The cultivation of tobacco was, from the earliest period, the main occupation of the colonists. Indeed, the prosperity of all the middle colonies reposed chiefly upon this foundation. It was almost the sole export of Maryland. There were no manufactures and no large towns in the Province. It was an agricultural community, scattered along the shores of the noble bay, and of the Potomac and other tributary streams which intersected the country in every direction. The abundance of these natural highways relieved the infant State from a large part of the burden of maintaining roads. Every large planter had at his own door a boat-landing, where he received his supplies, and from which his tobacco was taken to be shipped upon foreign-bound vessels. The high price of tobacco in the second quarter of the seventeenth century (ten times its present value), and the large demand for it by Dutch traders, led the colonists to devote themselves so exclusively to its cultivation, that, on more than one occasion, they suffered from a scarcity of food. Beginning in 1639, numerous acts were passed to enforce the planting of cereals. In order to maintain the excellence of the tobacco exported, the Assembly in 1640 enacted the first tobacco-inspection law,—and thus began a system which has, in some form, been maintained down to the present day. According to the Act of 1640, no tobacco could be exported till scaled by a sworn viewer; and when a hogshead was found bad for the greater part, it was to be burned.
Tobacco was not only the great staple of the Province, but also its chief currency. Taxes were assessed, fines imposed, and salaries paid in tobacco. After the Restoration the restrictive measures, to which we shall refer, and the overproduction of tobacco caused great depreciation in the value of the article. The consequent inconvenience was such that in 1661 the Assembly prayed the Proprietary to establish a mint for the coining of money. Lord Baltimore, by a doubtful stretch of his palatinate prerogatives, caused a large quantity of shillings, sixpences, and groats to be coined for the Province. These coins were put into circulation under an act, passed in 1662, requiring every freeman to take up ten shillings’ worth of them per poll for every taxable person in his custody, and to pay for the same in tobacco at the rate of two pence per pound. But their introduction did not give permanent relief, and tobacco continued to be the chief medium of exchange. Its value decreased so much, that, early in 1663, commissioners were appointed by Virginia and Maryland to consider the evil and its remedy. They could only suggest a diminution of the quantity raised. In the following year the Virginia agents represented to the Privy Council the necessity of lessening the cultivation of tobacco in Virginia and Maryland, and offered proposals for effecting it. These proposals did not meet the approval of Lord Baltimore. The Privy Council ordered that there should be no cessation of the planting of tobacco; but, in order to encourage the planters in cultivating other articles, directed that pitch, tar, and hemp, of the production of those colonies, should be imported into England free of duty for five years. In 1666 an agreement was made between delegates from Virginia, Maryland, and Carolina, providing for a total cessation in the planting of tobacco for one year. The legislatures of these colonies passed acts to enforce this agreement; but the Maryland act was vetoed by Lord Baltimore, upon the ground that it would work great injury to the poorer sort of planters, as well as cause a loss of revenue to the Crown. For various reasons these efforts to control the market by limiting the supply never succeeded.
The colonists did not then fully perceive where the root of the evil lay. There was not too much tobacco but too few buyers; and the number of buyers had been artificially lessened. The real cause of this colonial distress was the famous Navigation Act and the statutes which had been made in pursuance of the policy then begun. The Navigation Act, passed by the Long Parliament in October, 1651, provided that no goods should be imported from Asia, Africa, or America but in English vessels, under the penalty of the forfeiture of both goods and ship. Originally designed as a blow at the commercial supremacy of the Dutch, this Act became, to use the language of Burke, the corner-stone of the policy of England with regard to the colonies. This Act was supplemented by still more restrictive statutes passed in 1660 and in 1663 (15 Car. II. c. 7). The result of these regulations was that the colonists could buy nothing except from English merchants, and could sell nothing except to English merchants. They were not even permitted to export their own goods in their own vessels. They suffered from a triple monopoly of sale, of purchase, and of transportation. They bought in the dearest and sold in the cheapest market.
The chief source of the revenue derived by the Proprietary from the Province arose from the quit-rents which, from the earliest period, had been charged on all grants of land. These rents were at first payable in wheat. In later grants they were made payable in money or the commodities of the country, at the option of the Proprietary, until 1671, when an export duty of two shillings per hogshead was imposed on all tobacco, one half of which went to the support of the government, and the other half was granted to the Proprietary in consideration of his commuting his money quit-rents and alienation fines for tobacco, at the rate of two pence per pound. After 1658 another source of Proprietary revenue was an alienation fine of one year’s rent, which was made a condition precedent to the validity of every conveyance. In 1661 there was given to the Proprietary a port and anchorage duty of half a pound of powder and three pounds of shot on all foreign vessels trading to the Province. The fines and forfeitures imposed in courts of justice inured to the Proprietary as the fountain of justice and standing in loco regis. The royal nature of the Proprietary dominion was also shown in the use of his name in all writs and processes, as the name of the king was used in England. Provincial laws were enacted in his name, by and with the advice and consent of the upper and lower houses. Indictments, including those upon the penal statutes of England, charged the offences to be against his peace, good rule, and government.
The first mention of negro slaves occurs in an act passed in 1664; but they had probably been previously introduced into the Province from Virginia, where slavery existed before the settlement of Maryland. In 1671 an act was passed to encourage their importation, and slavery was thenceforth established. It was long, however, before slaves took the place of indented servants, who formed a large part of the population down to the time of the Revolution. They at first consisted of those who had signed an indenture of service for a limited number of years and were brought into the Province by the masters themselves. Subsequently the traffic in servants was taken up by shipowners and others, who sold them for the remainder of their term to the highest bidders. The term of service, which was at first five years, was reduced by the Act of 1638 to four years. Upon the expiration of his indenture a servant was entitled to fifty acres of land and a year’s supply of necessaries. These servants were called “Redemptioners,” and many of them became valuable citizens. After the Restoration the practice of kidnapping men in English seaports and selling them as servants in the colonies became very common. Among the Maryland papers is the petition of one Mrs. Beale to the king, complaining that the master of a ship had taken her brother as his apprentice on a voyage to Maryland, and there sold him as a servant. The lord mayor and aldermen of London complained to the Council that “certain persons, called spirits, do inveigle, and, by lewd subtilities, entice away” youth to be sold as servants in the plantations. Owing to its equable climate, Maryland had more of these indented servants than any other colony, and the statute book contains many acts relating to them. The practice of sending convicts to America, however, was warmly resisted, and in 1676 an act was passed to prevent it.
A temporary exception to the universal religious toleration, which was a capital principle of government in Maryland, occurred in the case of the Quakers. The first Quaker missionaries appeared in Maryland in 1657. Two years later other preachers of that sect visited the Province and caused “considerable convincement.” Their refusal to bear arms, or to subscribe the engagement of fidelity, or to give testimony, or to serve as jurors, was mistaken for sedition.
CECIL, SECOND LORD BALTIMORE.
[See the Critical Essay for an account of this picture.—Ed.]
On July 23, 1659, under Fendall’s administration, an order was passed directing that if “any of the vagabonds and idle persons known by the name of Quakers” should again come into the Province, the justices of the peace should arrest them and cause them to be whipped from constable to constable out of the Province. There is no evidence that this penalty was ever enforced. The most active Quaker missionary simply received a sentence of banishment; and after the suppression of Fendall’s rebellion there was no persecution of the Quakers. They found a refuge in Maryland from the intolerance of New England and Virginia. In 1672 George Fox arrived in the Province and attended two “general meetings for all Maryland Friends,” which he describes in his journal as having been largely attended, not only by Quakers but by “other people, divers of whom were of considerable quality in the world’s account.” Maryland was also sought by many French, Bohemian, and Dutch families. In 1666 the first act of naturalization was passed admitting certain French and Bohemians to the rights of citizenship, and from that time forward numerous similar acts were passed.