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.