for persecution, a special class-to wit, the adherents of that religion. Nothing more forcibly illustrates the spirit of intolerance than the legislation of England against the Romanists, unless it be the course of the Roman church itself against heretics, and the laws and deeds of the Puritans against everybody but themselves. Under these statutes an English Roman Catholic was practically debarred from the enjoyment of any of the ministrations of his religion; for he was forbidden so much as to give a farthing to the maintenance of the only one at whose hands he would receive such ministration; he could not console himself in the absence of the priest with the ordinary aids to devotion, for it was a crime to sell him the books he required, and he could import none himself, and for doing what every Protestant matron who visits the Vatican gladly does for the humblest Catholic domestic -bring back a rosary blessed by the pope-any one, Protestant or Catholic, was liable to the pains of præmunire. What those pains were, may now be seen :— -"that from the conviction, the defendant shall be out of the king's protection, and his lands and tenements, goods and chattels, forfeited to the king; and that his body shall remain in prison at the king's pleasure, or (as other authorities have it) during life."

1

If the Brownists, who were simply harried by the government, sought to escape, it is not surprising that the Roman Catholics, who were thus born to be criminals by statute, and whose hereditary reward for devotion was imprisonment, for life, or, at the least, proscription as a class, should eagerly strain their eyes in the direction of the West for a city of refuge.

2

2 The following letter from Sir Maurice Fortescue to the Earl of Chesterfield conveys an idea of the situation in which the Romanists found themselves in Ireland so late as the last century. [No date is given.] "The Catholics being thus peaceable and well-disposed, I pray you, my Lord, consider the many disabilities and misfortunes of our condition. A Catholic has every worldly advantage to gain by changing his faith. For a Catholic cannot buy land nor lease it for longer than 31 years, nor loan money on mortgage; if, by his industry, he makes more than a third penny profit, any Protestant who may choose to denounce him may take his land for the trouble; he cannot educate his children save as Protestants or beyond the seas, and if he dies while they are yet of tender years, they may be taken from their Catholic kindred and reared among Protestant strangers; he cannot become a lawyer or a soldier, nor occupy any public office, not so much as that of a constable, or tithe collector, nor to speak of a justice or member of Parliament; if he be a tradesman, his trade is hampered by all kinds of quarterage; if a gentleman, he may not carry a gun, nor wear a sword, nor own a horse valued above 5 guineas; and yet he that is thus excluded from all management of public affairs, and from all opportunity of

THE MARYLAND CHARTER.

121

Foremost among those who sought to deliver his people from the bondage of this death, was Lord Baltimore, who went in person to Virginia with the purpose of effecting there the settlement of his followers. But Virginia was the stronghold of conformity; it especially avowed the exclusion of Romanists from its territory, and, as an earnest expression of this avowal, it tendered Baltimore an oath, which no one of his faith could take, and which it was not expected he would subscribe. He proposed, as a compromise, a form of his own, which, happily for our country, was obstinately rejected, and he was forced to seek a soil as yet unencumbered by the stumbling-blocks of intolerance.' This he did, and in gratitude for the royal favor, which gave him a charter on his own terms, he named it after the queen, Maryland.

There is this difference between the New England charters and one such as that of Maryland—the former were given to companies; they were really nothing but franchises granted for the purpose of trade, through which the colonists, by their own exertions, acquired from time to time, such liberties as were not theirs by the mere fact of being British subjects. But the charters, such as that of Lord Baltimore, were very different affairs. In them the royal franchises were deliberately and solemnly parted with by the throne, and vested in the grantee, who thus became a Proprietary, or Lord Palatine, and who was thus constituted the guardian of the liberties of the colonists, as well as their governor. These liberties the proprietary colonists brought with them; those, the company colonists had to acquire as best they could. Where, as was commonly the case, the grantee was a favorite of the king, pleading his own cause, is taxed more heavily than any other to support Church and State.

"My Lord, I am sensible that many of the most galling of these laws are softened by the good-nature of Protestants, but I would most respectfully ask your Lordship to consider what tremendous temptations are offered to men of indifferent virtue to profess a religion which they do not in their souls believe. And *** * I would beg you to reflect whether men that resist such temptation have not at least one merit, and should be utterly crushed and subjugated." -Lippincott's Magaz., May, 1879, 569. For such class-oppression, the only remedy is that prescribed by Defoe for the plague-to fly from it.

This writer gives likewise the date when emigration from Ireland began. He attributes it to "the killing of the wool manufacture by the Act of 1699 [probably 10 and 11 William III, c. 3, ed. of Article], * * ** and from that time began the mortal drain on our population, which takes from 3,000 to 5,000 yearly to the West Indies or the American colonies, and these not belonging the miserably poor, but to the better sort.'

Hazard i. 72; "Notes on Virginia."

the crown was not niggardly as to the conditions of the grant, and to the credit of the Proprietaries, it must be said, that they never failed to make the best terms possible for the future colonists. None made better use of the favorable disposition of the crown, nor turned it to greater advantage for his people, than Lord Baltimore. His quick eye at once detected the opportunity of serving the interests of his followers, and of conferring a great boon upon mankind; and his generous spirit and shrewd judgment rushed to embrace it; for there is no doubt that he himself penned the charter which it was the honor of England to give, and the blessing of America to enjoy.

In this charter the prince reserved absolutely nothing but the evidence of feudal tenure; he gave away every thing else a free people deems worth having. The tenure of fealty, of itself, reserved the final authority to the crown; but this charter, the first of the kind ever known to be given, granted to the colonists independent legislation, a representative government of their own creation, exemption from taxation by any but themselves, a limitation that the authority of the proprietary should not extend to the life, freehold, or estate of the citizen, and, above all, not only equality in religious rights was guaranteed, but preference to any sect was forbidden, and protection was assured alike to all who believed in Christ. There was, in fact, no limitation whatever on the freedom of conscience, save that Christianity was made the law of the land; a limitation, which, by no means implying the right to persecute for opinion's sake, became in effect innocuous.'

Such were the provisions of a charter which caused a great advance in civilization, and which relieves the dark record of the House of Stuart by the honor of being the first to have inscribed upon it, toleration in religion. This is not the only instance where a tyrant in one hemisphere has been a liberator in the other: a despot heedlessly tosses to a favorite what he holds back from

"I will not," was part of the oath administered to the Governor of Maryland, "by myself, or any other, directly or indirectly, molest any person professing to believe in Jesus Christ, for or in respect of religion."

"And whereas the enforcing of the conscience in matters of religion hath frequently fallen out to be of dangerous consequences 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 amity among the inhabitants, no person within this province, professing to believe in Jesus Christ, hall be anyways troubled, molested, or discountenanced for his or her religion, or in the free exercise thereof."--Charter.

THE MARYLAND CHARTER.

123 his people, and generation after generation rises up and calls him blessed.

Before the charter had passed the great seal, Lord Baltimore died; but his mantle fell upon worthy shoulders. The patent issued to his son, who earnestly took up the work left undone by his father. Unable to go in person to overlook the foundation of the colony, he sent his brother, who, with a following of over a hundred gentlemen and their servants, successfully accomplished the task; and thus, while democracy and rationalism, in the person of Roger Williams, were preaching freedom of conscience in the North aristocracy and faith, embodied in a handful of Roman Catholics, were laying deep its foundations in the South. The career of this principle in Maryland and Rhode Island, though not exempt from the fluctuation incident to the action of every great social force, proved so fortunate, as not only to vindicate the faith of the Americans in its truth, but to justify the assertion, that, without it, the dozens of prosperous States which have made it a corner-stone, would not be what they now are, nor American character be what it now is.

CHAPTER V.

V.-Southern Life and Manners: Manners of the Frontier.

FR

Manners in the Southern Provinces.

ROM his treatment of the subject, Manners in the Southern Provinces, it is evident that Mr. Burke meant to give full effect to the haughtiness that distinguishes an aristocratic constitution of society, and especially one where there are but two classes, the owners and the owned. He confines his remarks, however, to the influence of the spirit of liberty which emanates from slavery itself. While he is careful not to express commendation, he asserts very positively the fact, that such a social condition renders fierce and stubborn the spirit of liberty that possesses the owners. But the subject is regarded in this work not so much respecting the effect which the personal relations of slave-owner and slave have upon the owner, as the effect which an aristocratic and dispersed condition of society exerts upon the upper class, and this, too, where the element of slavery is superadded.

Although the manners of New England are not dwelt upon in his remarks, it is evident that the contrast between them and the manners of the South, and the further contrast afforded by the social constitutions of these distinct localities, are present to his mind. These contrasts are set forth in the ensuing chapter, and are still further to be disclosed in that relating to Education, and particularly in what is therein said concerning the Township. Thus the manners of the North and the South are more or less described. But, as the Middle Provinces, at the time of the Revolution, comprised the most dense population, and the locality where wealth was most widely distributed, it is thought that their conservatism,