When the boy left the land of his birth, and the prow of the ship that bore him ploughed the waters of the Atlantic, his soul expanded with a heretofore unexperienced sentiment of liberty; for only then did he begin to feel that freely under the canopy of heaven he could practise his religion without let or hindrance, without the sneers or intermeddling of his neighbors. Add to this the anticipated enjoyment of the liberty in wait for him on the eastern lands of Catholic faith. Yet the prospective and future return to the land of bondage must from time to time have thrown shadows of sadness over the gushing and joyful youth at school. But now comes a truce to religious dissensions and family
quarrels; a victory is gained: the church is free, her shackles broken. Catholic and non-Catholic worship at the altar of their choice freely and publicly. They are all children of the same political family, members of the same moral body!
But the liberties of the colonies are crushed by the mother country, and Charles Carroll lands on these shores only in time to be one of the mourners at the funeral of liberty. His countrymen had been galled with bitterness by the contempt, insolence, and arrogance of the British soldiery, and felt a contempt for the martinet leaders of the Braddock defeat, while at the same time a feeling of superiority was engendered in their heart by the warlike qualities displayed by rank and file under the leadership of him who was already first in the hearts of his peers. They chafed at being made the hewers of wood and drawers of water to British indolence; they felt the sanctuary of their homes desecrated by the writs of assistance; their inmost souls were moved with indignation at being ordered to sacrifice their hard-earned comforts, their very subsistence, to the pleasure of a ribald soldiery. Such things could not be endured by the sons of liberty. And thus it happened that Charles Carroll was not welcomed with the cheers of a hearty greeting; he only heard the groans, the smothered curses, the oaths of vengeance deep and resolute, uttered by his oppressed fellow-colonists.
His soul was fired with wrath and zeal; but a wrath subdued by self-control, a zeal swayed by prudence. His was a self-possession that was never thrown off its guard. He seemed ever to be on the alert against surprises—a foe more fatal to armies than cannon and shot.
During the excitement of the Stamp Act Charles Carroll, who had returned from the Continent “a finished scholar and an accomplished gentleman,” was at first a silent but careful and discerning observer. He studied the tendency of events, and the moral elements on which these events should work some remarkable development. Cautious but firm, he gradually entered the lists, and then in the struggles which seemed so unequal he fought heart and soul with that noble galaxy of Maryland patriots who, bold and undismayed, opposed an unbroken front to those first encroachments which were even countenanced by interested parties in the colony. But for a prompt resistance a breach would have been opened for such inroads into the domain of our liberties as would break down its ramparts, overwhelm our defenders, and enslave the people.
It is not necessary for us here to relate how the obnoxious law was repealed—a tardy and unwilling act of atonement (“an act of empty justice,” as McSherry well defines it); yet its revocation was hailed by the colonies with great rejoicings as the harbinger of a better rule and the dawn of a day of just polity in the home government. Surely, the rulers in the mother country had felt the temper of her children abroad; they loved her fondly as long as she proved herself a mother; woe were she to forget the ties of love and harshly deal with them!
Charles Carroll was neither blinded nor hoodwinked by this sporadic token of motherly justice. Those years of residence in England were not lost to him. He well knew the temper of the British lion, his arrogance and his treachery. Sooner or later another paroxysm of exigencies
would come over him; they must be met, cost what it may.
“Wicked is the only word which I can apply to the government of your colonies. You seem to regard them as mere material mines from whence the mother country is to extract the precious ore for her own luxury and splendor.”[151]
The victory gained and the danger averted for the nonce, Mr. Carroll devoted himself to promoting the welfare of the colony. In fact, whilst a short period of comparative peace lasted outside the colonies, Maryland was not free from internal disturbance. Two sources of disquietude were then opened—the Proclamation and the Vestry Act. Nor was the colony less annoyed by the unfaithfulness of leading merchants in Baltimore, who, goaded by thirst of money and not prompted by feelings of love for their country, had slackened in their opposition to the encroachment of the government at home. They only followed in the wake of New York and Philadelphia, and even of Boston. The love of lucre and the diseased tastes of what was then called the quality allowed the merchants of those cities to fall away from the compact entered upon with the sister colonies. To advance their interests and to satisfy a portion of the community, they forsook their principles and paid the hated tributes for proscribed commodities. But outside Baltimore the people in the counties remained firm and unshaken in their patriotism.