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 ORATION 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE 
 
 V 
 
 COMMEMORATION OF THELANDING 
 
 OF THE 
 
 pilgrims of JWavnlanb, 
 
 CELEBRATED MAY 16, 1842, AT MT. ST. MARY'S, MDV 
 
 BY REV. JOHN M'CAFFREY, 
 
 President of Mt. SI. Mary's College. 
 
 
 ©etti;0burfl: 
 PRINTED BY H. O. NEINSTEDT 
 

 JAfc & T908 
 
 V 
 
Mt, St. Mary's College, May 17th, 1842, 
 
 Rev'd and Respected President, 
 
 We have been appointed by the students of the College, to solicit a copy of 
 the very elegant Address delivered by you on the 16th inst., and to beg that you 
 will gratify them by allowing its publication. Hoping that you will rind it suit- 
 able to grant this request, we remain, 
 
 Rev'd and Dear Sir, 
 
 Yours, most respectfully, 
 
 H. H. M. WILLIAMS, 
 WM. H. ELDER, 
 JOS. J. O'DONNELL, 
 J. V. M. HARDING, 
 WM. C. SAPPINGTON, 
 
 G. A. MILES. 
 Rev'd John M'Caffrey, 
 
 President of Mt. St. Mary's College. 
 
 Mt. St. Mary's College, May 17th, 1842. 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 In a few days 1 will be able to give you a copy of the discourse, which, at 
 the request of those, whom you represent, I delivered yesterday before the stu- 
 dents of the College and a numerous concourse of our neighbours. I sincerely 
 thank you and your fellow-students for that kind partiality, which has dictated 
 your course towards me on this and every other occasion. 
 
 I am, Gentlemen, with sincere regard and affection, your friend and servant, 
 
 JOHN M'CAFFREY. 
 To Messrs. H. H. M. Williams, 
 
 Wm. H. Elder, Jos. J. O'Don- 
 
 nell, J. V. M. Harding, Wm. 
 
 C. Sappinuton, G. A. Miles, 
 
 Committee, etc. 
 
ORATION 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE 
 
 COMMEMORATION OF THE PILGRIMS OF MARYLAND, 
 
 AT MT. ST. MARY'S, MAY 16, 1842. 
 
 We have come together, to honour the illustrious founders of 
 our State, and to dwell with pride and pleasure on the glory of its 
 early history. We offer no apology for this public celebration, 
 We do not pause to show, that it is both natural and useful to com- 
 memorate the birth of free and glorious States, as well as of dis- 
 tinguished individuals. If any are disposed to find fault with our 
 proceedings, whether they argue as sophists or declaim as fanatics, 
 they will meet with no sympathy in the heart of this great assem- 
 blage. We rather take blame to ourselves, that we have so long 
 neglected and so late begun to pay proper honours to the fathers 
 of our State. Marylanders are not ashamed of their origin, though 
 they have suffered it to be almost buried in oblivion. They blush 
 only for their past apathy on this subject; and they have resolved 
 to expiate this "sin of omission," by their future zeal and pious care 
 to venerate the ashes and proclaim to the world the unrivalled glo- 
 ry of their fathers. During the two hundred and eight years, which 
 have elapsed since the Ark and Dove entered our noble bay, much 
 has been done to shed lustre on the name of our State ; but what 
 achievement after all can be justly compared with the magnani- 
 mous conduct of "the Pilgrims of Maryland !" In her day of exist- 
 ence the dawn is the most beautiful part. The sun, which shone 
 on her origin, enlightened the birth-day of equal rights and gen- 
 uine liberty. The names of the ships which bore the Pilgrims 
 across the Atlantic were truthful symbols. The Ark contained the 
 sacred deposit of religious freedom : the Dove conveyed the olive-- 
 branch of peace. The first cross, which was reared within our 
 
6 
 
 borders, was indeed the sign of universal love, — the memorial of 
 HIM, who died for all mankind. Our celebration therefore is 
 Identified with a great principle — a principle of wisdom and of be- 
 nevolence : It is the festival of religious liberty. 
 
 We hail with delight every auspicious omen of a better era, — 
 when persecution for conscience' sake will cease. And what else is 
 betokened by the movement, in which we now participate ? What 
 spirit has brought you here to-day ? What spirit impelled the nume- 
 rous throng, who so lately repaired as pilgrims to the place, where 
 once stood "the ancient city of St. Mary's," to do homage to the 
 memory of the most enlightened and benevolent colonists, that 
 ever landed on the virgin shores of America and to venerate the 
 very ground, on which they imprinted the first traces of civilization ? 
 What sign of the times do you read in the august spectacle of the 
 primate of the Catholic Church in the United States, offering up 
 the divine sacrifice and rearing the symbol of redemption on the 
 spot, on which that same sacrifice was ollered, and that same sym- 
 bol reared two hundred and eight years ago, by the men, who fust 
 in this new world broke the chains of conscience and substituted 
 for them the golden ties of universal charity? What augury is 
 that of the gifted orator proclaiming in tones, which find a thou- 
 sand echoes in as many hearts, the triumph of religious liberty on 
 the very place of its birth and over the cradle of its infancy. The 
 triumph of religious liberty — for this great principle now covers 
 almost the entire union with its regis. Once down-trodden even 
 in Maryland, the land of its birth, it has Antaeus-like arisen with 
 j renewed vigour and has ultimately driven the dark spirit of religi- 
 ous intolerance from the Statute-book and the high places of the 
 land, to take shelter in the demoniac hearts, that prompted the 
 burning at Charlestown of the home of women and children and 
 in the calculating consciences, which find it jus! ami equitable to 
 leave .Mount Benedict strewed with black ruins by the side of BtiU 
 feer's bill. 
 
You expect me to-day to tell you why, and how, and by what 
 manner of men was first settled this State, which we are proud to 
 rail our own. To satisfy you, I must allude to things, which it is 
 not pleasant to dwell on. But we cannot shut our eyes to facts in- 
 scribed in bloody rubrics on that page of history, which shows us 
 the origin of our State. Religion is not answerable for the crimes, 
 which have been committed in her name. Every creed has num- 
 bered bigots among its professors. It is the cruelty, not the creed 
 of the tyrant, that we condemn. Religious persecution "a spouse 
 Of blood" to our country, two centuries ago was fast peopling with 
 civilized men the savage shores of North America. It drove the 
 Puritans to New England, the Quakers to Pennsylvania, Roger 
 Williams and the Baptists to Rhode Island, and the Catholics to 
 Maryland. English writers are seldom so eloquent and never so 
 poetical, as when they denounce the cruelties, which in France or 
 Spain or Italy, have been practised in the name of the God of char- 
 ity and under pretext of zeal for his honour. You would little 
 imagine, that the modern history of their own country, when truly 
 Written, is a recital of persecutions equalled only by those of Nero 
 and Dioclesian. When England by act of Parliament renounced 
 the supremacy of the Pope to acknowledge the supremacy of a 
 cruel and libidinous tyrant, the unhallowed union of Church and 
 State was cemented by the blood of Fisher and Moore. The base 
 and selfish portion of the aristocracy and the needy miscreants, 
 who pandered to the lusts of Henry the Eighth, were attached to 
 the royal head of the Church by the golden ties of self-interest, 
 and spirited on by the hope of rich booty from violated shrines, 
 despoiled monasteries and plundered churches and abbeys. They, 
 who have done a great and crying wrong, never forgive their vic- 
 tims. The Catholics of England were oppressed and robbed : 
 they were therefore suspected and calumniated. Children have 
 been taught from the primer and the horn-book to lisp the cruel- 
 ties of Mary, — "the bloody Queen Mary." Let no man attempt 
 
 
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 to justify them. But Mary was merely an imitator of her father, 
 and in persevering and systematic persecution falls far below her 
 much admired sister, the self-styled Virgin Queen. Under Eliza- 
 beth and her successors was enacted a code of laws, which shock 
 every sentiment of religion and humanity — laws written in char- 
 acters of blood, and framed and executed with the bloody purpose 
 of banishing the old religion by ruining, if not exterminating, all 
 who preferred the faith of their fathers to the faith prescribed by 
 act of Parliament and sanctioned by the authority of the royal 
 head of the church. If the atrocious policy of " reformed" Eng- 
 land bore hard on the Puritans, it blighted every earthly hope of 
 the Catholic and steeped his life in continual misery. That you 
 may have clear proof of this ; that you may know why your fath- 
 ers, at least many of them, fled from the land, which they loved 
 and of whose ancient happiness and glory they were justly proud, 
 — from "Merry Old England" to the wild forests of Maryland. 
 I will mention a very few provisions of that sanguinary code. For 
 a Catholic priest to enter England was high treason : it was high 
 treason for him to stay three days in England without conforming 
 to the law-established Church ; — and the punishment of the of- 
 fence was hanging, disembowelling and quartering. It was a 
 crime for a Catholic to educate his child at home, unless he edu- 
 cated him in the Church of England : it was a still greater crime 
 to send him abroad for the purpose of education. Twenty pounds 
 a month was the forfeiture by " the Act of Uniformity"' passed in 
 the first year of Elizabeth's reign, for non-attendance on Sundays 
 at the worship of the Church by-law-established. Fines, confis- 
 cations, imprisonment, the rack and the gallows, with every species 
 of torture, which ingenuity whetted by bigotry could devise, were 
 employed in succession to outweary suffering nature and overcome 
 the divine energies of faith. If the Stuarts were inclined to be 
 less intolerant than the Tudors, yet they had not the manliness to 
 stem the torrent of popular fury ; and the Catholics, loyal and pa 
 
9 
 
 triotic as they ever proved themselves iti the day of trial, were still 
 the victims of bigotry stimulated to blood-thirstiness by the arts of 
 unscrupulous politicians, their fabricated plots, their atrocious pros- 
 titution of the forms of justice, their systematic slanders and the 
 damning perjuries, by which they laboured to uphold them. — 
 Such, my friends, was the character of the persecutions, from 
 which your Catholic forefathers sought a refuge here. 
 
 To George Calvert, the first Baron of Baltimore, and his son, 
 Cecilius Calvert, belongs the glory of providing a shelter from An- 
 glican intolerance, not only for their brethren in faith, but for the 
 oppressed of every christian denomination. The one projected 
 and was prevented only by death from executing the plan, which 
 the other accomplished, of opening an asylum for conscience. Of 
 these great and good men I will say what is due to their fame and 
 necessary to the elucidation of my subject. All his cotemporaries 
 and all unprejudiced historians agree in ascribing to Sir George 
 Calvert extensive learning, great ability as a statesman, the most 
 enlarged and just views respecting colonization, a bold and chival- 
 rous spirit of adventure, and a character of such dazzling purity, 
 that even bigotry despairs of finding a blemish on it. While high 
 in favour at the Court of James the First, holding the station of 
 Secretary of State and respected and trusted above all others, he 
 forfeited all his offices, except that of privy Counsellor, with all 
 their emoluments, which were immense, and all his brilliant hopes 
 of higher distinction in the service of his King and Country. Do 
 you ask, for what crime? For the crime of obeying God rather 
 than man : for the crime of judging for himself in the concern 
 of religion, and in obedience to the dictates of his reason and con- 
 science declaring himself a Roman Catholic. For, not forgetting, 
 even in the ardent pursuit of honour, wealth and power, the mo- 
 mentous question of eternal weal or woe, he was compelled by 
 the endless dissensions on all theological subjects of those to whose 
 tanks lie belonged, to investigate and decide for himself ; and he 
 
 B 
 
10 
 
 Was not the man to enquire, " What is truth ?" and turn his back 
 upon the answer. " Quoesivit codo luce/n, ingemuitque repertct* 
 — could not be said of him. He would follow the light, which 
 
 God had given his mind, though the Red Sea's billows were lie- 
 fore him and Pharaoh's chariot* thundered in his rear. Living in 
 an age, when men of lofty aims and sanguine spirit naturally look- 
 ed on the new world as their proper theatre of enterprise, he had 
 already engaged conspicuously in schemes of colonization ; and 
 now, wishing to enjoy the free exercise of his religion, he came to 
 Virginia in 1628, with the intention of settling there. But the 
 spirit of intolerance had preceded him ; and on his arrival he was 
 summoned to take the oath of Supremacy. He departed refusing' 
 to swear, that the English King was the head of the Church. — 
 Had he proceeded to Massachusetts, the Puritans, self-exiled from 
 England, because they could not conform to the worship of the 
 established Church, would have banished him at once, for not con- 
 forming to their peculiar notions of Religion. He returned there- 
 fore to England and procured from the favour of his Sovereign, 
 Charles the First, a grant of the province of Maryland. Now then 
 the man, who has been compelled for conscience to sacrifice his 
 dignities, curtail his fortunes and forego his hopes in England ; the 
 man, whom the intolerance of the established Church has driven 
 from Virginia and who could not have signed himself with the 
 sign of the cross without treason in the neighbourhood of Boston, 
 becomes himself the liOrd Proprietary of an extensive Slate, a 
 sovereign almost absolute and an unrestricted lawgiver. Does he 
 retaliate ? Does he oppose intolerance to intolerance. No, fellow- 
 citizens: he knows the spirit of his religion: he is governed by 
 that golden rule, which came down to us From Heaven : ' l As you 
 would that men should do to you, do you also to them in like 
 manner."* lie respects the honest convictions of his fellow men : 
 he neither proscribes nor persecutes any man for difference of be* 
 * St. Luke c. fi. v. ::i 
 
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11 
 
 lief: He opens a safe and peaceful asylum for persecuted con- 
 science. It is admitted, that the first. Lord Baltimore drew the 
 charter of Maryland and traced the plan of government. To 
 him therefore we justly ascribe the honor of being the first legisla- 
 tor, who, rising above the spirit of his country and the bigotry of 
 his age, incorporated into a system of government the great princi- 
 ple of religious freedom. To his son, the Second Lord Baltimore 
 and the first actual proprietary is due the equal honor of carrying 
 into practical effect the liberal views of his father. The dying 
 statesman bequeathed with his titles and possessions the infinitely 
 better inheritance of his principles and example to a son in every 
 respect worthy of such a sire. 
 
 Cecilius Calvert pursued with ardour the design of planting a 
 colony in Maryland and commenced the undertaking with the su- 
 rest auguries of success. The charter, unlike any patent, which 
 had hitherto passed the great seal of England, was most liberal in 
 all its provisions. No one, who reads it, can ever question the pro- 
 found sagacity and far-seeing wisdom, the benevolence and mag- 
 nanimity of its author. It was such an instrument, as none but a 
 favourite could have obtained from any of the absolute and arbi- 
 trary monarchs, who sat upon the throne of England since the 
 apostacy of Henry the Eighth. It rendered Maryland less depen- 
 dent on the King and Parliament than any other colony. It made 
 the Monarch's sanction unnecessary to the appointments or legisla- 
 tion of the province, and left him without even a right to take cog- 
 nizance of what transpired within its limits. It foresaw and guard- 
 ed against the odious and oppressive claim of the mother country 
 to tax America and gave to Maryland, more favoured in this than 
 any of her sister colonies, an explicit covenanted right to exemp- 
 tion from such a stretch of parliamentary jurisdiction as the tea-tax 
 and Stamp-act, which caused the revolution. It invested the Lord 
 Proprietary with few powers beyond those, which even at this day 
 we regard as essential to the executive branch of a free govern 
 
12 
 
 meat, and it especially declared, (hat his authority should not ex- 
 tend to " the life, member, freehold, goods or chatties" of any col- 
 onist. It provided for a representative system, as soon as the body 
 of freemen should become too numerous for all to meet in coun- 
 cil ; and it secured to the people an independent share in the le- 
 gislation of the province, by requiring that the laws made for their 
 government should be enacted "of and with the advice, assent and 
 approbation of the freemen," or a majority of them or of their 
 deputies. The world then saw a great example and a glorious 
 spectacle — the founder and chief of a State spontaneously di- 
 vesting himself of every power, which could be readily abused 
 and placing in the hands of the people such effectual control, as 
 would necessarily make him in a great degree dependent on their 
 will. Surely this is not least of the titles of George and Cecilius 
 Calvert to the admiration of mankind, that in framing a govern- 
 ment according to their pleasure for a province, in which they and 
 their descendants were to exercise the supreme executive authority, 
 they kept steadily in view, above all other interests, the rights and 
 happiness of the people; they voluntarily renounced every attri- 
 bute of arbitrary power and omitted none of the safeguards of 
 popular liberty. 
 
 " The conditions of Plantation" published by (he first proprie- 
 tary, or, in other words, the terms, on which he offered lands to 
 emigrants, denote the same practical good sense and wise generos- 
 ity. He steered clear of all the rocks, on which similar underta- 
 kings had been wrecked, and in his wbole course of policy avoided 
 even the less fatal errors, which impeded the growth or diminished 
 the prosperity and happiness of every colony before and after him. 
 He permitted and even invited all British subjects, without distinc- 
 tion of religion to settle in his province ; and the very first emigra- 
 tion, conducted at his own expense, under the direction of bis 
 brother, comprised at least a few, who were not Catholics. "Rut it 
 is not true, as has been hastily and carelessly asserted, that [he char- 
 
13 
 
 ter itself secured to all liege people of the English King, without 
 distinction of sect or party, free leave to transport themselves to 
 Maryland. The ninth article, which has been supposed to justify 
 the assertion, merely gives to British subjects, as its own provisions 
 clearly import, the license of expatriating themselves, notwith- 
 standing the statutes to the contrary. This error has already found 
 a place in the elegant and interesting history of Bancroft ; and 
 past experience teaches us, that unless the proper mark be stamp- 
 ed upon it now, it will infallibly be pressed into the service of big- 
 otry, for the purpose of dimming the glory which can never be to- 
 tally darkened, — of the unvarying liberality of the Catholic pro- 
 prietaries and settlers of the province. 
 
 We have seen what powerful motives the English Catholic 
 had to tear himself away from a country, endeared to him by the 
 ties of birth and home, venerable by her glorious monuments of 
 ancient faith and piety, ennobled by the high achievements of his 
 Catholic ancestors and consecrated by the illustrious virtues of 
 Catholic heroes, patriots, sages, and martyrs. Two hundred per- 
 sons, mostly gentlemen of birth and quality sailed from the Isle of 
 Wight, in the Ark and the Dove, on the feast of Saint Cecilia or 
 the 22d of November, 1633, with Leonard Calvert, brother of Ce- 
 cilius, at their head, as Lieutenant General or Governor of the fu- 
 ture province. The blessed ministrations of religion went with 
 them, to cheer and support their sometimes drooping spirits. — 
 They were accompanied by four members of the society of Jesus ; 
 one of whom, Father Andrew White, " a man of transcendent tal- 
 ents," had left the professorships of Scripture, of Hebrew, and of 
 Divinity, which he had honorably held in the Colleges of Lou- 
 vain and Liege, to labor for the salvation of souls and to court the 
 martyr's recompense in England, and now though burthened with I 
 the weight of five and fifty years, was panting to become the apos- 
 tle of the savages dwelling by the waters of the Chesapeake. — ^ 
 " We placed our ship," says this venerable missionary, in a letter 
 
[4 
 
 preserved in the Jesuit College at Koine, kt We placed our ship 
 under the protection of Cod, the blessed Virgin Mother, Saint Ig- 
 natius and all the guardian Angels of Maryland." True to the 
 old, hereditary faith of Christendom, these good men weie con- 
 scious that they were at that moment " a spectacle to Angels" as 
 well as to men. Bidding adieu to all familiar objects and wonted 
 comforts and enjoyments, and breaking the sweet ties of many 
 beautiful affections, they were committing themselves to the mer- 
 cies of a stormy ocean, in the hope of winning for themselves a 
 home amid savage forests and more savage men, — a home, where 
 they might in quiet worship their Creator, as their fathers had done 
 for a thousand years before. They felt, that they needed protec- 
 tion. Could they put their trust in the counsels of human pru- 
 dence or lean for safety on the arm of human strength? No, their 
 confidence was in God. To him first, to Him supremely they 
 committed themselves and the issue of their undertaking. But 
 could they forget Her, whom the, Church had taught them to in- 
 voke, whether wandering by land or "going down into the deep," 
 as the auspicious guide of the voyage of life and to hail as the 
 beautiful " Star of the Sea ?" Oh, how naturally in their circum- 
 stances leaps forth from the Catholic heart that charming invo- 
 cation ! 
 
 .» -' Ave maris stella, 
 
 Dei mater alma — 
 Yitain praesta purara ; 
 
 Iter para tutuni ! " 
 
 They arc about to take up their abode, if God shall grant them a 
 safe passage, in a strange land,— a wilderness inhabited by the 
 heathen. Hut the sons of Saint Ignatius are with them, — often 
 the first and always the foremost to explore the savage wild, — not 
 loi filthy lucre, not to seek an earthly settlement, not, as men blind 
 to the truth fondly imagine, to establish their power, to gain ex- 
 tended sway, (how ridiculous the supposition!) but to carry for- 
 
15 
 
 Ward the light of the gospel and win souls to Jesus Christ; — 
 men of heroic mould, who at the risk of their lives had supplied 
 the faithful with spiritual blessings in England and kept alive the 
 fire, which for a thousand years had burned on the altars of their 
 fathers. Accustomed " to hope against hope" and patiently abide 
 the time marked out in the eternal councils, these holy men recom- 
 mend " the missions of Maryland" to the intercession of their 
 sainted founder, with even more of confidence, than they would 
 do, were he yet on earth directing the energies of the great and 
 glorious body, which he had called into being. For now that he is 
 translated to the place of his reward and that his charity is " made 
 perfect" in Heaven, they know that his zeal for the glory of God 
 and the salvation of souls is not lessened nor his prayers deprived 
 of their efficacy. Taught by sacred Writ and their " Holy Moth- 
 er, the Church," that nations are under the special guardianship 
 of heavenly spirits, whom the scriptures designate by the names 
 of the countries, over which they watch, our pilgrim fathers salute 
 at a distance the guardian angels of Maryland and invoke their 
 protection on their good ships, — the well-built Ark, — the light 
 and fragile Dove, now wafting them towards a barbarous land, 
 which they hope, by the divine blessing and through the interces- 
 sion of saints and angels, to add to the conquests of the cross. 
 
 They experience the usual incidents of a voyage in those days. 
 But these incidents are ennobled and even hallowed in our eyes, 
 by the great object, towards which they tend ; as the wanderings 
 and adventures of the Trojan band are dignified by the lofty pur- 
 pose, which the genius of Virgil keeps constantly before our view, 
 — of founding an empire and erecting the altars of religion. 
 
 " dum conderet urbem, 
 Inferretque Deos Latio. " 
 
 Free from superstition and without a particle of fanaticism, 
 they still betray that consciousness of their noble mission, which 
 Heaven gives to its chosen instruments, though often but in dim 
 
16 
 
 and twilight glimpses of imperfect revelation. A\ lieu a storm ari- 
 ses and separates the ships, — a storm so dreadful, that the most 
 fearless tremble for the issue; while prayers are redoubled and 
 vows offered to Heaven in honour of the saints; while purified and 
 strengthened by the sacraments of penance, with pious supplica- 
 tions they prepare themselves for death ; even then Father White 
 bowing himself down in prayer, calls the Lord Jesus, and his Holy 
 mother and the protecting angels of Maryland to witness, that 
 " the purpose of this voyage is to pay honour to the blood of our 
 Redeemer by the conversion of Barbarians," — and arises " with a 
 firm confidence, that through the mercy and goodness of God, thej 
 will escape the threatened destruction." And is it illusive fancy 
 or just and natural feeling, — the enthusiasm of a distempered 
 mind or the sound piety of a grateful heart, which prompts him to 
 exclaim : " Let the true God be glorified ! Scarcely was my pray- 
 er ended, when the storm was ceasing. Blessed forever be the 
 merciful charities of our dear Redeemer!" Having escaped the 
 dangers of the storm, they take the route of the Azores, touch at 
 Barbadoes and spend the gi eater part of the winter among the 
 WesJ India islands, stopping at different places, among others at 
 Montserrat in Guadaloupe, where they find a colony of Irishmen, 
 fellow-sufferers for the Catholic faith, for they have been driven 
 from Virginia on account of its profession. On the 27th of Feb- 
 ruary, 1634, they land in Virginia and are kindly treated by the 
 Governor and people, to whom they bring letters from the King of 
 England and who, though jealous of a colony destined to narrow 
 the limits of their jurisdiction, exhibit that warm hospitality and 
 refined courtesy, which are yet prominent traits in the character of 
 Virginians. Sailing up the Chesapeake Bay, they enter the Poto- 
 mac, lost in admiration at the grandeur and beauty of this noble 
 river and the magnificent forests, which shaded its verdant banks. 
 They effected their firsl landing within the boundaries of Mary- 
 land, on an inland, which they called Saint Clements'. Here they 
 
►s> 
 
 11 
 
 terminated with epic dignity their wanderings, mole Worthy of the 
 religious muse than those of the exiles, who bore their Penates 
 from the flames of Troy and found " a home and country" on the 
 shores of Italy. For having entered " the land of Mary," their 
 first solicitude Was to celebrate in a becoming manner " our blessed 
 Ladies' day," the twenty-fifth of March and to mark by a signifi- 
 cant act of religion their solemn entry into the province. The 
 sublime doctrines and beautiful usages of die Church regulated 
 the expression of their feelings and furnished the appropriate 
 ceremonial. " On the day of the Annunciation," says Father 
 White, " we first offered the sacrifice of the mass, never before 
 done in this region of the world : after which, having raised on 
 our shoulders an immense cross, which we had fashioned from a 
 tree and going in procession to the designated spot, assisted by the 
 commissary and other Catholics, we erected the trophy of Christ, 
 the Saviour, and humbly bent the knee in reverence, during the 
 devout recitation of the Litanies of the Holy Cross." Thus the 
 religion, which has always venerated and cherished the symbol of 
 Redemption, was first introduced into an Anglo-American colony. 
 Guided by the spirit of this religion, the colonists conciliated 
 the friendship of the native Indians and, in all their dealings with 
 them, were governed by the strictest rules of equity and the purest 
 sentiments of humanity. They did not usurp possession of the 
 soil. They obtained as much as they wanted by honest purchase, 
 giving in exchange, neither worthless trinkets, nor destructive 
 Weapons, nor more destructive alcohol, but the most useful instru- 
 ments of tillage and other articles of value. They waged no 
 bloody and exterminating wars. Had the great Chief of Piscata- 
 way sent a bundle of arrows wrapped in the skin of a rattle-snake 
 to Governor Calvert, the rattle-snake's skin stuffed with powder and 
 , shot would not have been the answer to this bold defiance.* Oh, 
 no! the Jesuit Father, with no weapon but his crucifix, would 
 * Bancroft Vol. I, chap. S. 
 C 
 
18 
 
 have gone in the name of the God of peace, to win back the 
 friendship of the savage, which the white men never lost except 
 by their crimes. 
 
 "Integer vitae scelerisque purus 
 
 Non eget Mauri jaculis, neque arcu." 
 
 But in truth, so long as the province was governed by its Catholic 
 settlers, notwithstanding the base deceits and wicked instigations of 
 Clayborne and a few others eager " to root out popery and prela- 
 cy," the infant's slumbers were never broken, — the mother's ear 
 was never startled by the savage war-whoop. The early history 
 of the province harmonizes in this with the histoiy of every coun- 
 try colonized by Roman Catholics. Canada under the dominion 
 of Fiance saw numerous tribes brought into the pale of the 
 Church, dwelling in amity with their pale faced brethren, erecting 
 common altars and setting examples of every christian virtue. The 
 Jesuit missionaries were the preservers of the Indians. Mexico 
 and the South American republics, invaded rather than colonized 
 by lawless soldiers of fortune and mercenary adventurers from 
 Spain and Portugal, still reckon twelve millions of men descended 
 from their aboriginal inhabitants ; and these men however low in 
 the scale of civilization, have still been reclaimed from savage life, 
 converted to the Christian faith and elevated to the practice of a 
 morality, at least as pure and holy as the virtue of those, who now 
 propose to improve their condition by robbing them of their prop- 
 erty and desecrating their churches. 
 
 Having obtained a right to a portion of the soil, the first care of 
 our colonists was to select a convenient site for a city. This they 
 found on the bank of St. Mary's river, not far from the Indian vil- 
 lage of Yaocomico. They called their town Saint Mary's in hon- 
 our of the blessed Virgin and afterwards loved to designate it by 
 that sacred and endearing name. The blessing of Heaven pros- 
 pered all their labours. The little colony immediately took root 
 and thrived and nourished beyond all former examples. The In- 
 
19 
 
 dians, who were preparing at the time of their arrival to leave that 
 part of the country, gave up to them their cultivated grounds. It 
 was the proper season to begin the labours of husbandry. The 
 soil was rich : the streams abounded with fish : the magnificent 
 forests were alive with game. Intermingling as brothers and sisters 
 with the children of nature around them, — the wives and daugh- 
 ters of the colonists learned from the squaws the various modes of 
 preparing indian corn and their young men were accompanied 
 by tawney warriors to the chase. They could purchase all need- 
 ful supplies from Virginia, and the Lord Proprietary, with princely 
 munificence provided for the wants and increased the comforts and 
 advantages of his people. 
 
 The first settlers of Maryland, as all historians inform us, were 
 persons of a superior class to most of the other colonists. They 
 were evidently men of more enlarged and liberal views, of kinder 
 and more christian feelings. They brought to the new world the 
 grace of polished manners, the refined courtesies and the warm yet 
 elegant hospitality of the best European society. Unlike the 
 peaceful fathers of Pennsylvania, they did not expose their benev- 
 olent policy to ridicule by singular fancies and odd peculiarities. — 
 They did not abase the majesty and weaken the moral force of 
 law, by turning its penalties against harmless customs or incurable 
 follies. Unlike the Puritans, — they did not make the State sub- 
 servient to the Church, and exhibit their piety by blind submission 
 to their preachers, — their faith by incessant wranglings about the 
 purest form of doctrine and discipline. Unlike the New England 
 colonists generally, — they never weakly imagined, that modern 
 society was to be fashioned according to the details of the Mosaic 
 legislation. They did not confide the government to those, who 
 were longest and loudest in praying and whom the ministers se- 
 lected for their gifts of godliness to be the props of Zion, " the pil- 
 lars of the house of wisdom." Had Father White or father Al- 
 tham addressed the legislators of the infant colony in the usual 
 

 20 
 
 manner of the Puritan ministers, concluding with the significant 
 words of Moses to the judges : " The cause, which is too hard for 
 you, bring it to me, and I will hear it," — they certainly would 
 have concluded, that the good Jesuit had lost his wits and with 
 them all the meekness and humility of a christian pastor. They 
 differed from New England too in this, — that they never provo- 
 ked the Indians to war and then enacted those frightful tragedies, 
 which chill the blood and sicken the heart, when we read the his- 
 tory of the Eastern colonies. They have no claims to the glory 
 of surpassing the savages in ferocity and thirst of blood. They 
 burnt no villages: they never strewed a battle field with the bones 
 of an entire nation.* They had not even enough of Puritanical 
 religion to believe old women witches and to hang them for it. — 
 But the government of the province passed too soon into the hands 
 of a very different class of persons, for the good seed committed to 
 the ground to grow up to maturity and yield its promised fruit. — 
 We see the thriving plant: we admire its soft green foliage and its 
 beautiful blossoms: the air is perfumed with the fragrance of its 
 flowers; but the frosts of bigotry shall blast these vernal hopes. — 
 The first colonists of Maryland were too far in advance of the oth- 
 er colonies and of those, with whom they generously shared their 
 privileges, to be allowed to work out peaceably and happily their 
 admirable experiment. They were on "the ways of pleasant- 
 ness" and " all their paths, were paths of peace," and all the au- 
 spices were bright and beautiful. Religion was there — the old, 
 unchanged religion of their fathers; — ruling with gentle sway the 
 mind and heart, enslaving neither ; — star-like, revolving in its prop- 
 er orbit ami shedding alike on civilized and savage its sweet benign- 
 ant rays. Education was there, and there it was destined to flour- 
 ish; for the Jesuits were there, its best promoters. ( >ne (act, which 
 cannot be denied, speaks trumpet-tongued on this subject. The 
 first printing press ever worked in any British colony was establish- 
 *Bancroft Vol. I. chap. 9. 
 

 21 
 
 ed at St. Mary's. The " Pilgrims of Maryland" wore the first 
 within the limits of these United States to employ that powerful 
 engine for the diffusion of knowledge. That they knew how to 
 maintain their rights as freemen and to advance the cause of liber- 
 ty is also proved by the stand, which they took, at the outset of 
 their history, against their beloved proprietary. They esteemed his 
 noble character ; they were grateful for his kindness and gave him 
 substantial proofs of thankfulness ; but when he sent them a code 
 of laws, requesting their consideration and adoption, they rejected 
 them at once, in order to establish, beyond dispute, forever, the 
 right of the freemen of Maryland to originate their own laws for 
 their own government. 
 
 The Jesuit Fathers had come to Maryland, not only to do good 
 among their countrymen ; but more expressly to carry the Gospel to 
 the Heathen. Our historians, who are inaccurate on several points 
 in the early history of the colony, are profoundly silent about the 
 labours of these missionaries, and some writers boldly assert, that 
 no efforts were made to convert the savages. Yet existing records 
 show, that, until the unhappy revolution, which trampled down 
 the power of the Catholics and banished the priests and religious 
 liberty with them, they prosecuted their great object with ardour 
 and success. They found in these wild children of the forest the 
 dispositions, which they deemed most desirable. They describe 
 them as exceedingly generous, kind-hearted and grateful ; models 
 of sobriety and charity ; never acting from sudden impulse ; but 
 grave, deliberate and inflexibly firm. In Canada or in Japan, in 
 the Moluccas, in China or in Paraguay ; wherever in a word hea- 
 thens were to be converted, the Jesuits approached the semicivili- 
 zed or savage man with perfect confidence, though they were often 
 rewarded with the crown of martyrdom. In Maryland, as else- 
 where, fearing nothing they hastened to the Indian settlement : 
 they followed the warrior in his hunting expedition : they launch- 
 ed the light skiff on the bosom of streams before unknown ; they 
 
'22 
 
 pitched their tent in the shade of some giant oak on a natural floor 
 of green inlaid with flowers, or slept sweetly, after reciting matins 
 and lauds, under the starry canopy of Heaven. Hardships and 
 privations of every kind the) 7 had to endure; but when did a Je- 
 suit missionary shrink from hardships and privations? To acquire 
 the barbarous language, to instruct the untutored savage, to win his 
 affections, to raise his grovelling mind to the height of Christian 
 . faith and bow down his stubborn will to obedience to the Christian 
 law — required consummate address, unquenchable zeal and pa- 
 tience inexhaustible ; but when were such qualities wanting in 
 these heroic heralds of the cross ? Death itself might stare them 
 in the face — death from cold, from hunger, from neglected sick- 
 ness, — death by the tomahawk and scalping knife or by the red 
 hot iron and burning faggot; " But when," says the Protestant 
 Bancroft, " did a Jesuit missionary seek to save his own life at 
 what he believed to be the risk of a soul?" In the history of this 
 heroic order cases occur of an entire band of missionaries cut off 
 by the cruel ferocity of the savages. Did not such massacres 
 quench the enthusiasm of their associates ? "I answer," says the 
 same historian, " that the Jesuits never receded one foot; but as in 
 a brave army, new troops press forward to fill the places of the fal- 
 len, there were never wanting heroism and enterprize in behalf of 
 the cross." I have digressed for a moment; but could I say less 
 of that society, which has kept the lamp of faith burning in Mary- 
 land ever since the landing of the pilgrims ; which has conferred 
 so many benefits on mankind and been so well calumniated for it? 
 For several years nothing occurred to disturb the harmony or 
 check the growth of the colony, except the ineffectual efforts of 
 Clayborne and a few other restless spirits from Virginia to dispute 
 the authority of its government and rouse the Indians to hostility. 
 Father White and his companions laboured at first among the 
 tribes, which dwell on the banks of the Patuxent. Soon after 
 they established a mission on the Isle of Kent and carried the Gos- 
 
23 
 
 pel to the southern boundary of the present District of Columbia. 
 In 1639 they had the happiness of converting Chilomacon, the 
 powerful king of the Piscataways and of administering the holy 
 sacrament of baptism to him, his wife and child and his principal 
 counsellor Mosorcoques, in a chapel erected for the occasion by 
 these pious proselytes, at an Indian town about fifteen miles south 
 of the present city of Washington. Several members of the ru- 
 ling families at Patuxent and also at Potopaco, (the modern Port 
 Tobacco,) with others in that vicinity to the number of one hun- 
 dred and thirty were added to the Church before the year 1642. — 
 The Chief and principal inhabitants of the town of Potomac and 
 four neighbouring Chiefs with some members of their respective 
 tribes were in like manner brought into the christian fold about 
 this period. We cannot accurately estimate the entire number of 
 converts; but hope and gratitude now swelled the missionary's 
 heart, for the prospect of ultimate success was unclouded. Seve- 
 ral fathers had arrived successively from Europe to aid the venera- 
 ble White and take the place of father Altham, who had gone from 
 the scene of his earthly toils, to intercede in Heaven for those, in 
 whose behalf he had laboured on earth. Some of them, particu- 
 larly Father White had become familiar with the language of the 
 Indians. Catechisms in their various dialects had been composed. 
 Some of the Indians in turn began to understand English. The 
 young Queen of the Piscataways, the daughter of Chilomacon, 
 (who had departed this life in sentiments of the most edifying piety,) 
 was receiving a liberal and christian education at St. Maiy's. The 
 converted Indians exhibited the ardour of proselytes and the purity 
 of morals, which distinguished the primitive Christians. The pri- 
 vations, fatigues and dangers of these missions invested them with 
 peculiar charms in the eyes of the Jesuits. How different would 
 be now the history of the aboriginal occupants of our country, had 
 all the States been founded under the same auspices as our own ! 
 Bat now began those troubles, which ended in the total over- 
 
24 
 
 throw of Catholic influence and civil and religious liberty in tliC 
 province. During Clayborne and Ingle's rebellion Father White 
 and two other missionaries were seized, put in irons and sent to 
 England to be tried as priests and Jesuits. The others concealed 
 themselves chiefly in Virginia. Their Indian flocks were dispersed} 
 as sheep without a shepherd. The good fathers returned to them 
 and again were chased away ; nor were they ever after allowed to 
 continue their missionary labours without molestation. The tribes, 
 which seemed destined to become christian and civilized have dis- 
 appeared forever. But the poor Indians were not the only suffer- 
 ers. The hydra of revolt derived a sort of immortality from Anti- 
 Catholic rancour ; and though at first repeatedly struck down, it 
 ever rose with redoubled vigour and showed its gratitude for the 
 mercy, which had failed to sear its mutilated trunk, by a new and 
 more ruthless onset. Clayborne, " the evil genius of the colony," 
 and others like him, were always ready to head the insurrection, 
 and the banks of the Severn, where the Puritans lately banished 
 from Virginia had been allowed to settle, became the hot-bed of 
 sedition. "To root out the abominations of Popery and prelacy," to 
 foster a " thorough godly reformation," and to vindicate their rights 
 and liberties brought into awful danger by the Jesuits and the Pope 
 were the ever- ready pretexts of each treasonable outbreak, and es- 
 specially of that successful conspiracy, which on the accession of 
 William ami Mary took the name of " The Protestant Association" 
 and completely revolutionized the government of Maryland. The 
 Catholic governors from first to last had sworn to molest no man in 
 the exercise of his religion and to make no distinctions on account 
 of creed. A Catholic legislature in 1649 had passed a glorious 
 sUitute in favour of religious liberty and equality. The first act of 
 the Association, on the success of their treason, was to stipulate, 
 that Roman Catholics should be excluded from all offices civil and 
 military. The fust enactment of the Assembly convened under 
 these auspices, after the formal recognition of William and Mary's 
 
25 
 
 sovereignty, was an act to disfranchise the Catholics and " estab- 
 lish the Protestant religion" within the province. It was follow- 
 ed up by penal laws forbidding Catholic priests to say mass or ex- 
 ercise the spiritual functions of their office, prohibiting Catholics 
 from engaging in the instruction of youth and empowering their 
 children, if they became Protestants, to compel their parents to 
 furnish them a maintenance adequate to their condition in life. — 
 At the instance of the crown, as it appears, priests were allowed by 
 an alteration of the law to exercise their spiritual ministry private- 
 ly in families of the Catholic persuasion. The Quakers too for a 
 time were sufferers by the change of Government. 
 
 In the overthrow of Maryland's religious freedom, the pillars 
 of her civil liberty were also shaken. " Her charter was exalted 
 above all others by its commercial privileges and exemptions." — 
 The English Parliament never viewed with a favourable eye the 
 immunities of the colonies : but the Lord Proprietary had, in a long- 
 continued struggle with both King and Parliament, contended man- 
 fully and not unsuccessfully for the integrity of his charter and 
 the freedom of his province. The men, who overturned his gov- 
 ernment in 1689 in their perfect hatred of every thing of Roman 
 Catholic origin yielded to England's tyranny the whole point at 
 issue, accused him as of a crime, of his defence of their commer- 
 cial privileges and firmly rivetted the restrictive system on the col- 
 ony. In the course of their legislation " to prevent the growth of 
 Popery within the province," they fully admitted what the charter 
 had carefully guarded against, what their Catholic predecessors had 
 ever denied and what in 1776 the thirteen united colonies repudi- 
 ated and repelled by an appeal to arms and the god of battles, — 
 the supreme legislative power of parliament over the internal gov- 
 ernment of the province.* Thus for a time the rights of Mary- 
 land were placed at the mercy of a King and his servile parlia- 
 ment. The colony, once so erect and noble in her bearing, crouch- 
 *Vide Note 13, chap. 3, page 243, of M'Mahon's Maryland. 
 D 
 
l 2(> 
 
 edjat the feet of the English Lion. It was bigotry, die hand maid 
 of oppression, that brought her down to this humiliating attitude : 
 but it was not natural to her; nor could her free, elastic spirit long 
 continue to bend in ignoble subjection. The acknowledgement of 
 the supremacy of parliament in the act of 1718 was a solitary ad- 
 mission, never repeated, as it was unprecedented. But liberty of 
 conscience had perished. By civil conflicts, by blood-shed, by the 
 bigot's ordinary weapons, — slander and treachery; amid scenes 
 of violence, rapacity and general distress, the Catholics were rob- 
 bed of their right to worship God according to the dictates of their 
 conscience in that colony, which they in their day of power had 
 made an asylum for conscience, — a refuge for the persecuted of 
 every Christian denomination. It was a base return for their mag- 
 nanimous liberality. It must have aggravated their sense of wrong 
 to know, that their own generosity had warmed into life and nerv- 
 ed the power which aimed the ungrateful blow. 
 
 "So the struck eagle, stretched upon the plain, 
 No more through rolling clouds to soar again, 
 Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart, 
 And winged the shaft, that quivered in his heart. 
 Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel, — 
 He nursed the pinion, which impelled the steel." 
 
 Let history extend the charity of her silence to those, who opened 
 the gate of this Western paradise to the demon of persecution. — 
 We feel no resentment towards the man who burned the temple of 
 Ephesian Diana, that he might hand down his detested name to 
 posterity. We would throw a veil over the memory of those, who 
 darkened the soil of Maryland with the melancholy ruins of that 
 beautiful temple, which the Catholic Pilgrims had reared to civil 
 and religious liberty. 
 
 Tims the fathers of Maryland, like many other benefactors of 
 mankind, were martyrs in the cause, of which they were the first 
 practical advocates and the most honest and consistent friends. — 
 
27 
 
 Attempts have been made to rob them of their peculiar and unri- 
 valled honour. But a glance at well known dates and indisputa- 
 ble facts decides the question. Sixteen hundred and thirty-four is 
 the era of the establismcnt of religious freedom on the soil of our 
 parent State. There it stood in solitary glory beside the cross, 
 which was erected on Saint Clement's island: there it was presi- 
 ding over the foundations of "Our Lady's City :" For in the 
 words of McMahon " it was coeval with the colony itself." The 
 oath of office prescribed to the governor of Catholic Maryland 
 bound him, " neither by himself or another, directly or indirectly, 
 to trouble molest or discountenance any person professing to believe 
 in Jesus Christ, for or in respect of religion ; to make no differ- 
 ence of persons in conferring offices, favours or rewards for or in 
 respect of religion, but merely as they should be found faithful 
 and well deserving and indued with moral virtues and abilities ; to 
 aim at public unity, and if any person or officer should molest any 
 person professing to believe in Jesus Christ on account of his re- 
 ligion, to protect the person molested and punish the offender." 
 What law-giver ever showed more solicitude than Calvert to guard 
 the religious liberty of his subjects? 
 
 William Penn obtained the charter of Pennsylvania in 1681, 
 nearly fifty years later and copied all its liberal provisions from the 
 charter of Maryland. He established religious freedom ; but he 
 gave no such evidence of his anxiety to extend to all denominations 
 of Christians the full enjoyment of it. Even his meek and be- 
 nevolent mind was infected with a pious hatred of the Mother 
 Church of Christendom, and he has left on record a lamentable 
 proof of his inconsistency. 
 
 In 1(338 Roger Williams flying from the persecutions of Mas- 
 sachusetts, founded the colony of Rhode Island. He obtained his 
 charter from Charles II, in 1663. This instrument proclaims the 
 principle of religious equality in the strongest and most compre- 
 hensive language : and happy would it be for the honour of 
 
28 
 
 Rhode Island and the memory of Williams, if the practice of the 
 polony had accorded with the spirit of its charter. His character has 
 won the loftiest eulogy and enlisted in his defence some of the best 
 talent of our country. Yet rejecting the testimony brought against 
 him and admitting all that his panegyrists have asserted, we must 
 still say, that he comes into the field but as a gleaner of that hon- 
 our and glory, the full harvest of which was gathered by the Cal- 
 verts and the Pilgrims of Maryland. 
 
 The freemen of the province, as long as power remained in 
 Catholic hands, were not behind the proprietary in liberality of 
 spirit. To their eternal honour be it said, they most heartily con- 
 curred in every measure, which extended to their Protestant breth- 
 ren all the benefits of their own condition. In order that the uni- 
 form practice of the government from the beginning might have 
 the solemn sanction and security of a legislative enactment, they 
 passed the law of 1649 in favour of religious freedom and thus 
 placed on the statute book an enduring record of their enlightened 
 views and equitable disposition. "Whereas/' such was the sub- 
 lime tenor of the statute, "Whereas the enforcing of conscience in 
 matters of religion hath frequently fallen out to be of dangerous 
 consequence to those commonwealths, where it hath been practi- 
 sed ; for the more quiet and peaceable government of this province, 
 and the better to preserve mutual love and unity among the inhab- 
 itants, no person or persons whatsoever within this province profes- 
 sing to believe in Jesus Christ, shall from henceforth be any-wise 
 troubled, molested or discountenanced for or in respect of his or her 
 religion, nor in the free exercise thereof within this province, nor 
 any way compelled to the belief or exercise of any oilier religion 
 against his or her consent, so that they be not unfaithful to the 
 Lord Proprietary, or molest or conspire against the civil govern- 
 ment, established or to be established in this province, under him 
 pi his heirs. And any person presuming contrary to this net and 
 the true intent and meaning thereof, directly or indirectly, cithei 
 
29 
 
 in person or estate wilfully to disturb, wrong, trouble or molest any 
 person whatever within this province, shall pay treble damages to 
 the party so wronged and molested and also forfeit twenty shillings 
 for every such offence." There in its beautiful simplicity is the 
 everlasting proof of the enlightened benevolence, the glorious mag 
 nanimity of the Catholic freemen of Maryland. 
 
 I know that this was an imperfect measure of religious liberty. 
 The Jew, and perhaps a few others, were not covered by the pro- 
 tecting mantle of the law. But he who studies well the history 
 of the times, will find more reason to eulogize the Maryland colo- 
 nists, because they went so far, than to blame them, because they 
 went no farther. It is hardly seven years, since the enlightened 
 State of North Carolina reached the point, at which they stopped. 
 Even the convincing eloquence of Gaston could not urge her be- 
 yond it. And New Jersey still lags behind her sister States, hold- 
 ing fetters for conscience in her hand and wearing the tattered 
 badge of ancient prejudice and perpetuated infamy. Certainly 
 the Pilgrims of Maryland were in advance of their times. Cer- 
 tainly they soared far above the spirit, which animated the govern- 
 ments both of the mother country and the sister colonies. It was 
 the age of Laud and of the Star Chamber's ascendancy. The 
 learning and genius of Grotius were employed in defending the 
 principle, which Cranmer, Whitgift and Hooker had identified 
 with the Ecclesiastical polity of England, — the principle of regal 
 supremacy or of the magistrate's authority to regulate the religion 
 of the people. It was at this very time, that the Legislature of 
 Virginia was passing acts to prevent dissenting ministers from 
 preaching in that province, and the pious government of Massa- 
 chusetts was proscribing Baptists and whipping and hanging Qua- 
 kers. It was, as we have seen, a time, when, beyond the bounda- 
 ries of Maryland, there was not in all the Anglo-American colo- 
 nies one spot, on which the Catholic might hope in peace and 
 safety to practice his religion. The bigots, who sicken at the sight 
 
 €~S 
 
 NEWBERRY 
 LIBRARY 
 
 CHIC AGO 
 
10 
 
 of Maryland's unrivalled glory, have with keen-eyed malignity 
 sought, and fancied that they found another reason for hawking at 
 her in her lofty flight. They say, " The Catholic colonists had 
 not the power to persecute, even if they had the will." We 
 know, that they had not the will ; and that's sufficient. But is 
 it true, that they, who had the power to do good and used it nohly, 
 were so powerless for evil, had they heen evil-minded? Could 
 they not have hung the inoffensive and unprotected Quakers, had 
 they taken a fancy to that vocation, just as well as the Puritans of 
 Boston. Could they not have excluded Dissenters from the pro- 
 vince, as Virginia did, and would not Charles I, have supported 
 them in doing so ? Yet it is on record, that in the very infancy 
 of the colony, in 1634, Leonard Calvert sent the Dove to Massa- 
 chusetts Bay, with an invitation to the people there to come and 
 settle in Maryland, promising them the free exercise of their reli- 
 gion. * Can any proposition then be more satisfactorily establish- 
 ed, than that to the Pilgrims of Maryland belongs the honour of 
 first incorporating into a system of Government and practising the 
 doctrine of religious liberty ? Individuals may have taught it be- 
 fore as a speculative truth. Whatever may have been his notions 
 in regard to persecution, no Catholic Divine from Tertullian to 
 Thomas Aquinas or from him to Fenelon and Bossuet could re- 
 gard the. enslavement of the Church to the State in any other 
 liubt, than as an odious and abominable tyranny, which heresy 
 alone could vindicate. Nor was the great principle, with which 
 our celebration is identified and which throws around it a halo of 
 peculiar glory, without distinguished and fearless advocates among 
 the legal and theological writers of our Church, during those ages, 
 when >bc exercised her spiritual sway over the civilized world, 
 without a rival. The "divine right of Kings" to rule their sub- 
 jects as they list and fetter even conscience, is a much more mod- 
 ern invention than they imagine, who take their notions of the 
 ♦WiiUlirop's Journal. 
 
31 
 
 middle ages, "dark ages" indeed for them, from the libels on 
 them, with which our English Literature abounds. The political 
 dogma, that the people have no rights, — a government absolute in 
 theory as well as in practice, are things almost unknown to the 
 olden Catholic times. Do you wonder then, that the Calverts 
 were the first to plant the standard of religious liberty on the shores 
 of this new world ? True civil Freedom — a freedom both from 
 the tyranny of Kings and the tyranny of a Church, such freedom 
 as we now enjoy and would die to defend, was brought to Amer- 
 ica by the charter of Maryland: — religious liberty was her com- 
 panion. God alone knows how much of our present happiness 
 
 should be referred to the influence of this great example of your 
 fathers. It was the first blow for freedom of conscience ; and 
 
 "Freedom's battle once begun, 
 Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son, 
 Though baffled oft is ever won." 
 
 The revolution found conscience fettered in every one of the colo- 
 nies. Even in Maryland, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, when he 
 was sent to Congress to sign the Declaration of Independence, was 
 not qualified by the existing laws to hold the pettiest civil office. — 
 Intolerant legislators had everywhere trampled on the rights of 
 their fellow-men under the miserable pretext of maintaining and 
 protecting religion ; as if bloody hands and burning faggots were 
 the proper and necessary support of the citadel of divine truth. — 
 But when the Protestant of almost every denomination and the 
 Catholic of Maryland, with the Catholic of Ireland, the Catholic 
 of Poland and the Catholic of France stood shoulder to shoulder 
 and mingled their blood in the battle for Independence, even big- 
 otry stood abashed and silent at the moral grandeur of the specta- 
 cle. Nor was her hoarse, discordant voice heard amid the national 
 shout of jubilee for our country's final deliverance. Then the 
 Angel of Freedom struck off the chains of captive religion and 
 led her forth, (for the iron gate of her prison opened before her,) 
 
LltJKHKY Uf CONGRESS 
 
 3'2 014 366 666 9 # 
 
 and girded and sandalled for a journey, she thenceforth went about 
 among us, not protected but protecting and blessing all that walk 
 in her train, moving as a Queen on earth, though her kingdom is 
 not of this world and her look is always towards Heaven. 
 
 Fellow- Citizens, there is no lesson more important to the hap- 
 piness of men, than that, which is taught by the earliest history of 
 our State. It is the lesson of charity; — it is the precept of our 
 divine Redeemer, that we should love one another and do good to 
 all men, even those who hate and persecute us. Your pilgrim fath- 
 ers never paused to ask : will our generosity be requited well or ill ? 
 They did their duty : They acted their part faithfully, nobly in 
 the history of the world. They set a rising nation the example of 
 universal benevolence. In God they trusted for their recompense, 
 and they have received it. The world is now resounding their 
 praise. Looking down from a higher sphere of charity they be- 
 hold the principles, which they professed and acted on triumphant 
 throughout our vast republic and destined yet to triumph through- 
 out the entire world. Marylanders emulate the glory of your fath- 
 ers: Men of every State, of every Country and of every Creed, 
 learn, that true religion, as angel's sung, when they announced 
 our Saviour's birth, gives glory to God in the highest and brings 
 
 PEACE AND GOOD WILL TO MEN. 
 
\ 
 
/ 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 014 366 666 9