USA > Maryland > Maryland, two hundred years ago, a discourse > Part 5
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The commission to Gov. Stone, besides surrounding him with restrictions in various particulars, that shew the Proprie- tary's jealous guardianship of his royal prerogatives, con- tained a clause, to be found in no preceding commission,' binding him not to molest any persons professing to believe in Jesus Christ, and in particular any Roman Catholic, on ac- count of their religion, so long as they were neither unfaithful to his lordship nor conspired against the government ; and to
1 On this point, I am at issue with Chalmers and those who copy him, 22 ? who assert that the Governors' commissions, "between 1637 and 1657," or from 1637 forward, contained a similar restriction. The matter has been referred to in a previous note. When I see the authority for such an assertion, I shall readily acknowledge my error, and concede the early date of the clause, which at present I entirely doubt.
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make no distinctions in appointments to office on account of religious opinions. Similar restrictions were inserted in the oaths prescribed to the subordinate officers, the greater part of whom were now Protestants. With these papers was transmitted to the colony a body of sixteen laws, to which the people, through their Assembly, were required to give their assent, " without alteration, increase or diminution," within twelve months, or they were to be of no effect.
This body of laws, which in several respects modified the government, is believed by many to have been drawn up by Lord Baltimore himself. But his own words are, these "acts were proposed to us for the good and quiet settlement of our colony ; and, finding them very fit to be enacted as laws there, we do consent that Gov. Stone shall propose them to an Assembly." They may have been recommended by Gov. Stone, as containing the principles on which he believed his government could be made stable, and the people be brought to live in quiet ; or they may have been drawn by Thomas Hatton, the new Protestant Secretary, who was made the bearer of the commissions and laws to the province. To Lord Baltimore is due the credit of having recognized their general justice and their adaptation to the wants and religious condition of the colony ; though, by coupling his expression of approval with the impolitic restriction, that the whole accompanying body of laws must be passed without the slightest alteration by the Assembly, he rendered their rejec- tion almost certain. Indeed, had not that body, as we shall see, after rejecting his code, proceeded to form one themselves in which they embodied the act concerning religion, that im- portant legal recognition of the rights of conscience, would have been still longer delayed.
Early in April, 1649, Stone's government was in operation, and an Assembly met at his call at St. Mary's, to discuss. the laws recently received, as well as other matters connected with the interests of the colony. Two objections were raised to the code ;- first, that an act of recognition of Lord Balti- > more's proprietary rights contained in it, was oppressive and unjust ; and, secondly, that the royal jurisdiction and also-
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lute dominion claimed in an oath of fidelity prescribed in it, went beyond the provisions of the charter and "implied a > slavish subjection of the people." Independently of these objections, the disgust of the members at having laws pre- sented for their adoption, which they were forbidden to mod- ify or amend, would have formed an insuperable obstacle to their passage, and his lordship's code was laid aside.
But while they rejected his lordship's body of laws, they showed, as in their earlier legislation, no unwillingness to prepare one themselves ; and, professing a sincere desire to meet the views of the Proprietary, selected from his code the enactments which they deemed essential for the preservation of the civil and religious repose of the colony, to which they added others of their own. Among the former, was the cele- brated " Act concerning Religion ;" -- the provisions of which were so luminously in contrast with the rigid conservatism of Virginia and the restrictive Puritanism of Massachusetts, ' that their light has remained as a beacon in the path of our colonial history, and the fact of their enactment has long been regarded as giving every true Marylander just ground for pride in the liberal spirit manifested by his ancestors, two hundred years ago.
The author of the act in question, whoever he may have 4: been, understood that his aim must be, to harmonize the dis-
1 An erroneous impression prevails, that the early code of Massachusetts was founded on the Mosaic law. I have shown in a previous note, that the people == ' of that colony made their first move towards a regular code, early in 1635, soon after the Maryland colonists had prepared theirs for Lord Baltimore's accep- tance. An abstract of laws, taken from the Mosaic code, was in consequence drawn up and presented to the General Court by the Rev. John Cotton, but not adopted,-though afterwards published in London in 1641, as "the laws of New England, as they are now established." Hence the error which has prevailed relative to the Massachusetts code. The laws, one hundred in number, actu- ally accepted, were drawn up by Nathaniel Ward, author of " the Simple Cobbler of Agawam," and were adopted in December, 1641. under the title of " the Body of Liberties of the Massachusetts colony in New England." This was the first code established there. In June, 1649, after laborious and protracted efforts to codify and improve the laws extant, the " Liberties" were put to ! press ;- so that Maryland and Massachusetts commenced their labors of legis- lation and remodeled their code, nearly at the same time. I regret that I can- > not devote some space to a comparison and contrast of their characteristics.
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cordant religious elements of which the Maryland colony was composed. The enactments proposed by him, therefore, form a compound, the elements of which are to be found in the acts or public professions of the Presbyterian, Catholic, and Independent sects of that day ; and were collected and com- bined, with a view of conciliating and satisfying persons of each and all of these antagonistic opinions. Let us now endeavor to trace the sources whence the different portions of this remarkable statute were derived.
In May, 1648, the Presbyterian party in Parliament, gather- ing courage after a period of absolute panic, called up and passed an ordinance against blasphemy and heresies, which, by the influence of the army had been kept back nine months; the stern severity of which has given rise to congratulations, that men capable of such enactments on religious subjects, did not succeed in obtaining supreme power. By this ordi- nance, any person denying the existence of God, or the per- sons of the Trinity, that Christ is the Son of God, and several similar dogmas, was, on complaint of two witnesses, to be brought to trial, and, if he would not abjure his errors, to suf- fer death,1 without benefit of clergy.
The Maryland law, drawn up three months after, embodied similar specifications and the same terrible penalty ;- only there was no opportunity given for recantation, and the goods and land of the offender were to be confiscated for the use of the Proprietary. In this respect, the Maryland law was even more severe than its model.
. By the second clause, any person uttering reproachful words concerning the Virgin Mary or the Holy Apostles or
1 By the Laws and Orders of the colony of Virginia, established May 24th, 1610, impious or malicious speech against the Holy Trinity, or against the known articles of the christian faith, or any word or act tending to the derision or despite of God's Holy Word, was made punishable with death. For using unlawful oaths, or taking the name of God in vain, the penalty of a first offence was, severe punishment ;-- of a second, to have a bodkin thrust through the tongue ;- of a third, death.
In the Massachusetts " Liberties," of 1619, worshipping any God but the Lord God,-witchcraft, and blaspheming the name of God, the Father, Son or Holy Ghost, were made capital offences.
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Evangelists, was to suffer fine for the first offence, or if des- titute of goods, to be whipped ;- for the second, a fine, or whipping and imprisonment ;- for the third, banishment and forfeiture of lands. This, as was afterwards declared by one' of Lord Baltimore's friends, was inserted in deference to the views of the Roman Catholics in the province.
By the third clause, any person calling another by any name or terms, in a reproachful manner, relating to matter of religion, was to suffer fine, whipping, or imprisonment, and ask forgiveness of the aggrieved party. Some propositions springing from the I dependents of that period, resemble this clause in form, though not precisely in the enumeration of sects. A similar clause was also introduced in one of the negotiations between the contending parties in Europe, during the Thirty Years' War. This was evidently intended to meet the peculiar condition and mixed religious character of the population of Maryland.
The fourth clause fixed penalties for profaning the Sabbath or Lord's day, similar to those enforced in the- Church of England, as well as among the various dissenting sects.
The fifth and last clause of the enactment, commencing with the noble postulate, that " the enforcing of the con- science in matters of religion hath frequently fallen out to be of dangerous consequence in those commonwealths where it hath been practiced," enacts, " for the more quiet and peace- able government of the province and the better to preserve mutual love and unity among the inhabitants," that no per- son, professing to believe in Jesus Christ, shall henceforth be molested, troubled, or discountenanced on account of his religion, nor the free exercise thereof, nor any way compelled to the belief or exercise of any other religion, against his
1 John Langford's "Refutation of Babylon's Fall in Maryland," published in London, 1655. The Act concerning Religion, hesays, "was passed by a Gen- eral Assembly in Maryland in 1649, and assented to by the Lord Baltimore in 1650 ; and the intent of it being to prevent any disgusts between those of differ- ent judgments in Religion there, it was thought necessary to insert that clause concerning the Virgin Mary, of whom some, otherwise, might perhaps speake reproachfully, to the offence of others."-p. 32.
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consent ;- so he be not unfaithful to the Lord Proprietary, nor molest or conspire against the civil government.
The counterpart of this portion of the law, is to be found in the "Agreement of the People," a paper submitted by (nonIs the officers of the English army to the consideration of their countrymen, in which they proposed to change the forin of government. In this address, after disclaiming the idea of continuing in force "any laws or covenants whereby to com- pel men by penalties or otherwise to any thing about faith or worship, or of restraining any person from professing his faith or exercising his religion according to his conscience," they demand that " all who profess faith in God by Jesus Christ, however differing in judgment from the doctrine, dis- cipline, and worship publicly held forth, shall not be restrained from but protected in the exercise of their faith and the prac- tice of their religion, so they abuse not this liberty to the civil injury of others or the disturbance of the public peace."" Here we have the substance, and indeed almost the form of the closing enactment of the Maryland law.
There was one sect, however, in whose favor the latter law made especial exception, to which the English document shewed no mercy. Here, the old national prejudice still ? asserted its power ; and the very voice which proclaimed to Englishmen in tones of majestic harmony the doctrine of perfect liberty of faith to all believers in Jesus Christ, died away in discord, with the denial of all religious rights to the 32 followers of the Pope. But Lord Baltimore was differently situated. A Roman Catholic himself, he lived in the midst of those who denied him the religious privileges they claimed for the meanest in their own communion ; yet he was able to 1) avail himself, in this period of religious excitement, of the doctrines of influential Protestant seets, to secure the quiet of his distant colony, and to protect by law, those of the
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' The Independent clergy, before this period, had insisted on toleration, in their discussions in Assembly with the Presbyterian divines, who refused to countenance any but those of their own faith ; and I think it probable that similar propositions in favor of all believers in Jesus Christ, were made by them, before the issuing of the " Agreement of the people."
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inhabitants from oppression, who were of the same pro- scribed faith with himself. And this, I believe, in view of the fact that he was about to place the control of the colony : in the hands of Protestants, was a strong motive for his sup- port of the act of religion transmitted by him from England in 1648, in which the principles proclaimed by different sects of the Protestants themselves were made available for the peace of the colony and the protection of the Roman Catho- lics in Maryland.
The impression is somewhat prevalent, that to our state belongs the honor of the first legislative movement in favor of religious toleration on this continent ; but such is not the fact. As early as 1645, an act in favor of the broadest tole- ration, more comprehensive even than that of Maryland, since it included the Jew and the Turk, was brought before the representatives of those who, twenty-five years before, had landed on Plymouth rock. "The sum of it," says Winslow, the Governor, in a letter to Winthrop, then Governor of the Massachusetts, "was, to allow and maintain full and free toleration to all men that would preserve the civil peace and submit unto government; and there was no limitation or exception against Turk, Jew, Papist, Arian, Socinian, Nieo- laitan, Familist, or any other." A majority of the deputies and three of the assistants were in favor of the act; but the Governor, fearing that, if carried into effect, it would "eat out the power of godliness," refused to put the question, and stiffed the law. "By this," pathetically concludes the writer, "you may see that all the troubles of New England are not at the Massachusetts." Thus, nothing but the hesi- tancy of a timid magistrate prevented the Puritan Pilgrims of Plymouth' from bearing away from the Roman Catholic
" We are too apt, in referring to the civil and religious traits of the early settlers of New England, to confound the different settlements with each other. Massachusetts and Plymonth were distinct in government acel lanz. and in some particulars, essentially different in feeling. " The Plymouth colonists, in religious matters, were more tolerant than their neighbors of Massachusetts. When Roger Williams had been driven from Massachusetts for his opinions, and was reduced to extreme indigence, Governor Winslow of the Plymouth colony, aided him by money and advice. 'That great and
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and Protestant Pilgrims of Maryland the honor of the second legislative recognition on this continent of the sacred rights of conscience,
This spectacle of the wise, the powerful, and even the pious, rejecting the principle of toleration as tending to the subversion of religion and authority, was not to be seen alone in the colony of Plymouth. The noblest minds of that day, so far as intellectual reach and profound scholarship were concerned, shrunk from the word, as one, the mere ut- terance of which was sufficient to shake down the walls of Zion and undermine the foundations of civil government ; and it was left for those, in one sense humble and illiterate, but in a higher, truly noble and enlightened, to see by the flame of the stake, and amid trials and persecution, the truc nature of that liberty wherewith Christ designed to make man free.
Yet, what the Plymouth colony failed to do, through the weakness of her executive, was actually accomplished in the " Providence Plantations," the asylum of Roger Williams. Two years before the session of the Maryland Assembly, of 44 which I have spoken, the people of that settlement formally adopted a code, having the democratic principle for its basis, and containing this noble enactment : " All men may walk as their consciences persuade them, every one in the name of his God ;- and let the saints of the Most High walk in this colony without molestation, in the name of Jehovah, their God forever and ever."> In the same spirit, Roger Williams, perhaps the author of that code, wrote in after years to the peo- ple of his beloved Providence, in the following terms : " Sup- pose a ship goes to sea with many hundred souls on board, whose weal is common. This is a true picture of a common- wealth or human combination or Society. It hath fallen out
pious soul, Mr. Winslow,' said Williams, ' kindly furnished me at Providence, and put a piece of gold into the hands of my wife for our supply.'" Moore's Lives of the Governors of New Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, p. 118.
' Proceedings of the first General Assembly for the Incorporation of the Providence Plantations, and the code of Laws adopted by that Assembly in 16-17, p. 50.
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sometimes, that both Papists and Protestants, Jews and Turks may be embarked or board one ship, The liberty of con- science I plead for, turns on these hinges ;- that none of these Papists, Protestants, Jews or Turks be forced to come to the ship's prayers or worship, if they have any."
Maryland, however, was the first American colony in which the principle of toleration was practically carried out, al- - though its recognition by statute, dates fifteen years later than its actual introduction into the colony. This was co-in- cident with the first arrival of the expedition of settlement, composed of both Catholic and Protestant colonists; and its origin, I have already stated to have been, in my opinion, not simply of a religious character, but an unavoidable conse- quence of the provisions of the charter, the peculiar position of the Proprietary, and the mixed religious opinions of the . people ; which, while the colony was controlled by a Roman Catholic, rendered any other policy than that of toleration, to the last degree impolitic, if not impossible.
This opinion, however, is stated, not with a view of detract- ing from the honor justly due to Proprietary and people, in connection with the subject, but to place that honor on its proper foundation. The causes that lead men to a perception of truth, do not always lie within the compass of the particu- lar subject to which the principle recognized belongs. As, in science, some of its grandest discoveries have had their origin in circumstances, not commonly recognized as included within its peculiar circle, so, in religion, some of its most sublime doctrines, and among them that of the inviolability of the human conscience, have been made clear to the compre- hension of men in earlier times, not so much by a direct per- ception of the essence of religious principle, as by that pres- sure from without, which made the helpless victims of intole- rance and persecution alive to the injustice with which they were treated, and ready to claim for themselves and their fel- low-men the privileges that were truly their right. 1%, also, in respect to scientific discoveries, the inductions are not the less valuable and true, that they run, not from the centre out- ward, but rather tend from the exterior to the interior, so, in
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religion, and in the case of our ancestors of Maryland, they are not the less entitled to praise, because their views of duty in this particular, sprang rather from the influence of external circumstances, than from their clear perception of the true nature of toleration, arising from the nature of Christianity itself. It is sufficient that Proprietary and people, in the face of an almost universal intolerance in the sects to which they respectively belonged, were placed by God's good providence in such relations, as made the practice of tolerance essential to their own quiet and the permanence of their social organi- zation ; and thus led the way, by the incorporation of the prin- ciple in the civil code of the colony, for a manifestation of its advantage and its justice, and for its adoption by more popu- lous and more powerful communities. For, say what we may, a large amount of the noble doing in the world is the result of noble example; and doctrines which might never or but slowly have made themselves felt in society, if left merely to argumentative inculcation, have borrowed a sublime force and an irresistible power, from being embodied in some great act, or presented to the admiration of mankind in a series of marked and heroic efforts.
After passing other laws, besides that concerning religion, appropriate to the wants of the colony, the Assembly of 1649 prepared to adjourn. Before doing so, the members drew up a letter to his Lordship, (AApril 21st, 1649,) vindicating their past course, explaining their reasons for laying aside the code recently proposed, and praying him to send no more such, as they were only calculated to fill their minds with jealousies and suspicions. Would he but send the heads of such laws as he wished passed, they would use their utmost endeavors to mect his views, but it was significantly intimated that > oaths did not sit well upon the consciences of the people, and they desired to perform their duties to him and to one another, " with as little swearing as possible." Forfeitures, it was suggested, would be more likely to keep men faithful, than oaths.
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This letter found Lord Baltimore in London, watching the proceedings of those bold regicides, who, after beheading to ... their king, bad abolished monarchical institutions, and were now engaged in putting down all opposition, strengthening the foundations of their new government, and forwarding the fortunes of their friends. Lord Baltimore was a man of pen- etration and foresight ; and he could not but see that the eradication of the monarchical principle from the supreme law, might endanger his own authority over the colony of Maryland. His position was evidently one which would require the most cautious and prudent management, to enable him to retain his charter and avoid a one-sided discussion of the principles upon which it was based, and the manner in which the government had been administered.
With the letters of the Assembly, just mentioned, came also an application for permission to settle in Maryland, from a considerable number of persons, residents of Virginia, who, for their stubborn non-conformity and their sympathy with 33.55. 9 Parliament, had fallen under the ban of Sir William Berke- ley, and had been ordered to leave that province.1 With Lord Baltimore, their religious faith formed no objection to their admission to his colony ; and it is quite probable he was not unwilling to adopt a course that would show his superi- ority to religious prejudices, and establish for himself some claim on the future forbearance of the party in power. These Virginia Independents asked " convenient portions of land, liberty of conscience, and privilege to hold courts within themselves," which Governor Stone had promised to concede, provided they would accept lands upon the existing condi- tions of plantation, take the usual oath of fidelity, and submit to appeals to the Provincial Court. The only objection made by the Independents, was, to the quantity of land assigned ; and his Lordship, in a most accommodating spirit, sent out new conditions of plantation, (July 2d, 1649,) changing the
1 I had prepared a sketch of the origin and growth of this congregation of > non-conformists in Virginia, and the circumstances that induced them to take up their residence in Maryland ; but find myself obliged to reserve it for future use and publication.
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grant to three thousand acres for every thirty persons, but requiring from each settler, as before, the oath of fidelity, as a condition precedent to taking possession of his land. With this, the Independents professed themselves satisfied ; and, under the guidance of Richard Bennett, an old and distin- guished resident of Virginia, prepared to leave their former homes. Within the year 1649, the greater part of the con- gregation, numbering over one hundred, had removed into Maryland. The most of them, selected a place of settlement on the banks of the Severn ; and, as Roger Williams had, at the time of his banishment from Massachusetts, formed his 5 / little company into a church and declared that the Providence of God had led them to a place among the savages, where they might worship without molestation, a privilege denied them among christian men, -- so they, organizing themselves into a church and taking up their abode in a region surround- ed by savage tribes, piously recognized that divine PROVI- DENCE, which had guided them to a place of refuge, and bestowed on their new home the same name that had been given to the first settlement of Rhode Island. Here, " they sat down joyfully and cheerfully followed their vocations ;"- so that it might be appositely said of them and the Proprie- tary, in the words of Cowper,
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