Changes wrought by slavery.
These admirable manorial institutions were brought to Maryland in precisely the same shape in which they had long existed in England. They were well adapted for preserving liberty and securing order in rural communities before the days of denser population and more rapid communication. In our progress away from those earlier times we have gained vastly, but it is by no means sure that we have not also lost something. In the decadence of the Maryland manors there was clearly an element of loss, for that decadence was chiefly brought about by the growth of negro slavery, which made it more profitable for the lord of the manor to cultivate the whole of it himself, instead of leasing the whole or parts of it to tenants. Slavery also affixed a stigma upon free labour and drove it off the field, very much as a debased currency invariably drives out a sound currency. From these causes the class of freehold tenants gradually disappeared, “the feudal society of the manor” was transformed into “the patriarchal society of the plantation,”[107] and the arbitrary fiat of a master was substituted for the argued judgments of the court leet.
A fierce spirit of liberty.
Among the people of Lord Baltimore’s colony, as among English-speaking people in general, one might observe a fierce spirit of political liberty coupled with engrained respect for law and a disposition to achieve results by argument rather than by violence. Such a temper leads to interminable parliamentary discussion, and in the reign of Charles II. the tongues of the Maryland assembly were seldom quiet. As compared with the stormy period before 1660, the later career of Cecilius and that of his son Charles down to the Revolution of 1689 seem peaceful, and there are writers who would persuade us that when the catastrophe arrived, it came quite unheralded, like lightning from a cloudless sky. A perusal of the transactions in the Maryland assembly, however, shows that the happy period was not so serene as we have been told, but there were fleecy specks on the horizon, with now and then a faint growl of distant thunder.
Cecilius and Charles.
That the proprietary government had many devoted friends is not to be denied, and it is clear that some of the opposition to it was merely factious. There is no doubt as to the lofty personal qualities of the second Lord Baltimore, his courage and sagacity, his disinterested public spirit, his devotion to the noble ideal which he had inherited. As for Charles, the third lord, he seems to have been a paler reflection of his father, like him for good intentions, but far inferior in force. The period of eight-and-twenty years which we are considering, from 1661 to 1689, is divided exactly in the middle by the death of Cecilius in 1675. Before that date we have Charles administering the affairs of Maryland subject to the approval of his father in London; after that date Charles is supreme.
Sources of discontent.
The family party
Now the circumstances were such that father and son would have had to be more than human to carry on the government without serious opposition. In the first place, they were Catholics, ruling a population in which about one twelfth part were Catholics, while one sixth belonged to the Church of England, and three fourths were dissenting Puritans. To most of the people the enforced toleration of Papists must have seemed like keeping on terms of polite familiarity with the devil. In the second place, the proprietor was apt to appoint his own relatives and trusted friends to the highest offices, and such persons were usually Catholics. As these high officers composed the council, or upper house of the assembly, the proprietor had a permanent and irreversible majority in that body. When we read the minutes of a council composed of Governor Charles Calvert, his uncle Philip, his cousin William, Mr. Baker Brooke, who had married cousin William’s sister, Mr. William Talbot, who was another cousin, and Mr. Henry Coursey, who was uncle Philip’s bosom friend, we seem to be assisting at a pleasant little family party. Again, when the governor marries a widow, and each of his five stepchildren marries, and we are told that “every one who became related to the family soon obtained an office,”[108] we begin to realize that there was coming to be quite a clan to be supported from the revenues of a small province. Nepotism may not be the blackest of crimes, but it is pretty certain to breed trouble.
Conflict in the assembly.