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.”