USA > Maryland > Frederick County > Emmitsburg > Discourse delivered at the commemoration of the landing of the pilgrims of Maryland : celebrated May 11, 1846, at Mt. St. Mary's, near Emmitsburg, Md. > Part 2
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red four years before the visit of Calvert to Virginia. It had occurred before his visit to Avalon, and his discovery that that region was un- suited for his design. At the time of his visit, the administration of the colony was in the hands of a royal governor. There were even in 1628 no persons in existence who could lay claim to jurisdiction over that territory which was granted to him. It was in the hands of king Charles, and the cancelling of the charters had given him the same right to carve out a province from its limits, which he had before possessed to bestow the whole territory upon the first grantees. It had returned back within the sway of his royal prerogative, and it was just for him to make, and proper for Calvert to receive, a grant out' of the immense unsettled territory which had been included in the forfeited charters .* I think these facts will free the character of Calvert from the imputation of improper contrivance in obtaining his grant, which has very lately been unjustly cast upon it. Honourably and hon- estly, without depriving any man of his just rights, did Lord Baltimore return to solicit from Charles a grant of the"territories which he had examined and found suitable to his purposes. Charles, mindful of his services to his father, and his exertions in a cause in which he him- self had been deeply interested, remembering his gallant exploits at Newfoundland, and doubtless moved by the intercessions of his Catholic Queen, Henrietta Maria, after whom the province was named-who must have favoured a design which offered to the followers of the faith
*A complete answer to the assertion, that there were settlements made within the . territory prior to the grant, is to be found in the petition to the Virginians against Calvert's Charter. They do not say that it included their settlements-but simply, that it included " the places of their traffic and was so NEAR the places of their habi- tation, &c.,"-directly negativing the idea of settlements within its limits-this was in 1633-one year after the issuing of the Charter.
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she professed an asylum from persecution, granted the boon which he asked. In the composition of the Charter, many things were to be guarded against : To have extended the disabling laws of England to the colony, would have been an insult and an injury to the grantee- to have protected openly the rights of the Catholics, and proclaimed a toleration in any portion of the Empire, even in the wild forests of the western world, would have brought down upon the head of the king the vengeance of Parliament. If Charles had even intended such a result, he would not have dared for a moment to avow it : for in Eng- land, his desire, through complacency to his Catholic Queen, to les- sen the sufferings of the persecuted, called forth, as a like course had done upon his father, the sturdy remonstrance of the violent faction, that ruled in Parliament and compelled him to a more rigourous execution of the penal laws. If then he dared not resist the importunities of this party for the continuance of persecution, it is absurd to suppose that he would have had the boldness to grant a charter, which was understood by the terms of it, not only to dispense with the execution of those laws, but in effect to permit a free and full toleration, and yet more, a complete equality of rights to the members of the disfranchised church. Upon examination, the charter will be found to provide carefully for the repose of the king and the freedom of the colonists, for the rights of Charles and the conscience of Baltimore. Only thrice is the subject of religion alluded :o : in the first instance, it is simply the desire of Lord Baltimore for the extension of the Christian religion which is spoken of which certainly enther refers to the Catholic church or to Christianity generally. - Undoubtedly, to my mind, it means simply the latter. In the second, the ecclesiastical laws of England are ex- tended to the colony, so far as regards the consecration and presenta- tion to churches and chapels. In the third, the same words, " Chris- tian Religion "are used in the 22d section, the proviso of which de-
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clares that no interpretation of the Charter shall be made, " whereby God's holy and true Religion, and the allegiance due " to the king " may in any wise suffer change, prejudice, or diminution :" and this clause has been construed to refer to the church of England. If these words mean the church of England, then is there no toleration in the Charter, then is there no more freedom than in England for Catholics or Dissenters-then is the Charter of this Protestant king to this Cath- olic nobleman an intolerant Charter. A Connivance-much more a toleration, was construed in those days to be a diminution of the rights of the established church, and therefore a toleration in Maryland would have been impossible. But if these words refer to Christianity at large, they simply provide that the colony be Christian, not infidel, & are complied with even if the colony were in the exclusive possession of any denomination. The colonists could then have passed such laws, excluding and prohibiting the entrance of such persons as they might choose, or laying a preventive tax upon their admission into the colony. as was done after the protestant revolution, and continued, under this same Charter, to be done down to the very date of the war of Indepen- dence, and only for the purpose of preventing the increase of the Cath- olics. By these general phrases, the king was protected, and Calvert shielded. Indeed, there is evidence of a constant "care to secure the Lord Proprietary, clearly his own work-in the use of the word al- legiance and the omissioni of that of . Supremacy,'-allegiance which every Catholic was bound to give to his Sovereign or his country :
*The Charter of Sir H. Gilbert furnishes evidence, that the words above were not considered to mean the church of England-for it addsto the true Christian faith' the words -- " now prote-sed in the church of England, " restraining the evident gen- erality of the first terms, and in an exactly similar clause to that of the Maryland Charter.
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spiritual Supremacy which no Catholic could hold and remain a Cath- olic, as it was impossible for any Catholic to believe the king of Eng- land to be the head of the church. Calvert yielded nothing which his fidelity to the faith he had just adopted prohibited-he gave nothing which he could not conscientiously give. He was true and faithful in his legitimate duty to his king, and equally true and faithful in the duty which he owed to his God. The truth is the charter does not look at all'to toleration in any of its provisions. It is a question wisely kept in the back-ground, and left open to the legislation of the colonists. In this much this charter from Charles to Calvert is wor- thy of much honor, for to be negatively tolerant-not to be a persecu- tor -- was much, in that day, for a king of England. There is noth- ing in that instrument which might not have been equally appropriate in a grant to a Protestant nobleman. The toleration is to be found, solely, in the breast of Calvert and his associates. When the power passed by violence into the hands of Commissioners of Parliament, under Cromwell, and afterwards into those of the insurgents in the Protestant revolution-they were restrained by no charter stipulations, but laid their hands upon that beautiful system which Calvert had reared up with so much painful labour, and crushed it to the dust. In each case they alternately passed most stringent laws against each other, and in both against the Catholics.
The provisions of the charter which enabled the colonists to secure liberty of conscience were two, which were found'to a certain extent in many others of that day-yet which of themselves were nothing, but all important'in the manner of their execution. They are the 9th- which permitted the emigration of all who are not specially *prohib- 1
*This did not prohibit restraining laws on the part of the colonists-but only re- ferred to the departure from England -- not to the admission into Maryland,
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ited-in spite of any restraining Statues of England, and the 7th- which confers upon the Lord Proprietary and the colonies, the full power of legislation, without interference of king or Parliament. The first colony sent out by Cecilius, was composed of Cath- olics, most of them gentlemen of family and estate, who no doubt glad- ly seized the opportunity of escaping, at once and for ever as they vainly hoped, from the heavy and odious fines for non-conformity. And this very selection explains the object of the Calverts in forming the plantation, and the wisdom of the design which they matured. These first settlers could have so legislated as to have restricted the emigration of those whom they wished to exclude ; yet such was nev- er the design of George Calvert or of his son Cecilius. The mind of the great projector of the enterprise was too enlarged, and while he destined Maryland as an asylum for the persecuted of his own faith, he generously threw it open to all who might feel desirous of entering. Such was the policy of the first Proprietary and his people, though it afterwards was changed to the exclusion of the men, who professed the faith of the founders of the colony.
The toleration of Maryland was in the heart of its founder, and in the bosom of its people. Even though George Calvert himself, shel- tered under the Ægis of the Royal favor, won by his many services and chivalrous devotion to the cause of his king, escaped the fiercest blasts of the storm, his high heart and expanded notions of right could never permit him to rest satisfied with such temporary security, deriv- ed from mere connivance. Cherishing a desire for spiritual freedom, capable of estimating civil liberty, he had longed for that time which he foresaw in the dim future with prophetic eye, when all men should be entitled to equal political privileges, when religious disabili ties should disappear from the statute book, when the true spirit of Christianity, the spirit of its Godlike charity, should warm every bo-
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som, and bind hands and hearts together in one common bond of love. The hope of that vision had been the solace of his years of toil and struggle, and yet the reality was destined to pass as quickly from the scene of the world as its distant prospect had darkened on the dying eyes of the great founder of Maryland. The time had not yet come for the full and final triumph of the principles which he endeavored to plant, aud though they produced goodly fruit of glory and prosperity to Maryland in her early years, they were blighted by the hot breath of the bigot. But from that picture, the reverse of its glory, let me turn, in silence ! To each heart here-in its own secret chambers-I Jeave its mournful contemplation-happy even in its sadness, if the les- son bring instruction. All the clauses of the charter, about the ad- vancement of the Christian religion, were to be found in every charter. They existed in the Virginia charter, yet in Virginia there was no tol- eration. It was the cant of charters-it was one of the reasons why grants were supposed to be lawful, and English, French, and Spanish · grants were made alike for the extension of the Christian religion and the conversion of the natives. The toleration of Maryland found its legal existence in the exercise of the power of legislation .- The evi- dence of this is to be found not only in the want of any such provi- sion in the charter, in the spirit of the age when the charter was grant. ed, and in the circumstances nnder which it was granted, but also in the subsequent legislation of the Proprietary and of his people. The Governor was required to take an oath, which was prescribed by Cecilius Lord Baltimore in 1636, two years after the land- ing of the first colony, which must for ever make memorable its noble framer,-" that he would not by himself or by another, directly or indi- rectly, trouble or molest, or discountenance any person professing to believe in Jesus Christ for or in respect of religion ; that he would make no difference of persons in conferring offices, favors, or rewards, for or
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in respect of religion, but merely as they should be found faithful and well deserving, and endowed with moral virtues, and abilities : that his aim should be public unity ; and that if any person or officer should molest any person professing to believe in Jesus Christ, on account of his religion, he would protect the person molested & punish the offen- der .* " Would that this oath were the official oath of this day-would that its glorious principles were written upon every heart, and were the moving principle of every action.
In the year 1649, this great doctrine was most broadly laid down in an enactment, a portion of which, it is true, is stained with a spirit too common at that day ; but the remainder breathes a spirit in advance of that age, aye, of this age. The glory of Maryland would have been complete, had not the magic circle of her freedom of conscience been limited within the boundaries of Christianity : wide, wondrously wide for that age were those boundaries, and full of glory to those who marked them out. And yet therein they were not behind the present age, in the circle of its freedom of spirit, its liberty of conscience ; for this age still keeps beyond that charmed circle, as accursed spirits, those who are beyond the limits of Christianity.t An age may come when this very age of ours-this nineteenth century, shall be called up before the judgment seat and be condemned : when the finger of scorn shall point back to its loud boasts and empty professions of liber- ality, and then turn in mingled contempt and disgust to the recorded proofs of their folly and their falsehood. I do not now allude to any popular outbreak, to any insane outrage of the spirit of fanaticism which still lingers in the mob, ready to be stirred up by the potent spell of those misguided spirits who love to ride upon the storm which they have raised against their neighbors-to ruined convents, burnt
. McMahon, 226.
;It has been but lately that the Jews were exempted, fiom ths operation of this disability.
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churches, and desecrated tombs-nor to that no less terrific persecu- tion of public opinion, the proscription of slander, and the torture of obloquy. This is the evidence which history must bear in testimony against this age -- but I do allude to that record evidence which still stains the statute-book of our land. Test-caths have not ceased to ex- ist-articles of belief are still to be signed-and there are disabilities of religious belief which prevent those, who hold it, from enjoying the full rights which belong to freemen.
I abhor intolerance of any kind, be it the spirit that delights in blood, or that abstains from it only because it wants the courage and the "power to stain its fangs in gore, be it the spirit that revels where the rack is in horrid motion, where the screw and the wheel, & the axe are crushing out human life ; or that gloats over the not less agonizing torture which pursues man throughout all the relations of existence, in all his rights, in his privacy, in his public hopes, in prospects which it blights with its ever pursuing curse, following him to the very verge of the grave, and only pausing there because the released spirit has cs - caped the grasp of its undying malice.
Chains may bind the body, but the spirit is unchainable-the body you may coerce, compel to obey, but the spirit is beyond the con- trol of human power. Silence the tongue, torture the body, im- mure it in adamantine walls, and the conscience is still free in the enchanted palace of the heart, reigning unconquered and uncon- querable. You cannot bow it save by conviction. Persecution for conscience sake is blasphemy against Heaven ; it is an attempt to deprive the soul of a gift which God has given her. It is a folly, because it must fail of its purpose-for the stern spirit will con- quer in spite of torments, and the softer will remain unconvinced in spite of outward conformity. It can only make martyrs or hypocrites.
The famous act of 1619, which proclaimed to the world the no-
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ble sentiment of freedom of conscience, after enacting provisions against blasphemy, declares that the penalties therein named shall be inflicted on any person calling another a sectarian name of reproach. specifying those terms which include every denomination, and . then proceeds with the sublime declaration, " And whereas the en- forcing of the conscience, in matters of religion, has frequently fallen out to be of dangerous consequence in those commonwealths, where it has been practised, and for the more quiet and peaceable government of this province, and the better to preserve mutual love and unity among the inhabitants, &c., No person or persone whatsoever with- in this province, or the islands, ports, harbors, creeks, or Havens, thereunto belonging, professing to believe in Jesus Christ, shall from henceforth be any ways troubled, molested, or discountenanced, for or in respect of his or her religion, nor in the free exercise thereof, within this province or the islands thereunto belonging, nor any- way compelled to the belief or exercise of any other religion a- gainsthis her or consent .*
The passage of this act, the oath of the Governor, and the consequent freedom of conscience which the colony enjoyed-and the effectual re. peal of this same act by the laws establishing the church of England and disabling the Catholics and the intolerance and persecution which ensued, prove conclusively that to legislation, to the legislation of Bal- timore and his colonists, was owing the toleration of carly Maryland and to the legislation of the faction that in a later day came to power, was owing the intolerance, which stains the annals of Maryland. The charter had nothing to do with toleration or church establishment. If it had scoured toleration in the first instance, it would have rendered its overthrow in the second impossible. No legislative action could
* Bacon's las- 1617 ch 1- 17th year of Cecilius Lord Proprietary, fre act, for the penalties.
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destroy a constitutional sanction. In later days the stamp act, passed by Parliament, was declared unconstitutional by the Judges of Freder - ick county Court, because it infringed upon rights secured by the char- ter, and the people of Maryland solemnly planted themselves upon those provisions, framed by the foresight of George Calvert, which protected them from taxation by the crown. That the charter was not intolerant, granted by a king, who was compelled to put in force the penal laws against the Catholics in England, must ever reflect honor upon Charles, although that grant may have been induced by grateful favour toward the first Lord Baltimore, its framer.
The charter of Maryland is full of testimony to the fact that the mon- arch marked but little the nature of the powers he conferred upon a fa- vorite over a distant and unsettled province, or that Calvert persuaded him to relinquish his deep rooted prejudices for that occasion. A mon arch who aimed at despotic sway, conveys away the complete jurisdic- tion of a noble territory without one restriction of the rights of the crown, save the simple one of allegiance. A prince jealous of his power, raises a subject to an authority equal and a rank only inferior to his own in the wide domain he had given him. A king who had determined to rule without a parliament, confers upon the Proprietary the power of assembling the freemen of the colony, or their delegates and makes the sanction of a majority necessary for the passage of laws, except in a few cases which come within the purview of a mere tem- porary police power. A king who was greedy of money and seek- ing to impose taxes upon his people without their consent, deprives himself and his heirs forever of the right to tax the people who shall settle within the borders of Maryland. A king who was hampering trade and destroying commerce by arbitrary duties, bestows upon the Proprietary and his people the right of trading in their own ships to any
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port. Do we praise Charles for these provisions -do we say that he loved liberty-was opposed to arbitrary taxation aud despotic govern . ment ? Their whole honor is due to George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, the framer of that charter. Why then should Charles receive any greater degree of honor for the absence of restrictions upon conscience which would have made his gift like the poisoned gift of Dejanira, a des- troying curse to him whom he wished to favour, Yet we do honor him for generosity of soul and easiness of disposition which induced him in bestowing, to bestow a royal boon. The charter of Maryland was truly a royal boon. Of its further merits it is unnecessary to speak : it has been too often discussed for me to dwell longer upon it. It was the work of a great man whose fame must endure while Mary- land is grateful. Ile died before the preliminaries were adjusted : but he had already overcome all the difficulties in the path to success, and nothing was left to his son to perform, bnt faithfully & steadfastly to fol- low out the counsels and designs of his great Father.
Then to Calvert and his Catholic followers. and not to the king of England, belongs the glory of Maryland toleration.
The character of George Calvert has been often drawn and well : sometimes alas it has been distorted, cunningly, perhaps and under the guise of seeming love and reverence. But yet such is its native 1 beauty and simplicity, and the power of truth that it must ever contin- ue to stand forth in bright relief from the shadows of that age, un- harmed by the petty shafts of envy or the fictions and surmises of the inventors of modern philosophical history. He was a man of ster- ling integrity, unbending in his religious faith from the time of his conversion-of that generous self-sacrificing devotion, which led him to give up all for the sake of conscience. The whole history of his . life subsequent to his conversion and its tenor prior to that event, prove beyond a doubt the singleness of his mind and the honest up.
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rightness of purpose which distinguished true greatness of soul. No truly great man can be a dissembler and a hypocrite. Hypocrisy is the mark of a contracted spirit : not for a moment could a soul like that of George Calvert dissemble with itself, and shrink from avow- ing before the world the honest convictions of his intellect : and more especially when those convictions were the result of mature deliber- ation, affected interests, not temporal. but eternal ; concerned duties not owed to man, but to God. Few men dare trifle upon such a subject ; it was not in the soul of Calvert to do so for one moment- much less to pass years in a course of systematic hypocrisy. Yet it has been said, and a laboured argument made to sustain the asser- tion, that he was a Catholic from his early years, if not born one, and that the statement of his conversion in 1624, and his consequent re- signation upon conscientious grounds, is unworthy of credit. Thank Heaven there is no testimony to sustain so startling an assertion : an assertion, which, if true, would destroy the character of the first founder of Maryland, and make him an inconsistent dissembler, a mis- erable poltroon, a perjured hypocrite. A Catholic, he must have con- cealed his faith under the outward garb of Protestanism ; holding a creed which was proscribed, through base fear, he must have adhered in appearance to another which he could not subscribe : believing in his heart the spiritual supremacy of the Pope, he must have sworn to hold the spiritual supremacy of the king. All this is inconsistent
with the character of Calvert, with his admitted probity-with his con- duct when the oath of allegiance was administered to him in Virginia, whither he had gone to plant his household gods and build up a home for himself & his children. How inconsistent these two facts-that as a Catholic he had once taken this oath to secure an office, and then subsequently as a Catholic he had peremptorily refused to sub- scribe to that oath, and had departed from the inhospitable land, where
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it was tendered to him, to seek a refuge among the more tolerant savages on the shores of the Chesapeake. It was not from pride that he refused to take the oath-for we are informed that whilst he reject- ed the oath preferred, he prepared one which he and his followers de- clared themselves ready to subscribe .* Utterly inconsistent with the honor of Calvert is this statement, inconsistent with his whole life pri- or and subsequent, inconsistent with itself.
The fact of his conversion and resignation is stated by Fuller, who wrote his life in his Worthics of England ; and the denial of this fact is rested upon the casual words of Arthur Wilson, in his His- tory of England. If there were no other testimony in the case, if the matter stood isolated even from the confirmatory evidence of at- tendant circumstances, upon the conflicting testimony of these two men alone there could not be room for a moment's doubt. Fuller says that he resigned his office in 1624, and that, " he freely confessed himself to the king that he was then become a Roman Catholic, so that he must be wanting to his trust, or violate his conscience in discharging his office. This his ingenuity so highly affected king James, that he continued him Privy Councillor all his reign, as appeareth in the Council-books, and soon after created him Lord Baltimore, of Balti- more, in Ireland." On the other hand, Wilson says under the year 1616. " Time and age had also worn out Sir Ralph Winwood, the king's able, faithful, and honest servant and Secretary ; who dying, Sir Robert Nauton and Sir George Calvert were made Secretaries ; men of contrary religions and factions, (as they were then styled,) Calvert being an hispaniolized Papist; the king matching them together like contrary elements, to find a medium between them." He afterwards speaks of him as ' popishly affected' in 1620-as the . Popish Secretary ' in 1621. Wilson wrote in
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