It would have been difficult to find anywhere communities more thoroughly Protestant than the thirteen British colonies one hundred years ago. The little body of Catholics in Maryland, in all about 25,000, who, in spite of persecution, had retained their faith, had sunk into a kind of religious apathy; and as their public worship had long been forbidden and they were not permitted to have schools, to indifference was added ignorance of the doctrines of the church. A few priests, once members of the suppressed Society of Jesus, lingered amongst them, though they generally found it necessary to live upon their own lands or with their kindred, and with difficulty kept alive

the flickering flame of faith. Without religious energy, zeal, or organization, the Maryland Catholics were gradually being absorbed into mere worldliness or into the more vigorous Protestant sects; and, in fact, many of the descendants of the original settlers had already lost the faith. In this way the character of the old Catholic colony had been wholly changed; so that Maryland surpassed all the other colonies in the odious proscriptiveness of her legislation, levying the same tax for the introduction into her territory of a Catholic Irishman as for the importation of a Negro slave. The existence of the Catholic families there, and of the small and scattered settlements in Pennsylvania, if recognized at all by the general public, was looked upon as an anomaly, an anachronism, which, from the nature of things, must soon disappear. There is no exaggeration, then, in saying that the Revolution found the British provinces of North America thoroughly Protestant, with a hatred of the church which nothing but the general contempt for Catholics tended to mitigate; while the seeming failure of the Catholic settlement in Maryland, one hundred and fifty years after the landing of Lord Baltimore, gave no promise of a brighter future for the faith.

In the presence of the impending conflict with England political questions became supreme, and the Convention of 1774, in its appeal to the country, entreated all classes of citizens to put away religious disputes and animosities, which could only withhold them from uniting in the defence of their common rights and liberties. Though this appeal was probably meant to smooth the way for a more cordial union between New England and

the Southern colonies, which were even then as unlike as Puritan and Cavalier, it was also an evidence of the public feeling, showing that with the American people religious questions were fast coming to be merely of secondary importance. At any rate it was responded to cheerfully and generously by the Catholics, who, without stopping to think of the wrongs they had suffered, threw themselves heartily into the contest for national independence. The signer of the Declaration who risked most was a Catholic, and a Catholic priest was a member of the delegation sent to Canada to bring about an alliance, or at least to secure the neutrality of that province.

The conduct of the Catholics in the war made, no doubt, a favorable impression, and the very important aid given to the American cause by Catholic France had still further influence in softening the asperities of Protestant prejudice; but, unless we are mistaken, we must seek elsewhere for the explanation of the clause of the federal Constitution which provides that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the United States”; as well as of the First Amendment, to the effect that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” These provisions were merely a part of a general policy, which restricted as far as possible the functions of the federal government, and left to the several States as much of their separate sovereignty as was consistent with the existence of the national Union.

This is evident from the fact that the federal Constitution placed no restriction upon the legislation of the different States in matters of

religion, leaving them free to pursue the intolerant and persecuting policy of the colonial era; and, indeed, laws for the support of public worship lingered in Connecticut till 1816 and in Massachusetts till 1833, and anti-Catholic religious tests were introduced into several of the State constitutions. In New York, as late as 1806, a test-oath excluded Catholics from office; and in North Carolina, down to 1836, only those who were willing to swear to belief in the truth of Protestantism were permitted to hope for political preferment. New Jersey erased the anti-Catholic clause from her constitution only in 1844; and even to-day, unless we err, the written law of New Hampshire retains the test-oath.

The provision which denied to the general government all right of interference in religious matters was a political necessity. Any attempt to introduce into Congress religious discussions would have necessarily rent asunder the still feeble bands by which New England and the Southern States were held together. The reasons of policy which forbade the federal government to meddle with slavery applied with ten-fold force to questions of religion.

The First Amendment to the Constitution, of which we Americans are so fond of boasting, cannot, then, be interpreted as the proclamation of the principle of toleration or of the separation of church and state; it is merely the expression of the will of the confederating States to retain their pre-existing rights of control over religion, which, indeed, they could not have delegated to the general government without imperilling the very existence of the Union. Nearly all the leading statesmen of that day recognized the necessity of some kind of union

of church and state, and their views were embodied in the different State constitutions.