USA > Maryland > Studies in the civil, social and ecclesiastical history of early Maryland; lectures delivered to the young men of the Agricultural College of Maryland > Part 11
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The province of Maryland was left by will to Henry Harford, the natural son of Frederick, with all the private and executive rights which the father had possessed. He was a minor at the time of his accession, and the province had to be administered by guardians in his name. By this time, however, Maryland, along with the other colonies, was so excited by the great questions springing to the front in connection with the policy of the home country,-though Maryland, also, herself had certain great colonial causes to agitate her,-that it would have made very little difference who was proprietary. Besides, Governor Eden, who was then in the colony, was not a man of a very vigorous, though very amiable, character, and proprietary rights were not brought offensively for- ward. What may be said is, that with such a series of
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absolute lords, claiming great powers under the charter, it is no wonder that Maryland was what it was,-a body politic claiming and struggling for the largest possible independence, resisting assumptions by the proprietary, and by the governor and council that spoke for him, and asserting rights that practically annulled prerogatives that had been enjoyed from the beginning. A series of exalted men, of large and liberal minds, who, knowing the people, would have fostered what was good, would have been able to keep the province in peace. As it was, there was nothing to retard that natural growth of a free spirit, that, passing on from claim to claim, did not rest till a free and entire republic was established.
Between 1715 and 1776 there were three great notable periods of agitation, in which the subjects were of a local character and not connected with that other agitation in which Maryland took part with all the other colonies. The first of these periods reached from 1722 to 1732, years of effort on the part of the lower house, with steady antagonism on the part of the upper. The great question was, By what law shall the province be gov- erned? Lord Baltimore said, By the laws that I approve; the colonists said, By the laws of Great Britain as far as those laws are applicable in the colony. Not here a law and there a law as the proprietary shall think advisable, but whatever laws are found within the English code and are suitable to the circumstances of the colony, shall be appealed to and applied in the administration of the colony. It was not a new question by any means. For many years the principle had been recognized and acted on in particular instances, yet such limited application had never been satisfactory to the people, for it had always
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been a question for the courts to decide whether a law applied, and the judges, being of Lord Baltimore's appointment, could never be looked upon as impartial between him and the people, or in any case in which he in his own name or in that of his friends or adherents might be interested. For beside many other ways in which his lordship might be a party in matters of litigation, it will be remembered that the family had retained extensive tracts of land in different parts of the colony, as manors. So that he was as liable as another freeholder of the colony to meet with the difficulties incident to property.
It was true, as the court party, as the adherents of his lordship were called, said that a law of England did not necessarily operate in the colony; for various laws of a most important character, as the Habeas Corpus act, and the Toleration act, were not in force in Mary- land until they had been adopted here. The whole was one of those cases so common in the legislative or judicial history of a people, where occasional incidents gradually go to establish a principle, until at last what was only sporadic becomes the consistent and lawful process.
Lord Baltimore claimed that such a principle would neutralize his right under the charter to assent to laws, and therefore he opposed it year by. year. Particular laws might be recognized and applied, but to take up the whole body of English laws "in a lump," as he expressed it, did away with all the veto power of his provincial jurisdiction. It is true it was a rule that might work both ways, for while it might save the people from the arbitrary government of the proprietary, it
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might also introduce laws that might seriously impair their own peculiar liberties; for there were many laws on the statute-book of England that would not have suited the feelings of the people of Maryland.
They pursued the matter, however, to an issue, which, though appearing to be a compromise, with the balance in favor of the proprietary, in its substantial results and further consequences was altogether with the people. The contest lasted nearly ten years. The terms finally reached were apparently ambiguous, but the practice of the courts of the colony henceforth was to accept such laws of England as were plainly applicable to the case before them.
The next great period was that reaching from 1754 to 1763. There had been trouble in the colony, beginning with the year 1739, on the question of the revenue which Charles Lord Baltimore was receiving. The people claimed that he received more than he was entitled to, that money that came to his hand ought to go into the treasury of the colony, and so the people be cased in their burdens. This controversy lasted till all such dis- sensions were lost in the revolutionary struggle. The controversy of the period between 1754 and 1763 was, however, of a different character. It was the period of the French War, which terminated in the last-named year; only the peculiarity is that the French and English pro- vinces were in arms before the parent states had formally declared war.
In the pressure of the first-named year the colony responded to a requisition to the amount of six thousand pounds, and then provided for a sinking fund with which to liquidate the loan at maturity. This was done by
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various taxes imposed on the people on various kinds of property. Among these we find a tax of a peculiar kind, different from any that we know of at this day. Mary- land, through all the colonial period, had a poll tax, the most of her revenue being raised in that way. We have already seen the features of the law providing for such an imposition. This tax seems to have been levied to such an extent and in such an offensive way during the colonial period, that ever since then the people have utterly repudiated the system.
This sinking fund, however, was not provided for by a poll tax, though in one of its items persons were intro- duced with a discriminating odiousness that must have been offensive to the parties concerned. It was an income tax levied upon bachelors because they were bachelors, the amount being rated according to their incomes. Why they should have been so treated the law did not say. Probably the implied meaning of the law was that if not married they ought to have been, and that they could be if they would. Neither unmarried ladies were taxed, however large their incomes, nor widowers, even though they might not have children- only bachelors. It was evidently intended to be a penalty. This notion receives confirmation in the fact that bachelors are named along with luxuries, such as wines and billiard tables. The vestries throughout the province were re- quired to return the names and rated incomes of all the bachelors within their parochial limits, and in many of the old parish records we find such lists.
After 1754 Maryland's course was different, and though the governor and council were anxious to heed the royal requisition for carrying on the war, yet Maryland did
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little or nothing; for her first principle was that when the danger did not threaten her own borders the matter was no concern of hers; and so, however strong the demand might be, either from England or from the sister-colonies, she would do nothing. This was a selfish policy and might have proven a short-sighted one. Shut in as she was by Pennsylvania and Virginia, she was not to the same extent exposed; but the nature of the war, as carried on by the French and Indians together, might have brought on an inroad at any time. It was selfish, also, as showing an unwillingness to help those in their extremity with whom she was bound by so many ties, not only of blood, but also of interest. For though the colo- nies had not come yet to understand it, they not long afterwards learned that their interests were one, and that they must all stand or fall together. This came to be fully understood when the great emergency arose.
A second reason why Maryland did so little during the war was the jealousy of the Assembly against Lord Bal- timore on account of the revenues he was receiving from the colony, the amount at this time being from eight to ten thousand pounds sterling. Part of this they were convinced he was not entitled to; and certainly the province was nearly a sinecure to him, with a revenue out of all proportion to any outlay or attention that his ancestors had expended upon it. The people were there- fore jealous, and when the time came to provide for the requisition made by the English ministry for prosecuting the French war, Maryland insisted that the lands and revenues of the proprietary should bear their share of the necessary tax. This was, of course, bitterly opposed by the governor and the upper house. We can see no
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reason why the Assembly was not right. We cannot see why extensive manors, and vacant lands in the market for sale, which were equally with all the other lands in the province to be protected against foreign encroach- ments, should not bear their equal share of the burdens of the province. We cannot understand why fines, which were penalties for the violation of the laws of the province, should not go to the support of the commonwealth. Nor can we see why licenses for carrying on business in the colony should go without drawback to the proprietary when the business itself was to be protected by means of the tax.
The whole order of things was radically different from our notions of what is right. The colony existed for Lord Baltimore, according to his view. It was not a commonwealth, but his private property. It was his peace that was broken, for which fines were imposed; of his grace that business was carried on, for which his license was given. All its administration was of his right and all its emoluments for his advantage. It was a strange condition of things. It had not the redeeming feature of royalty to tone down its severe expression, in which antiquity and long usage mitigate the hereditary idea.
Beside that, as we have seen, the present proprietary, Frederick, was not one on whom the people could look with any respect. We have already seen his character,- vain, foolish, depraved. Born in 1731, he was now in full career, and had exhibited the leading traits of his dis- position. His father, also, who had died in 1751, was in no way qualified to win respect. These things made the people the more jealous. They believed that they were
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being defrauded in various ways by the proprietary, and that the governor and upper house were, in his behalf, enemies of the rights and interests of the people. In the . matter of licenses, and in the matter of port and tobacco duties, they believed they were being robbed every day, and so the position they assumed. The whole adminis- trative power being in the hands of those appointed by Lord Baltimore, they had no redress. Now, however, an opportunity was presented of asserting the rights of the people, and it was done. One feature of their proposed ordinance was unfortunate. As the war was with a Roman Catholic power, and as they could not disabuse their minds of fear and jealousy of all Roman Catholics, they attempted to double the rate of the imposition of taxes upon such of the colony as were of that faith. The reasoning certainly was not logical and the conclusion was not just.
The consequence, however, of all these features of the law was that the colony did nothing for the prosecution of the war. The lower house would not depart from the position it had taken, and the governor and council would not approve the relief bill as passed. The other colonies complained bitterly of Maryland's inactivity, the British ministry was highly indignant and indulged in threats of coercior, but the Assembly stood fast. They laid the blame on the governor and council, and the governor laid the blame on the Assembly. The result, however, was the same. The people as represented-for the lower house was unanimous-had reached the point, as against the proprietary, when they would preserve their rights, and while they would help the general cause on their own terms, they would not help on any other. It shows
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the spirit and resolution of the time. The dissension was continued through nine sessions of the Assembly, with the only result that the people of the colony got further training in the principles that were afterward to be accepted as the groundwork of their political existence.
The next period reaches from 1770 to 1773, and was a time of as much agitation and political ferment in the colony as any, may be, it ever passed through. To under- stand it we must bear in mind that the rule of the Assembly of Maryland, in the matter of money bills, had been to pass them only for a limited period, so that they had to be renewed from time to time. The advan- tage of this was that, holding the purse-strings, they could control so far the administration. It was a rule growing out of the resolution to preserve their rights; for, as we have seen, while no law could become such without the assent of the proprietary, so also no law could be repealed without his consent. To limit the period of the operation of a law, therefore, was their only safe- guard. This principle is adopted in all free states.
Among the laws so passed was that of 1763, regulating the fees of office in the various executive departments, a law that was limited to seven years, and consequently expired in 1770. When this time came the lower house, reviewing the matter, discovered that certain officers were receiving most extravagant sums,-the secretary four thousand three hundred and seventy-six dollars, the judges of the land office three thousand four hundred and thirty-eight dollars, and the commissary-general three thousand nine hundred and twenty-three dollars,-salaries which, however moderate as compared with some at this day, were very large for that time.
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The people, therefore, refused to renew the old law and insisted on certain reductions; but as the act of the lower house had to be approved by the upper, and these officers named were four members of the upper, their attempt came to nothing. The contention was prolonged and very angry, with the result that the Assembly was prorogued, with no law to regulate this very important matter. In this position of affairs Governor Eden at- tempted a solution, and raised a storm that agitated the colony deeply. He attempted by his own individual act to re-establish the law of 1763, with the fees therein pro- vided, until the Assembly should pass a new act-a thing unnecessary if the governor could accomplish the same by proclamation.
With this the war began, hot and prolonged, in which all the ablest men. of the province became interested. For to rule by proclamation, to assume the power to lay taxes, which the fees were declared to be, without the consent of the people, was always in the English world regarded as the grossest stretch of tyrannical power. Able lawyers contended, on the other side, that a fee was not a tax, and, appealing to precedent, tried to justify the governor's act. The response was that the duties of these various officers were essential for the people's wel- fare, that they were not a matter of choice, but of neces- sity, and that, therefore, they were a tax whose imposition belonged alone to the people; and they objected not only to the extravagance of the charges in this case, but absolutely to the principle involved.
It was in this controversy that Charles Carroll first came prominently before the people, and it was in this controversy that Daniel Dulany, one of the ablest men in
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Maryland annals, wounded his reputation irretrievably. He had defended Maryland and the other colonies in the Stamp Act agitation, using his pen with great power, and exercising an influence in England as well as in America. But now, as provincial secretary, and the beneficiary of large emoluments from his office, he came forward to defend a principle on the denial of which the very exist- ence of a free people depends. For when a ruler can tax a people by proclamation without law the whole power of the state is in his hands.
Of course there could be but one issue to such a con- test at any time, and particularly now when the public mind was so much aroused on great civil questions. For this discussion began only five years after that of the Stamp Act, which had excited all America. By the elections of 1773 the will of the people was definitely proclaimed and government by proclamation received its quietus.
Associated with this controversy there was another that derived factitious interest because of its association, though it was also a matter of very great moment: the question of the salaries of the clergy under the act of establishment. By the law of 1763 these had been re- duced from the original sum of forty pounds of tobacco per poll to thirty pounds, and when this law ceased by limitation, the question was, what were the clergy to receive? In this case the resort was not had to procla- mation, as in the other, but the earlier tax of forty pounds was revived. For the law of 1702 was not repealed in whole or in part, but only thirty pounds appointed instead of the forty by the law of 1763. The whole process seems to have been peculiar, for this sub-
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stitution of one rate for another without any repeal or amendment of the law which set the rate was something out of course. The agitation was wide-spread and very keen, though the principal use of it seems to have been to give the excited brains of the day another subject on which to show their skill and acrimony. Another ques- tion arose during the controversy, whether the act of establishment had been valid from the beginning, the ground being that though the Assembly that passed the law had been summoned by writs running in King Wil- liam's name, yet that he had died before the law was passed, his death not being known of in the colony, and that consequently the act was null and void. This question the people of the day did not attempt to settle, passing it over to a more convenient season. The other question of the amount of the tax was determined in 1773, thirty pounds being again appointed. All other questions were soon lost sight of in the great agitation leading to the revolutionary struggle.
And now for the conclusion of the proprietary gov- ernment. Henry Harford succeeded his father Frederick, not as of hereditary right, for his birth precluded that; but by his father's will all the property of Lord Baltimore and all the high privileges of " absolute lord " descended to him. It is not likely, however, that people paid much attention to the fact, though to many of them it must have appeared as the last point of their anomalous posi- tion, that all the extensive prerogatives of government and all the extensive revenues that arose in the admin- istration of government, fines, licenses, duties, should pass over by will to another, an illegitimate child, a minor, one who knew nothing of the colony, and had no
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interest whatever in its welfare beyond his own revenues. But the mind of the colony was now fixed on other things. All attention was absorbed in great questions. Principles, not men, occupied their attention. Robert Eden, the governor at the time in the colony, was per- sonally a popular man, however unpopular his course in regard to the proclamation. He had, however, but little influence. The people, by the Assembly, as well as by their meetings held everywhere, were asserting master- ship, and the time between his accession and the Revolu- tion was too short for any new question to arise about the rights of government.
In 1775, July 26, the Convention of Maryland took the government into its own hands and proprietary control ccased. The private rights of the proprietary were recog- nized till 1780, when the people having become irritated by the course of the Tory party in the colony, and by the refusal of the English trustees to honor the drafts of the State upon the public funds in the Bank of Eng- land, all the property of British subjects in the State was confiscated, amongst which property was that of Henry Harford. The State afterwards paid him ten thousand pounds sterling in compromise of all claims. In this way ended a connection which, however rational accord- ing to the ideas of the year 1634, had become in 1776 an anachronism and a monstrosity, so great had been the progress which the human mind had undergone within one hundred and fifty years.
NINTH LECTURE.
MARYLAND AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
We have endeavored to trace through the preceding lectures the development of a sense of liberty and the spirit of independence in the people of Maryland during the colonial period. That spirit we have seen manifested even in the beginning, when Lord Baltimore attempted to restrict the privilege of the people in the matter of pro- posing laws for their government. From that time on there never was a day in which that same spirit was not inanifested. Sometimes it was toward the proprietary, sometimes the governor or council, sometimes it was towards the king and British ministry. It was always there, ready to be called forth upon every occasion.
What was all this but a steady course of education and training for the final development into statehood, the maturity of the commonwealth, in which the people of the state were to be their own masters and pursue their own courses, untrammeled by any over-lord of any name? The jealousy of Maryland in this was remarkable, as was evidenced by the fact that though she fought resolutely from the beginning of the war to the end of it, and took such deep interest in the period of agitation that preceded the breaking out of hostilities, yet she did not enter the Confederacy till 1781. Her position in the matter was rather that of an ally than of a confederate, in which, while she did her whole part and received encomiums both for her civil policy and the martial zeal and ability of her sons,
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yet at the same time she insisted that a broad spirit of equity should be observed by all. Her whole life was in the cause, but her independence was preserved amongst her equals in the contest.
The purpose of this lecture is to review the course of Maryland during the whole period of the conflict. As we have seen, during the French War the wrath of the British ministry had no terrors for her. Her legislature had definite ideas of what was right to herself, and they pursued those ideas irrespective of threats from any source. The great English minister who afterwards espoused the cause of the colonies, William Pitt, was irritated to the highest degree. Governor Sharpe, though in a very eminent degree he commanded the respect of the people, urged in his irritation that, as the colony could not be reached by the direct method, a stamped paper be imposed on the colonies, to be used in all legal transactions; the same law that was afterwards attempted by the English Parliament with such signal failure. He even went so far as to send the draft of such a law to the Ministry. Maryland had never learned to stand in awe of any power or authority, but from the beginning insisted definitely on her own autonomy, that she was free to regulate her own internal affairs without dictation from any source.
Not that she was factious or rebellious in temperament. The contrary was the case. She gave the proprietaries, when there was cause for it, strong and substantial proofs of her more than loyalty to them. Also she evinced every desire not to break off her connection with the British empire; and when the British ministry relaxed its efforts to tax the colonies by the repeal of the stamp act, Mary- land cordially rejoiced. Also she bore quietly through
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many years the oncrous and unjust navigation laws, · though they were in such conflict with her own prosperity, restricting and confining her trade for the benefit of the English merchants.
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