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]