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 7
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found themselves shut off and put under the ban and required to leave the province. It was a heavy blow where none was expected.
But if the proprietary had difficulty from this source, not less had he from another class, the Puritans, who began to come into the province only four or five years after this other question had been settled; for they antag- onized him from the time they began to acquire power. Whether Church of England people gave him trouble we do not know, nor whether any of the other bodies of Christians that may have been represented; for we are not acquainted with the religious convictions of the people in the earlier days of the colony. Much more is known of the matter later when the colony had increased in population. But take it all in all, masters and ser- vants, Puritans and Jesuits and nonconformists of various names, along with Churchmen-who under the charter itself had a certain recognition, as the ecclesiastical laws of England in the matter of consecrating churches were alone recognized as allowable-his lordship had abundant opportunity for showing his talent as a good pilot to guide his bark through troubled waters. At one time, just before the close of the first rebellion in 1644, he did feel that all was hopeless, and was about to abandon the effort to build up his colony. It was after the long con- tention with the Jesuits and when the Puritans had begun to come in and the province had been for two years in the hands of his enemies, who had done their utmost to ruin it, and when his brother had been long a refugee in Virginia,-enough we would think to make a man turn away in disgust. His brother, however, came to the rescue, and not believing all was lost, by a manful effort restored peace and order once more.
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It will be wise for us to get a clue to the policy on which Lord Baltimore acted in the legislation of the province. Nor is that difficult to find. He acted as every other practical man is found to act in his relations and dealings with his fellow-men,-by adaptation of means to ends as the occasions may arise. Theorists endeavor to force matters and to implant a new idea on an old system. But new ideas are possible only in a new system, and a new system is gotten only by agitation, or the training up of the common mind into readiness to receive it. New ideas are grafts that can be inserted only when there is vitality enough in the growing tree to lay hold on them and make them part of itself.
And so of Lord Baltimore's policy. There is no evi- dence for believing that he was ever an agitator. He undertook a difficult work, the building up of a pro- vince, the first attempt of the kind within the English empire; and by the necessities of the case, as well as of his own desire, it was to be different from anything at that time in the world. A new principle was to be recognized in it which, with the one noble exception of Holland, had never been a part of any commonwealth, namely, that among inherent human rights is that of worshiping God in one's own way, without restraint from any source. But the acceptance of this principle as the corner-stone of the province, was not of his choice,
but of necessity. His own faith, his own position, required the principle. It was either that or ruin. And this policy of adaptation he pursued with great skill.
His first colonists were, doubtless, in harmony with him, however much they and he might differ in opinion in some matters. The twenty gentleman adventurers
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that left England were probably, most of them, of his own selection, men with whom he had been brought in close contact, and men of as good birth and education as himself. For that reason there was no conflict between them and him in the earlier efforts of the colony to secure a definite form of government. They differed and expressed their differences, and he acquiesced. They passed a body of laws and he rejected them. He pro- posed a body of laws and they refused to receive them at his hand. They then considered them as of their own motion, passed such as they approved, and he con- firmed them. It was a way of discussing and estab- lishing a certain fundamental constitutional question by two parties living on opposite sides of the Atlantic. The men at the head of affairs in the colony knew of the rights of Englishmen, and quietly asserted them, notwith- standing any charter privileges King Charles might attempt to bestow on a proprietary of his own creation.
Of the two hundred laborers or servants that went to make up the first company, the noticeable thing is that the great majority of them were not of the proprietary's views in religion. This is vouched for by the provincial of the Jesuits, writing in 1642, who says of this first com- pany that "by far the greater part were heretics," -- that is, of the whole number, for most of the twenty gentle- men, from all the evidence available, seem to have been Roman Catholics. And these laborers also appear to have been in harmony with Lord Baltimore, from the fact that the troubles that disturbed his colony were fomented by persons who did not belong to it.
As legislating with these-for the laborers, having served out their time, became freemen and sat in the
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Assembly-there seems to have been essential agreement between his lordship and them, and the laws that they made were in an eminent degree well fitted for all the needs of the infant commonwealth, for such Maryland was from the first. It was a body politic, with all the laws and processes essential for good order, and not merely a body of men controlled and directed by a power existing over themselves, over whose will and actions they might have no control. This had been the case in the earlier Virginia settlements. The proprietary did not readily acquiesce in the pretensions of the col- onists, so that the laws sent back by them in 1638 were not approved, though in the same year he sent word to his brother, the governor, authorizing him to assent and give immediate force to any laws that should be passed by the people, subject to his vcto.
It was at this time that a full organization of the province took place, for one of the laws passed provided for the calling of assemblies. Such assemblies were pro- vided for in the charter, the requirement being that all laws should be assented to by the people. This law pro- vided for the composition of the Assembly, and deter- inined that it should be composed of two classes,-those who should be chosen as burgesses, and those who should be summoned by his lordship's special writ. At first all freemen were expected to sit in the house and pass upon all laws, though any one unable to be present might delegate some one else to act as his proxy. After- wards we find some confusion, some persons being clected as delegates, and having as such but one vote, while others claimed the right to sit and vote in their own name, a man so holding his scat and representing
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only himself having as influential a voice as another man who might represent many.
This was found, of course, not to work well. Also when the body was composed in part of those who rep- resented a number of voters and in part of those sum- moned by special writ, it was found not to be equitable, because those so summoned might very well defeat the will of the people, preventing even the expression of their voice; for no limit was placed upon the number that might be summoned. The inequality of this arrangement soon began to show itself, so that as early as 1642 the question of dividing the Assembly began to be considered, a change that was completed in 1650, when the two houses were created. In 1658 the right of appearing by proxy or in person finally ceased, and the two houses, as they existed till the downfall of the colonial system, came finally into existence. The upper house, however, differed very materially from the present State senate, where the members are elected in the same way as the members of the lower house; for according to the colonial plan the upper house was entirely the crea- tion of the proprietary, being composed of the governor and other colonial officers appointed by him. It repre- sented and protected his interests. It had the veto power over the action of the lower house, and could at any rate greatly retard any effort of that house looking to larger political freedom. Many were the contentions and the bitter words between the two bodies. It is to be said, however, that the lower house, having advanced a proposition or passed a law looking to the preservation or the extension of civil rights, never receded from it, but held on to it till success crowned their effort.
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In a session of 1639 the Assembly passed a series of laws of the highest importance, which gave a permanent color to the province and indicated the character of the people. The first law passed declared that Holy Church should have all her rights and liberties. Many claims have been set up on this law, as if it bestowed upon the church of the proprietary a certain peculiar eminence and assured it of many gifts. The law, however, meant nothing of the kind, but was only intended to be a rec- ognition of the Christian Church as in England estab- lished, the Church of England, and declared that as such she should possess whatever, as of her right, belonged to her. The phrase was copied exactly from the Magna Charta, which, as will be remembered, became the con- . stitutional principle in England at a time when the Church of England, in the person of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the State of England, by the barons assembled at Runnymede, were vindicating English liberties against the poltroon who would sacrifice them to the claims of the papal throne, an act for which the Archbishop received the severe condemnation of the Pope. The church has rights and always has had rights in glebes and endowments, rights to perform spiritual functions, rights to do her own work without being meddled with. This phrase, instead of being any assur- ance of special privileges to the church of Lord Balti- more, as has been claimed, was rather the assertion of the liberty of the church against any claims or preten- sions that he might set up; in the same way as in Stephen Langton's day it was an assertion in Magna Charta against tyrannous claims that King John might make either to oppress the church or to betray it. It was a
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common phrase in the earlier codes of laws, like some of the protestations found in the charters, where God's glory and the good of the heathen are assigned as the causes for enterprises beyond the seas, and Maryland lawmakers adopted it probably as belonging to the proprieties of a newly promulgated code.
The great contest with the Jesuits was about breaking out, and we see what were esteemed by them the rights and liberties of the church. So far was this from being a submission to them, that within a short time they were ordered out of the colony. Also by the seventh section of this code we have the very rights for which the Jesuit fathers were ready "to shed their blood" dis- tinctly alienated to and claimed for the civil jurisdiction, -power, for instance, in matters testamentary, the proving of wills and granting letters of administration. The act, if it meant anything special at all, as applying to Mary- land, meant that men should be allowed to serve God in any way acceptable to themselves without let or hin- drance from the civil authority, a liberty that has existed up to this time. When the Jesuits attempted to extend their claims to a degree that could never be allowed to any body of Christians, they found themselves condemned by all but their own order.
The first sections of the code were declarations of the rights of the church, the king, the proprietary and the people, assuring to each whatever in the common law of England belonged to them. It was English legis- lation in behalf of those who were liege subjects of the king of England. A notable thing is that at this time, when England had had no parliament for about ten years, Charles the First having determined to rule without
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one, the Assembly of Maryland passed, and Lord Balti- more approved, as he had before suggested, a law pro- viding for triennial sessions.
Other matters of cardinal moment provided for by this code were the trial by jury, the right of all men to the common law of England, and that the inhabitants shall have all their rights and liberties according to the great charter of England. No exception was made of any, no privileges were granted to any, no ecclesiastical courts were set up for the trial of ecclesiastical persons or persons whose crimes were against the church or her laws. All persons, ecclesiastics, lords of manors, freemen, of whatever degree or calling, as well as all servants, were equal before the law,-the same laws for each and all. These great institutes are regarded as being for Maryland a constitution, in conformity with which all subsequent laws have had to be made.
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SIXTH LECTURE.
CONTINUATION : LEGISLATION OF THE PROVINCE PREVIOUS TO 1689.
I have said in the previous lecture that Lord Balti- more's method of administration was on the principle of adaptation, which means that, recognizing that he had intelligent men to deal with who could not be intimidated by a great name, who knew they had rights and dared maintain them, who felt that in the eye of English law they were equal with the best blood of the land, --- that recogniz- ing this, he accommodated himself to the pressure of cir- cumstances, and proposed such laws and approved such laws as he felt the will of the people and their needs required. And he showed his wisdom in this. The will of men is very much like the law of gravitation; it is going to have its way all the time. It may be modified, instructed, improved, but it cannot be ignored or annihilated. It may be made to operate along unfortunate lines, through the deficiency of instruction; it may be chained down by the dread or the exercise of tyrannical power; but it is there all the time, biding its opportunity, and when it attains it, exercises itself with a power commensurate with the pre- vious restraint. Lord Baltimore had the wisdom to recog- . nize this fact, and accommodated himself to his circum- stances from the start, or as soon as, in his first conflict with the colonists, he learned that they had a will. He was but a young man then, but he had already the skill of a famous French statesman who was able to pass through
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many crises of fortune, and who said, in response to some one's astonishment at his good fortune, "I bend like the sapling and do not break as the unyielding tree."
To-day we come, in the consideration of the legislation of the colony, to the law which, probably, of all passed in all the colonies, during whatever period of their history, has been most talked of. I refer to the "Act Concerning Religion," passed in the year 1649; for it has been talked of and written about by statesmen, historians, orators, bishops, cardinals, priests, on both sides of the Atlantic. It has been the theme of college students, school anni- versaries, and has been represented as glorifying a great Christian body, as if it were the choicest gem that could adorn the brow; and for many years almost all men con- ceded any claims that were made to the honor which it was supposed to bestow.
Now, accepting the proposition that Lord Baltimore suggested and submitted the law, it is difficult to see how the law could, in the light of its true circumstances, bestow such honor upon him: or again, granting that he is to be so honored, it is difficult, impossible, to discern how the personal honor that may be supposed to belong to him, is in any way reflected upon or adorns a whole body of Christians, that have not another like instance to show in all the legislation of any time and place which members of their church could or did control. - The thirst for honor and the conscious necessity for it, must, indeed, be very great to bring one such instance into such great demand.
As to religious toleration, or the right to the exercise of religious worship according to one's own craving or desire, more properly religious liberty,-that is a question
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that arises late in the history of any people. While all men have conscience, yet conscience toward God comes in late in the development of man. Religion itself in the beginning is a superstition, a dread of something in nature behind the mere natural phenomena; and the acts of worship, not worthy of being called so, are efforts at placating this something, or diverting its malevolent power from one's self. Even later in life, in all nations except one, which was taught by the Almighty a definite notion of sin, I mean the Jews, religion did not enter into the province of the conscience. Men had a regard for one another's rights. There were definite laws regu- lating mutual conduct, and these laws were fortified by, if they were not the outcome of, the sense of justice in the relations of inan with man. But conscience toward God was an unknown quality; it was too high an idea, too difficult a conception. Religion was made up of cere- monies, sacrifices, sometimes attractive for beauty, some- times hideous and brutal. St. Paul, in writing to the Romans, touches upon this question, and referring to things done in the name of God, speaks of them as done in secret, of which it is a shame even to speak. That was in Rome and in Greece, centers of western education and refinement; but it was even worse, infinitely worse, in the great center of eastern refinement, Babylon. Even to this day, in some lands where ignorance abounds, in the very midst of a Christian priesthood, religion is very often only a matter of forms and ceremonies, an observance of rules. an obedience to institutions, and conscience is unheard of.
As men are cultivated, however, as religion becomes a personal matter and not merely a social institution, con- science develops; and when it does, it becomes' stronger
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than any other power, even than the will itself. Though such a distinction is hardly legitimate, in that with an aroused conscience the will is always in alliance. But it is this mighty force, conscience toward God, calling forth all the rectitude and all the loyalty and all the devotion of the human heart; and the heart means human energy.
And whenever it has arisen into being it has wrought commotion and discord in the world. It has struggled against the bonds with which inen have endeavored to bind it, and it has never rested till it has broken the bonds and felt itself free. This was at the bottom of all the turmoil and confusion that, beginning with the Reforma- tion, continued in England till the reign of William and Mary, nor even then was the principle fully established. It was at the bottom, also, of the commotions that dis- turbed Europe through the same period, whether the Huguenots of France were the occasion, or the Wal- densians of Savoy, or the Bohemians and others of the Austrian dominion and of the German empire. Con- science would not, could not yield, and battles were fought and provinces desolated, in the futile attempt to break down her spirit; and in the end all that was done was to spill the blood of countless multitudes of men and women and children, fill the land with cries and tears, and at last acknowledge the freedom of conscience. Con- science is the highest expression of the human mind and character.
A curious feature of the whole matter is that good and conscientious men, who would themselves have died for their conscience, have in innumerable instances been those who would deny this high prerogative of freedom to others. : For it is not the ungodly, but the godly who have
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most frequently, in our Christian period, persecuted others for religion's sake. Torquemada, who established the Spanish Inquisition that wrought in his day, and for cen- turies afterwards, such horrid butchery, was a rigorously upright and devoted man. The men of the days of the Commonwealth, and before, in England, who put popery and prelacy equally under the ban, were very righteous men. The men who in the reign of Elizabeth consented to the death of those who dissented from the established faith, were sincere in their belief and practice. The mis- fortune has been that such men felt themselves endowed by God with authority over another's faith, and because such would, not surrender the prerogative of believing and worshiping according as their own consciences might prescribe, they were condemned to the stake or the scaffold.
Often, also, the party that had called loudest for reli- gious freedom and the right to serve God in their own way, were the first, when power came into their own hands, to push to extremity those who differed from them in belief or practice. That was the case in England in the days of the Civil War. When the Independents were suc- cessful in the field, Cromwell very plainly intimated to the Presbyterian Parliament, that such men should be allowed to worship God according to the light which they possessed; and yet when they came into power, no man ever looked with more wrathful scorn upon those who would follow the old ways in religion. So in Mas- sachusetts. The Plymouth Brethren fled to Holland be- cause they were denied religious freedom in England, but no sooner were they firmly fixed in their own colony than popery, prelacy, and every form of dissent were rigidly
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suppressed as far as in their power. In Maryland it was the same. Puritans sought asylum in Maryland, coming from Virginia because they were no longer tolerated there; and yet, as soon as they were here, they began a protest . which became more and more violent against the Church of the proprietary, as well as against the Church of Eng- land, which in Virginia had repressed them.
Such was the experience the world over. He who cries out most lustily when he is down, will be the most deaf to cries when he gets on top. Freedom of conscience, the ability to act consistently upon the principle, that while religion is to bless by its association the civil institutions of the state, it is to be regarded as independent of, a differ- ent order, organization, autonomy from the state, is, may be, the last thing to be achieved in the progress of man- kind,-the recognition that, while the state exists to secure the welfare and the peace of the community, and to enable men to work out here the highest destiny that is con- sistent with the good of their fellows,-for all the higher functions of their nature, as regards their soul and spirit, as regards their eternal welfare, and their relations with that higher community which has Christ as its head- with this the state has nothing whatever to do. This has nowhere been entirely achieved yet, and in some places, as concerns this matter, darkness broods with pestilential wing. When it shall be universally recognized, then, and not till then, will Christ's kingdom be established on earth.
When the Act of 1649, concerning religion, was passed, very little had come to be known concerning this funda- mental principle in the true economy of the race. As we have seen, when the Independents were soldiers, and had not yet come to be directors of the affairs of England,
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they claimed the application of the principle to them- selves. Like as it is with men generally, when pursuing their own ends, all that they asked was " to be let alone." It was very different when the positions were reversed. Some few men, as Sir Thomas More, had advanced the truth, but it was rather the adumbration of the philosopher than the principle of the lawmaker. He was one of the most conscientious men of his age, and possibly of any age.
The man, however, who stands out gloriously before the world as the practical representative of this great truth, is not Lord Baltimore by any means, but a man who lived many years before he was born, a man who made his land to be the refuge of the persecuted, and who insisted that all should enjoy the equal privilege of com- ing before God, each in his own way. I speak of Wil- liam the Silent of Holland. Like Cecilius Calvert, he was a convert, only it was out of the Church of Rome to the Calvinistic faith. Also, he lived in a day when per- secution was rife against the church and faith of his adop- tion; for in his time the awful Massacre of St. Bartholo- mew took place, the anticipation of which the French king had communicated to him, for he only became a Calvinist in 1573. Holland also in his day suffered the last extremities of torture, both at the hand of Philip of Spain and his minister, the Duke of Alva, and of the Inquisition. Again he had the power in his hand to exer- cise reciprocal vengeance, and a word from him would have drawn the sword against the Roman communion.
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