baltimore himself, in which this motive is mentioned. Driven from Avalon by the hardness of the climate, he visited Virginia with the same view; but hence again he was driven by religious bigotry and the presentation of an anti-popery oath from a colony “from which the careful exclusion of Roman Catholics had been originally avowed as a special object.” His mind, filled with the thought of founding a place of refuge for Catholics, next turned to the country beyond the Potomac, which had been embraced originally in the Virginia charter, but which, upon the cancellation of that charter, had reverted to the crown. He obtained a grant and charter from the king, so liberal in its terms that, Griffith says, it became the model for future grants. The name was changed from Crescentia to that of Maryland, in honor of the Catholic queen of Charles; but the devout Catholics of the expedition, in their piety, extended the term Terra Mariæ, the Land of Mary, into an act of devotion and honor to Mary, the Queen of Heaven.
The first Lord Baltimore did not live to see his project carried into effect; he died on the 25th of April, 1632, was succeeded by his son Cecilius, second Lord Baltimore, who, as Bancroft says, was the heir of his intentions no less than of his fortunes; to him was issued the charter negotiated by his father, bearing date the 15th of June, 1632.
Founded by a Catholic, designed as an asylum for persecuted Catholics, is it to be supposed that Lord Baltimore and his brother, Governor Leonard Calvert, who organized and led forth the pilgrims, would be so inconsistent at this moment of their success as to lose sight of the main object of the movement, and carry Protestant colonists with whom to found a Catholic colony? If, as Rev. Edward D. Neill, author of Maryland not a Catholic Colony, says, there were only twenty Catholic gentlemen in the ship, and three hundred servants, mostly Protestants, would it have been deemed necessary to carry two Catholic priests and their assistants along to administer to the souls of so small a number? In point of fact, the Protestants were so few that they brought no minister with them, and it was several years before their entire numbers justified their having either a minister or a place of worship. The voyage on the Ark and Dove was more like a Catholic pilgrimage than a secular expedition. The principal parts of the ship (the Ark), says Father White in his Narrative, were committed to the protection of God especially, and to his Most Holy Mother, and S. Ignatius, and all the guardian angels of Maryland. The vessel was a floating chapel, an ocean shrine of Catholic faith and devotion, consecrated by the unbloody sacrifice, and resounding with Latin litanies; its safety from many a threatened disaster was attributed to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and the saints, whose mediation was propitiated by votive offerings promised and promptly rendered after their safe arrival at St. Mary’s. The festivals of the saints were faithfully observed throughout the voyage, the feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin was selected for landing, and the solemn act of taking possession was according to the Catholic form. Father White thus describes the scene:
“On the day of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Virgin Mary (March 25), in the year 1634, we celebrated the Mass for the first time on this island [St. Clement’s]. This had never been done before in this part of the world. After we had completed the sacrifice, we took upon our shoulders a great cross which we had hewn out of a tree, and advancing in order to the appointed place, with the assistance of the governor and his associates, and the other Catholics, we erected a trophy to Christ the Saviour, humbly reciting on our bended knees the Litanies of the Sacred Cross with great emotion.”[110]
They founded a city, the capital of the colony, and called it St. Mary’s. A Catholic chapel was subsequently erected there; and this too was dedicated to S. Mary. The city has passed away, but the little chapel still stands, preserved alike by Catholic and Protestant hands, as a monument of the faith and zeal of the Catholic pilgrims of Maryland. Mr. Griffith, the historian, uniting his voice to that of Bancroft and other writers, speaking of the object which inspired the settlement from its inception by Lord Baltimore in England, says: “Out of respect for their religion they planted the cross, and, after fortifying themselves, plainly and openly set about to obtain, by the fairest means in their power, other property and homes, where they should escape the persecutions of the religious and political reformers of their native country at that time.”[111]
The church and parish of S. Mary were for many years the headquarters of the Jesuit missions of Maryland. During the succeeding years prior to 1649 there was a steady influx of Catholics into the colony from England, as is evident by the land records and other official documents, and by the fact that the number of Catholic priests required for the settlement increased from two in 1634 to four priests and one coadjutor prior to 1644. The Catholic strength was also increased by numerous conversions, as is shown by Father White’s Narrative, in which, at page 56, he relates that, “among the Protestants, nearly all who came over from England, in this year 1638, and many others, have been converted to the faith, together with four servants … and five mechanics whom we … have in the meantime won to God.” So numerous were these conversions, and they created so great a sensation in England, that measures were taken there to check them.
That the colony was Catholic in its origin, and so continued until after the year 1649, when the Toleration Act was passed, has never been denied, according to our researches, except by Mr. Gladstone and the two Protestant ministers whom he quotes. Bancroft, writing of the religious toleration which prevailed in Maryland during this period, always speaks of it as the work of Catholics. In referring to the original colonists he adds, “most of them Roman Catholic gentlemen and their servants.” Even so unfriendly a writer as Bozman says: “The most, if not all, of them were Catholics.” Chancellor Kent speaks of the colony as “the Catholic planters of Maryland,” and Judge Story says they were “chiefly Roman Catholics.” Father White, in his Narrative, speaks of the few Protestants on board the Ark as individuals, and not as a class. Bozman, alluding to the year 1639, and to “those in whose hands the government of the province was,” says: “A majority of whom were, without doubt, Catholics, as well as much the greater number of the colonists.” Mr. Davis, a Protestant, who drew his information from the official documents of the colony and State, gives unanswerable proofs of the fact for which we are contending. We give a single passage from his work on this point:
“St. Mary’s was the home—the chosen home—of the disciples of the Roman Church. The fact has been generally received. It is sustained by the tradition of two hundred years and by volumes of unwritten testimony; by the records of the courts; by the proceedings of the privy council; by the trial of law-cases; by the wills and inventories; by the land-records and rent-rolls; and by the very names originally given to the towns and hundreds, to the creeks and rivulets, to the tracts and manors of the county. The state itself bears the name of a Roman Catholic queen. Of the six hundreds of this small county, in 1650, five had the prefix of St. Sixty tracts and manors, most of them taken up at a very early period, bear the same Roman Catholic mark. The creeks and villages, to this day, attest the widespread prevalence of the same tastes, sentiments, and sympathies. Not long after the passage of the act relating to ‘religion,’ the Protestants, it is admitted, outgrew their Roman Catholic brethren, and in 1689 succeeded very easily in their attempt to overthrow the proprietary. But judging from the composition of the juries in 1655, we see no reason to believe that they then had a majority.”[112]
Mr. Gladstone seems to favor the view that religious toleration in Maryland was derived from the charter. We are surprised at this, since “E. D. N.” (Rev. Edward D. Neill), whose pamphlet has furnished the substance of the entire passage we have quoted from Mr. Gladstone’s Preface, says in his Maryland not a Roman Catholic Colony, “The charter of Maryland granted to Lord Baltimore was not a charter of religious liberty, but the very opposite.” McSherry, a Catholic historian, says that “the ecclesiastical laws of England, so far as related to the consecration and presentation of churches and chapels, were extended to the colony, but the question of state religion was left untouched, and therefore within the legislative power of the colonists themselves.”[113] And Bozman, a Protestant historian, adopts the same view of the charter, for he regards the “Act for Church Liberties” passed in 1639, enacting that “Holy Church within this province shall have all her rights and privileges,” as an attempt to exercise a control of religion, and says: “We cannot but suppose that it was the intention of the Catholic government to erect a hierarchy, with an ecclesiastical jurisdiction, similar to the ancient Church of England before the Reformation, and to invest it with all its rights, liberties, and immunities.”[114] The same views are expressed by the same author at pages 68 and 350 of his history. While civil liberty was guaranteed by the charter to all within the province, we find no mention of religious toleration in its provisions. Nor do we find that immigration was made free by the charter, as alleged by Mr. Gladstone; the provision to which he refers simply assures to the subjects of England, “transported or to be transported into the province, all privileges, franchises, and liberties of this our kingdom of England,” but the decision of the point as to who should be transplanted or admitted to settle there was left to the lord proprietary and the provincial legislature. The grant by the king to Lord Baltimore of all the lands of the province in itself gave him the full control over immigration, by enabling him to fix the conditions to the grants of land to colonists, which would have kept out all except such as the lord proprietary wished to enter.
We think we have shown that the Catholics were in the majority during the whole period covered by our discussion, and that the charter left them free to protect themselves from intrusion; that they were, consequently, all-powerful to perpetuate their numerical preponderance and control of the government. Why had they not the same motives for practising intolerance as the Puritans? Their positions, respectively and relatively, were the same in this particular, and the same reasons apply to both. No, they were actuated by a different spirit, and guided by different traditions. They possessed the power, and used it with mercy and benevolence; not only permitting but inviting Christians of every shade of opinion to settle in the province, but also offering grants of land on easy terms, and protecting the settlers from molestation on account of their religion. If they had not the power to proscribe, why should Bancroft, Griffith, Chambers, Kent, Story, and nearly all writers on the subject, have bestowed such encomiums on them for doing what they could not have refrained from doing? Why extol the toleration enjoined by Lord Baltimore and proclaimed by Governor Leonard Calvert, and the subsequently enacted Toleration Act of 1649, if the liberty it enacts was already secured by the charter of 1632?
It is not necessary for us to go further into this question, since in either event the honor and credit of religious toleration in Maryland is due to a Catholic source. If the charter secured it, our answer is that the charter itself was the work of a Catholic, for Lord Baltimore is the acknowledged author of that document. “The nature of the document itself,” says Bancroft, “and concurrent opinion, leave no doubt that it was penned by the first Lord Baltimore himself, although it was finally issued for the benefit of his son.”[115] “It was prepared by Lord Baltimore himself,” says McSherry, “but before it was finally executed that truly great and good man died, and the patent was delivered to his son, Cecilius, who succeeded as well to his noble designs as to his titles and estates.”[116] It will be more than sufficient to add here that both Mr. Bozman and the Rev. Ethan Allen concede that Lord Baltimore was the author of the charter.
We propose now to show that the religious toleration which prevailed in Maryland had its origin in the good-will, generosity, and mercy of the Catholic lord proprietary and his Catholic government and colony of Maryland; was practised from the very beginning of the settlement, and that we are not indebted for it to the Toleration Act of 1649, except perhaps as a measure by which its provisions were prolonged. Toleration was the course adopted in organizing the Maryland colony, even in England and before the landing of the pilgrims. Thus we find that some Protestants were permitted to accompany the colonists and share equal rights and protection with their Catholic associates. Father White speaks of them on board the Ark and Dove. The author of Maryland not a Catholic Colony refers to the fact that “Thomas Cornwallis and Jerome Hawley, who went out as councillors of the colony, were adherents of the Church of England,” as evidence in part that Maryland was “not a Catholic colony.” We take the same fact to show that not only were Protestants tolerated in the colony from its inception, but were liberally and generously given a share in its government. The Rev. Ethan Allen relates a succession of proofs of this fact, though not for that purpose, in the following passage: “Witness the fact of so large a portion of the first colonists being Protestants; his invitation to Capt. Fleet; his invitation to the Puritan colonists of Massachusetts to come and reside in the colony in 1643; his constituting Col. Stone his governor in 1648, who was a Protestant, and was to bring five hundred colonists; his admitting the Puritans of Virginia in the same year; and in the year following erecting a new county for Robert Brooke, a Puritan, and his colonists.”[117] McSherry says, speaking of the act of possession on landing in 1634: “Around the rough-hewn cross, on the island of St. Clement’s, gathered the Catholic and the Protestant, hand in hand, friends and brothers, equal in civil rights, and secure alike in the free and full enjoyment of either creed. It was a day whose memory should make the Maryland heart bound with pride and pleasure.”[118] The same author says that the Toleration Act of 1649 was passed “to give additional security to the safeguards which Lord Baltimore had already provided.” Bancroft makes religious toleration commence from the first landing “when the Catholics took possession,” and extend throughout the fourteen years up to the passage of the act of 1649. He says that “the apologist of Lord Baltimore could assert that his government, in conformity with his strict and repeated injunctions, had never given disturbance to any person in Maryland for matter of religion.”[119] The Rev. Ethan Allen relates that the Protestants in the colony were allowed to have their own chapel and to conduct therein the Protestant service. He cites a case in which a Catholic was severely punished for abusive language towards some Protestant servants in respect to their religion, and remarks that “the settling of the case was unquestionably creditable and honorable to the Catholic governor and council.”[120] Mr. Davis, a Protestant, says: “A freedom, however, of a wider sort springs forth at the birth of the colony—not demanded by that instrument [the charter], but permitted by it—not graven upon the tables of stone, nor written upon the paper of the statute-books, but conceived in the very bosom of the proprietary and of the original pilgrims—not a formal or constructive kind, but a living freedom, a freedom of the most practical sort. It is the freedom which it remained for them, and for them alone, either to grant or deny—a freedom embracing within its range, and protecting under its banner, all those who were believers in Jesus Christ.”[121]
Again, the same author writes: “The records have been carefully searched. No case of persecution occurred, during the administration of Gov. Leonard Calvert, from the foundation of the settlement at St. Mary’s to the year 1647.”[122] Langford, a writer contemporaneous with the period of which we are treating, in his Refutation of Babylon’s Fall, 1655, confirms the result of Mr. Davis’ investigation of the records. The Protestants of the colony themselves, in a declaration, of which we will speak again, attribute the religious toleration they enjoyed not solely to the Toleration Act, but also to “several other strict injunctions and declarations of his said lordship for that purpose made and provided.” Gov. Leonard Calvert also enjoined the same by a proclamation, which is mentioned by numerous historians. A case arising under this proclamation is given by Bozman and others in 1638, eleven years before the passage of the Toleration Act. Capt. Cornwallis’ servants, who were Protestants, were lodged under the same roof with William Lewis, a zealous Catholic, who was also placed in charge of the servants. Entering one day the room where the servants were reading aloud from a Protestant book—Mr. Smith’s Sermons—at the very moment the Protestants were reading aloud a passage to the effect “that the pope was Antichrist, and the Jesuits were anti-Christian ministers,” supposing that the passage was read aloud especially for him to hear, he ordered them with great warmth not to read that book, saying that “it was a falsehood, and came from the devil, as all lies did; and that he that writ it was an instrument of the devil, and he would prove it; and that all Protestant ministers were ministers of the devil.” All the parties were tried before the governor and his council; the case against the servants was postponed for further testimony, but Mr. Lewis, the Catholic, was condemned to pay a fine of five hundred pounds of tobacco (then the currency of the colony), and to remain in the sheriff’s custody until he found sufficient sureties in the future. Bozman thus remarks upon this decision: “As these proceedings took place before the highest tribunal of the province, composed of the three first officers in the government, they amply develop the course of conduct with respect to religion which those in whose hands the government of the province was placed, had resolved to pursue.”[123] Not only did the Catholic lord proprietary, in 1648, appoint Mr. Stone, a Protestant, to be the governor of the province, but also he at the same time appointed a majority of the privy councillors from the same faith.
We will close our testimony on this point with the official oath which Lord Baltimore required the governor and the privy councillors to take; it was substantially as follows:
“I will not by myself nor any person, directly or indirectly, trouble, molest, or discountenance any person whatsoever in said province professing to believe in Jesus Christ, for or in respect to his or her religion, nor in his or her free exercise thereof.”
We cannot determine when this oath began to be used. Bancroft places it between 1636 and 1639. Chalmers, Dr. Hawks, and others give the time as between 1637 and 1657. It is certain that this oath was prescribed prior to the passage of the Toleration Act; for Governor Stone and the councillors took the oath in 1648, and there is reason to believe that it was in use at a much earlier period.
Referring to the period anterior to the passage of the Toleration Act, Bancroft says: “Maryland at that day was unsurpassed for happiness and liberty. Conscience was without restraint.”[124] Mr. Davis, in reference to this subject, writes: “The toleration which prevailed from the first, and for fifteen years later, was formally ratified by the voice of the people” (in 1649).
Mr. Gladstone’s view of the subject is evidently superficial; it relates exclusively to the passage of the Toleration Act, and was conceived and published without the knowledge of the fact, which we have demonstrated, that the toleration for which the Catholics of Maryland have been so much praised had been practised for fifteen years before the passage of that act. Surely, there can be no rival claim set forth in behalf of Protestants for the period we have mentioned. Mr. Gladstone sets up his claim for the Protestants under that act. We cannot admit the justice or truth of the pretension. Let us examine it. This law enacted that “no one professing to believe in Jesus Christ shall be troubled, molested, or discountenanced for his religion, or the free exercise thereof, nor compelled to the belief or exercise of any other religion against his consent.” Now here, too, the claim set up by Mr. Gladstone, and by the authors of the pamphlets he quotes, is met by stern facts.
In the first place, the Toleration Act of 1649 was the work of a Catholic. It was prepared in England by Lord Baltimore himself, and sent over to the Assembly with other proposed laws for their action. This fact is related by nearly all writers on Maryland history, including those consulted by Mr. Gladstone, except the writer of Maryland not a Roman Catholic Colony, who does not refer to the subject, except to claim that it was but the echo of a previous and similar order of the English House of Commons in 1645 and of a statute passed by it in 1647. The last-named writer even intimates that the Rev. Thomas Harrison, the former pastor of the Puritans at Providence, afterward Annapolis, in Maryland, suggested the whole matter to Lord Baltimore. We might even admit this pretension without impairing the Catholic claim. It does not destroy the credit due to the Catholics of Maryland in passing the Toleration Act to show that others, even Puritans, entertained in one or two instances similar views and enacted similar measures. We know that the Puritans in England were proscriptive, and that in New England they did not practise the toleration of Maryland. Even if Lord Baltimore had the measure suggested to him by the Puritan Harrison, the act itself, when adopted by him and put in practice, is still his act and that of the Assembly which passed it. It remains their free and voluntary performance. The merit which attaches to the good deeds of men is not destroyed by having been suggested by others. A Puritan might even share in the act without appropriating the whole credit to himself. But whatever merit is claimed for the Puritans in these measures—which we cannot perceive—is lost by their subsequent conduct. They overturned the government of Lord Baltimore in Maryland, and under their ascendency Catholics were persecuted in the very home of liberty to which Catholics had invited the Puritans. But of the existence of the English toleration acts mentioned by the writer referred to and by Mr. Gladstone, we have been supplied with no proof. That the Puritan Harrison suggested the measure to Lord Baltimore is hinted at, not roundly asserted, certainly not sustained by proof.
But public facts give the negative to these pretensions. The Toleration Act of 1649 was the immediate echo of the actual toleration which, under the injunctions of Lord Baltimore, the proclamation of Governor Calvert, and the uniform practice of the colonists, had long become the common law of the colony. Why seek, in the turbulent and confused proceedings of the Long Parliament, a model or example for the Maryland law, when such exemplar is supplied nearer home by the colony itself from its first inception? To the people of Maryland, in 1649, the Toleration Act was nothing new; it was readily and unanimously received; it produced no change in the constitution of the province. Toleration was not the law or the practice of that day, either in England or her colonies; the echo was too remote and too readily drowned by the din of persecution and of strife.
But the Maryland Toleration Act contains intrinsic evidence of a purely Catholic origin. The clause enforcing the honor and respect due to “the blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Saviour,” which we have already quoted, gives a Catholic flavor to the whole statute, and excludes the theory of parliamentary or puritanical influence in originating the measure. The claim thus set up is also against the concurrent voice of history, which, with great accord, gives the authorship of the law to Lord Baltimore, who, as he had enjoined and enforced its provisions on the colony for fifteen years, needed no assistance in reducing them to the form of a statute, which we are informed he did.
But who were the lawgivers of 1649, and what was their religion?
By the charter the law-making power was vested in Lord Baltimore and the Assembly. It was for some years a matter of contest between them which possessed the right to initiate laws. The lord proprietary, however, finally conceded this privilege to the Assembly. It was not uncommon for the Assembly to reject the laws first sent over by the lord proprietary, and afterwards to bring them forward themselves and pass them. But in 1648, when Governor Stone was appointed, the Toleration Act was among the measures sent by Lord Baltimore, for the action of the Assembly. The government, then, consisted of Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, without whose sanction no law could be enacted, and whose signature to the measure in question was given the following year. The journal of the Maryland legislature was lost or destroyed, but fortunately a fragment of it is preserved, consisting of a report from the financial committee of the Assembly, and the action of that body on the bill of charges. With this document, and the aid of the historical facts recorded by Bozman and other historians, we are enabled to ascertain the names of the members of the Assembly in 1649.
Gov. Stone was lieutenant-governor and president of the council, which was composed of Thomas Green, John Price, John Pile, and Robert Vaughan, commissioned by the lord proprietary; and the remaining councillors were Robert Clarke, surveyor-general, and Thomas Hatton, secretary of the colony, ex-officio members of the council. The other members of the Assembly were the representatives of the freemen, or burgesses, as follows: Cuthbert Fenwick, Philip Conner, William Bretton, Richard Browne, George Manners, Richard Banks, John Maunsell, Thomas Thornborough, and Walter Peake, nine in number. The governor, councillors, and burgesses made sixteen in all; but as Messrs. Pile and Hatton, one Catholic and one Protestant, were absent, the votes actually cast were fourteen. On the memorable occasion in question the councillors and burgesses sat in one “house,” and as such passed the Toleration Act. Of the fourteen thus voting, Messrs. Green, Clarke, Fenwick, Bretton, Manners, Maunsell, Peake, and Thornborough were Catholics, and Messrs. Stone, Price, Vaughan, Conner, Banks, and Browne were Protestants. The Catholics were eight to six Protestants.
But the Assembly was not the only law-making branch of the government. The executive, or lord proprietary, was a co-ordinate branch, and without his co-operation no law could pass. Now, the executive was a Catholic, and a majority of the Assembly were Catholics; so that we have it as a historical fact that in a government composed of two co-ordinate branches, both branches of the law-making power which enacted the Toleration Act were Catholic. It is an important fact that if all the Protestant members of the Assembly had voted against the law, the Catholic majority could and would have passed it, and the Catholic executive was only too ready to sanction his own measure. It cannot, therefore, be said that the Catholics could not have passed the law without the Protestant votes; for we have seen that both of the co-ordinate branches of the government were in the hands of the Catholics.
Waiving, however, the division of the government into two co-ordinate branches, by which method we have the entire government Catholic; and regarding the lord proprietary merely as individual, computing the lawgivers of 1649 simply numerically, we have the following result:
LAWGIVERS OF 1649.
| Catholics. | Protestants. |
| Lord Baltimore. Mr. Green. Mr. Clarke. Mr. Fenwick. Mr. Bretton. Mr. Manners. Mr. Maunsell. Mr. Peake. Mr. Thornborough—9. | Lt.-Gov. Stone. Mr. Price. Mr. Vaughan. Mr. Conner. Mr. Banks. Mr. Browne—6. |
As Catholics we would be quite content with this showing; but we are indebted to several Protestant authors—more impartial than Messrs. Gladstone, Allen, and Neill, who write solely in the interests of sect—for a computation of the respective Catholic and Protestant votes in the Assembly in 1649, which, leaving out Lord Baltimore, and making the number of votes fourteen, gives, according to their just and strictly legal computation, eleven Catholic votes and three Protestant votes for the Act of Toleration. Mr. Davis, in his Day-Star of American Freedom, and Mr. William Meade Addison, in his Religious Toleration in America, both Protestant authors, take this view, and enforce it with strong facts and cogent reasonings. We will quote a passage, however, from only one of these works, the former, showing their views and the method by which they arrive at the respective numbers eleven and three. Mr. Davis writes: “The privy councillors were all of them, as well as the governor, the special representatives of the Roman Catholic proprietary—under an express pledge, imposed by him shortly before the meeting of the Assembly (as may be seen by the official oath), to do nothing at variance with the religious freedom of any believer in Christianity—and removable any moment at his pleasure. It would be fairer, therefore, to place the governor and the four privy councillors on the same side as the six Roman Catholic burgesses. Giving Mr. Browne to the other side, we have eleven Roman Catholic against three Protestant votes.”[125]
We think, however, that if the computation is to be made by numbers, Lord Baltimore must be included, as the act received his executive approval, and could never have become a law without it. Thus, according to the views of Messrs. Davis and Addison, with this amendment by us, the numbers would stand twelve Catholic against three Protestant votes. But we prefer taking our own two several methods of computation, viz., by co-ordinate branches of the government, showing—
| Catholic. | Protestant. |
| The executive, Lord Baltimore, The Assembly, 2. | None. |
—and that estimated by numbers, counting Lord Baltimore as one, showing—
| Catholics, 9. | Protestants, 6. |
This surely is a very different result from that announced by Mr. Gladstone, following the author of Maryland not a Roman Catholic Colony—viz., sixteen Protestant against eight Catholic votes. So far the numbers given by Mr. Gladstone and the writer he follows are mere assertion, unsupported by authority, either as to the composition of the Assembly or the respective religious beliefs of the members. Mr. Davis, however, gives in detail every member’s name, and refers to the proof by which he arrives at their names and number; and the same testimony is open, we presume, to the examination of all. In order that there may be no lack of proof as to the religious faiths they professed, he gives a personal sketch of each member of the Assembly in 1649, and proves from their public acts, their deeds of conveyance, their land patents, their last wills and testaments, the records of the courts, etc., that those named by him as Catholics were incontestably of that faith.
The population of the colony in 1649 was also largely Catholic beyond dispute. We have already shown that it was Catholic by a large majority during the fifteen years preceding and up to that time. The above computations, showing a majority of the legislature to be Catholic, strongly indicates the complexion of the religious faith of their constituents. Up to 1649 St. Mary’s, the Catholic county, was the only county in the State, and Kent, the seat of the Protestant population, was only a hundred of St. Mary’s. Kent was not erected into a county until the year the Toleration Act was passed. While St. Mary’s was populous and Catholic, Kent was Protestant and thinly settled. There were six hundreds in St. Mary’s, all Catholic except perhaps one, and of that one it is uncertain whether the majority was Catholic or Protestant. “But the population of Kent,” says Davis, “was small. In 1639, if not many years later, she was but a hundred of St. Mary’s county.[126] In 1648 she paid a fifth part only of the tax, and did not hold in the Assembly of that year a larger ratio of political power. That also was before the return, we may suppose, of all the Roman Catholics who had been expelled or exported from St. Mary’s by Capt. Ingle and the other enemies of the proprietary. In 1649 she had but one delegate, while St. Mary’s was represented by eight. And this year she paid but a sixth part of the tax, and for many years after as well as before this Assembly there is no evidence whatever of a division of the island (of Kent) or the county, even into hundreds. Its population did not, in 1648, exceed the fifth, nor in 1649 the sixth, part of the whole number of free white persons in the province.”[127] After a thorough examination of the records, Mr. Davis arrives at the conclusion that the Protestants constituted only one-fourth of the population of Maryland at the time of the passage of the Toleration Act, in 1649. His investigations must have been careful and thorough, for he gives the sources of his information, refers to liber and folio, and cites copiously from the public records. He thinks that for twenty years after the first settlement—to wit, about the year 1654—the Catholics were in the majority. He concludes his chapter on this subject with the following passage: “Looking, then, at the question under both its aspects—regarding the faith either of the delegates or of those whom they substantially represented—we cannot but award the chief honor to the members of the Roman Church. To the Roman Catholic freemen of Maryland is justly due the main credit arising from the establishment, by a solemn legislative act, of religious freedom for all believers in Christianity.”[128]
But, fortunately, we have another document at hand, signed in the most solemn manner by those who certainly must have known the truth of the case, as they were the contemporaries, witnesses of, and participators in, the very events of which we are treating. This is what is usually known as the Protestant Declaration, made the year after the passage of the Toleration Act, and shortly after it was known that Lord Baltimore had signed the act and made it the law of the land. This important document is an outpouring of gratitude from the Protestants of the colony to the Catholic proprietary for the religious toleration they enjoyed under his government. It is signed by Gov. Stone, the privy councillors Price, Vaughan, and Hatton—all of whom were members of the Assembly that passed the Toleration Act—by all the Protestant burgesses in the Assembly of 1650, and by a great number of the leading Protestants of the colony. They address Lord Baltimore in these words:
“We, the said lieutenant, council, burgesses, and other Protestant inhabitants above mentioned, whose names are hereunto subscribed, do declare and certify to all persons whom it may concern that, according to an act of Assembly here, and several other strict injunctions and declarations by his said lordship, we do here enjoy all fitting and convenient freedom and liberty in the exercise of our religion, under his lordship’s government and interest; and that none of us are anyways troubled or molested, for or by reason thereof, within his lordship’s said province.”[129]
This important document is dated the 17th of April, 1650. It proves that the religious toleration they enjoyed was not due alone to the act of 1649, but to the uniform policy of Lord Baltimore and his government; and that even for the Toleration Act itself, which had recently become a law by his signature, they were indebted to a Catholic. Comment on such testimony is unnecessary.
Chancellor Kent, with the charter, the public policy of Lord Baltimore, of his colonial officers and colonists, and the Toleration Act of 1649, all submitted to his broad and profound judicial inquiry and judgment, has rendered the following opinion and tribute to the Catholic lawgivers of Maryland, to whom he attributes the merit of the generous policy we are considering:
“The legislature had already, in 1649, declared by law that no persons professing to believe in Jesus Christ should be molested in respect to their religion, or in the free exercise thereof, or compelled to the belief or exercise of any other religion against their consent. Thus, in the words of a learned and liberal historian (Grahame’s History of the Rise and Progress of the United States), the Catholic planters of Maryland won for their adopted country the distinguished praise of being the first of American States in which toleration was established by law, and while the Puritans were persecuting their Protestant brethren in New England, and Episcopalians retorting the same severity on the Puritans in Virginia, the Catholics, against whom the others were combined, formed in Maryland a sanctuary where all might worship and none might oppress, and where even Protestants sought refuge from Protestant intolerance.”[130]
Catholics have written comparatively little upon this subject. The historians of Maryland have been chiefly Protestants. As long as Protestants so unanimously accorded to the Catholic founders of Maryland the chief credit of this great event, it was unnecessary for Catholics to speak in their own behalf. It has remained for Mr. Gladstone and the two sectarian ministers he follows to attempt to mar the harmony of that grateful and honorable accord of the Protestant world, by which Catholic Maryland received from the united voice of Protestant history the enviable title of “The Land of the Sanctuary.”