Part 3

But, in truth, our materials for his biography are extremely scant. He died at the very moment when America's chief interest in him began. He belonged to the Court Party, as distinguished from the Country Party. He is known to have been a zealous supporter of the "supremacy of authority." He held, that "America, having been acquired by conquest, was subject, exclusively, to the control of royal prerogative." He was the defender of the Court in its diplomacy; and, ultra as James was in his monarchical doctrines, there can be little doubt that he would have dismissed Calvert from office, had there not been concord between the crown and its servant, as to the policy, if not the justice, of the toryism they both professed. But let us not judge that century by the standards of this. That would be writing history from a false point. Let us not condemn rulers who seem to be despotic in historic periods of transition--in periods of mutual intolerance and distrust--in periods when men know nothing, from practical experience, of the capacity of mankind for self government.[8]

The charter which Sir George Calvert framed, and the successor of James granted, was precisely the one we might justly suppose such a subject, and such a sovereign would prepare and sign. It invested the Lord Proprietary with all the royal rights, enjoyed by the Bishop of Durham, within the County Palatine of Durham. He was the source of justice. He was the fountain of honor, and allowed to decorate meritorious provincials with whatever titles and dignities he should appoint. He had the power to establish feudalism and all its incidents. He was not merely the founder and filler of office, but he was also the sole executive. He might erect towns, boroughs and cities;--he might pardon offences and command the forces. As ecclesiastical head of the Province, he had the right to found churches, and was entitled to their advowsons.[9] In certain cases he had the dangerous privilege of issuing ordinances, which were to have the force of sovereign decrees. In fact, allegiance to England, was alone preserved, and the Lord Proprietary became an autocrat, with but two limitations: 1st, the laws were to be enacted by the Proprietary, with the advice and approbation of the free men, or free-holders or their deputies,--the "_liberi homines_" and "_liberi tenentes_," spoken of in the charter;--and 2nd, "no interpretation" of the charter was "to be made whereby God's Holy Rights and the true Christian Religion, _or_ the allegiance due to us," (the King of England,) "our heirs and successors, may, in any wise, suffer by change, prejudice or diminution." Christianity and the King--I blush to unite such discordant names--were protected in equal co-partnership.[10]

The first of these reserved privileges of the people, the Lord Proprietary Cecilius understood, to mean, that _he_ had the exclusive privilege of proposing laws, and that the free-men, or free-holders of his province, could only accept or reject his propositions. These laws of the province were not to be submitted to the King for his approval, nor had he the important _right of taxation_, which was expressly relinquished. In the early legislation of Maryland, this supposed exclusive right of proposing laws by the Proprietary, was soon tested by mutual rejections, both by the legislative Assembly and by Cecilius, of the Acts, which each had separately passed or prepared.

But the other clause, touching "God's Holy Rights and the true Christian Religion," was one, in regard to the practical interpretation of which, I apprehend, there was never a moment's doubt in the mind either of the people or of the Proprietary. It is a radiant gem in the antique setting of the charter. It is the glory of Calvert. It is the utter obliteration of prejudice among all who professed Christianity. Toleration was unknown in the old World; but this was more than toleration, for it declared freedom at least to _Christians_,--yet it was not perfect freedom, for it excluded that patient and suffering race--that chosen people--who, to the disgrace even of republican Maryland, within my recollection, were bowed down by political disabilities.

I am aware that many historians consider the religious freedom of Maryland as originating in subsequent legislation, and claim the act of 1649 as the statute of toleration. I do not agree with them. Sir George Calvert had been a Protestant;--he became a Catholic. As a Catholic, he came to Virginia, and in the colony where he sought to settle, he found himself assailed, for the first time in his life, by Protestant virulence and incapacitation. He was now, himself, about to become a Lord Proprietor. The sovereign who granted his charter was a Protestant, and moreover, the king of a country whose established religion was Protestant. The Protestant monarch, of course, could not _grant_ anything which would compromise him with his Protestant subjects; yet the Catholic nobleman, who was to take the beneficiary charter, could not _receive_, from his Protestant master, a grant which would assail the conscience of co-religionists over whom he was, in fact, to be a sovereign. In England, the King had no right to interfere with the Church of England; but in America, which was a vacant, royal domain, his paramount authority permitted him to abolish invidious ecclesiastical distinctions. Calvert, the Catholic, must have been less than a man, if he forgot his fellow sufferers and their disabilities when he drew his charter. His Protestant recollections taught him the vexations of Catholic trials, while his Catholic observation informed him sharply of Protestant persecution. Sectarianism was already rampant across the Atlantic.[11] The two British lodgments, in Virginia and New England, were obstinately sectarian. Virginia was Episcopalian; New England was Puritan;--should Maryland be founded as an exclusively Protestant province, or an exclusively Catholic settlement? It is evident that either would be impossible:--the latter, because it would have been both impolitic and probably illegal; and the former because it would have been a ridiculous anomaly to force a converted Catholic, to govern a colony wherein his own creed was not tolerated by a fundamental and unalterable law. It is impossible to conceive that the faith of Calvert and the legal religion of Charles, did not enter into their deliberations, when they discussed the Charter; and, doubtless, both subject and sovereign justly decided to make "THE LAND OF MARY," which the Protestant Charles baptised in honor of his Catholic Queen, a free soil for Christianity. It was Calvert's duly and interest to make Charles tolerant of Catholic Christianity; nor could he deny to others the immunity he demanded for himself and his religious brethren. The language of the charter, therefore, seems explicit and incapable of any other meaning. There were multitudes of Catholics in England, who would be glad to take refuge in a region where they were to be free from disabilities, and could assert their manhood. The king, moreover, secured for his Catholic subjects a quiet, but chartered banishment, which still preserved their allegiance. At the court there was much leaning towards the church of Rome. It was rather fashionable to believe one way, and conform another. The Queen was zealous in her ancestral faith; and her influence over the king, colored more than one of his acts. Had Calvert gone to the market place, and openly proclaimed, that a Protestant king, by a just charter of neutrality, had established an American sanctuary for Catholics, and invited them thither under the banner of the cross, one of his chief objects, must have been at once defeated; for intolerance would have rallied its parties against the project, and the dream of benevolence would have been destroyed for ever. If by the term, "God's Holy Rights and the true Christian religion," the charter meant, _the church of England_, then, _ex vi termini_, Catholicity could never have been tolerated in Maryland; and yet it is unquestionable that the original settlement was made under Catholic auspices--blessed by Catholic clergymen--and acquiesced in by Protestant followers. Was it not wise, therefore, to shield conscience in Maryland, under the indefinite but unsectarian phraseology of "God's Holy Rights and the true Christian Religion?"[12]

* * * * *

So far, then, for the basis of the charter, and for the action of Sir George Calvert. After his death, the planting of the colony took place under the administration of Cecilius, who, remaining in Europe, dispatched his brother Leonard to America to carry out his projects.

If the personal history of the Calverts is scant, the history of the early days of Maryland is scarcely less so; but the industry of antiquarians, and the researches of a learned Catholic clergyman, have brought to light two documents which disclose much of the religious and business character of the settlement. The work entitled:--"A RELATION OF MARYLAND," which was published in London in 1635, and gave the first account of the planting of the province, is a minute, mercantile, statistical, geographical and descriptive narrative of the landing and locating of the adventurers who set sail in 1633, and of their genial intercourse with the aborigines. If I had time, it would be pleasing to sum up the facts of this historical treasure, which was evidently prepared under the direction of Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, if not actually written by him. It is full of the spirit of careful, honest enterprise; and exhibits, I think, conclusively, the fact that the design of Calvert, in establishing this colony, was mainly the creation of a great estate, manorial and agricultural, whose ample revenues should, at all times, supply the needs of his ten children and their descendants.

The other document to which I refer, is a manuscript discovered some years ago, by the Rev. Mr. McSherry, in the archives of the college of the Propaganda, at Rome, and exhibits the zeal with which the worthy Jesuits, whom Lord Baltimore sent forth with the first settlers, applied themselves to the christianization of the savages. It presents some beautiful pictures of the simple life of these devotees. It shows that, in Maryland, the first step was _not_ made in crime; and that the earliest duty of the Governor, was not only to conciliate the Indian proprietors, but to purchase the land they were willing to resign. Nor was this all; there was provident care for the soul as well as the soil of the savage. There is something rare in the watchful forethought which looks not only to the present gain or future prospects of our fellow men, which takes heed not only of the personal rights and material comforts of the race it is displacing, but guards the untutored savage, and consigns him to the vigilance of instructed piety. This "NARRATIVE OF FATHER WHITE," and the Jesuits' letters, preserved in the college at Georgetown, portray the zeal with which the missionaries, in their frail barks, thridded the rivers, coves and inlets of our Chesapeake and Patapsco;--how they raised the cross, under the shadow of which the first landing was effected;--how they set up their altars in the wigwams of the Indians, and sought, by simplicity, kindness and reason, to reach and save the Indian. In Maryland, persecution was dead at the founding;--prejudice, even, was forbidden. The cruelties of Spanish planting were unknown in our milder clime. No violence was used, to convert or to appropriate, and thus, the symbol of salvation, was properly raised on the green Isle of St. Clement, as an emblem of the peace and good will, which the Proprietary desired should sanctify his enterprise.[13]

I think there ran be no doubt that this adventure had the double object of affording an exile's refuge to Calvert's co-religionists, as well as of promoting the welfare of his family. It was designed for land-holders and laborers. It was a manorial, planting colony. Its territory was watered by two bays, several large rivers, and innumerable streams. Its fertile lands and thick forests, invited husbandmen, while its capacious coasts tempted the hardy fisherman. And so it is, that in the Arms which were prepared for the Proprietary government, the baronial shield of the Calvert family, dropped, in America, its two supporting leopards, and received in their stead, on either side, a Fisherman and a Farmer. "Crescite et Multiplicamini,"--its motto,--was a watchword of provident thrift.

* * * * *

Forty-nine years after the charter was granted to Lord Baltimore, King Charles II issued a patent, for a magnificent patrimony in America, to WILLIAM PENN.

But what a change, in that half century, had passed over the world! A catalogue of the events that took place, in Great Britain alone, is a history of the growth of Opinion and of the People.

Charles's efforts to overthrow the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, and to enforce Episcopacy, brought on the war with the stern enthusiasts of that country. Laud, in the Church, and the Earl of Strafford, in the Cabinet, kept the King in a constant passion of royal and ecclesiastical power. Strafford fell, and the civil war broke out. Cromwell towered up suddenly, on the bloody field, and was victorious over the royalists. The King perished on the scaffold. Cromwell became Lord Protector. Anon, the commonwealth fell; the Stuarts were restored, and Charles II ascended the throne;--but amid all these perilous acts of political and religious fury, the world of thought had been stirred by the speeches and writings, of Taylor, Algernon Sydney, Hampden, and Milton. As the people gradually felt their power they learned to know their rights, and, although they went back from Republicanism to Royalty, they did so, perhaps, only to save themselves from the anarchy that ever threatens a nation while freeing itself from feudal traditions.

Besides these political and literary phases of the time, there had been added to the Catholic, Episcopal, and Puritan sects, a _new_ element of religious power, which was destined to produce a slow but safe revolution among men.

An humble shoemaker, named GEORGE FOX, arose and taught that "every man was complete in himself; he stood in need of no alien help; the light was free of all control,--above all authority external to itself. Each human being, man or woman, was supreme." The christian denomination called Quakers, or more descriptively--"Friends,"--- thus obtained a hearing and a standing among all serious persons who thought Religion a thing of life as well as of death.

Quakerism, with such fundamental principles of equality in constant practice, became a social polity. If the Quaker was a Democrat, he was so because the "inner light" of his christianity made him one, and he dared not disobey his christianity. He recognized no superiors, for his conscience taught him to deny any privileges to claimed superiority. But the Quaker added to his system, an element which, hitherto, was unknown in the history of sects;--he was a Man of Peace. It is not to be supposed that any royal or ecclesiastical government would allow such radical doctrines to pass unnoticed, in the midst of a society which was ever greedy for new teachings. The Quaker, therefore, soon participated in the persecutions which prelacy thought due to liberal christianity. But persecution of the Friend, was the Friend's best publication, for he answered persecution, not by recantation, but by peaceful endurance. Combative resistance, in religious differences, always gives the victor a right, or at least, an excuse, to slay. But Quakerism, a system of personal and religious independence and peace,--became slowly successful by the _vis inertiæ_ of passive resistance. All other sects were, more or less, combative;--Quakerism was an obstinate rock, which stood, in rooted firmness, amid a sea of strife:--the billows of faction raged around it and broke on its granite surface, but they wasted themselves--_not_ the rock! And this is a most important fact in the history of Religion in its development of society. All other sects lost caste, power or material, either by aggression or by fighting. But the Quaker said to the Prelate, the Puritan, and the Catholic, you may annoy us by public trials, by denial of justice, by misrepresentation, by imprisonment, by persecution, by the stake,--yet we shall stand immovable on two principles, which deny that God is glorified by warfare--especially for opinion. Our principles are, equality and peace--in the church and in the world. Equality is to make us humble and good citizens. Peace is to convert this den of human tigers into a fold, wherein by simply performing our duties to each other and to God, we may prepare ourselves for the world of spirits. You can persecute--_we_ can suffer. Who shall tire first? We will be victorious by the firmness that bears your persecutions; and those very persecutions, while they publish your shame, shall proclaim our principles as well as our endurance. They knew, from the history of Charles 1st, that the worst thing to be done with a bad king was to kill him; for, if the axe metamorphosed that personage into a martyr, the prison could never extinguish the light of truth in the doctrines of Quakerism![14]

* * * * *

You will pardon me, gentlemen, for having detained you so long in discussing the foundation of Maryland. The planting of your own state is familiar to you. It has been thoroughly treated in the writings of your Proud, Watson, Gordon, Du Ponceau, Tyson, Fisher, Wharton, Reed, Ingraham, Armstrong and many others. Can it be necessary for me to say a word, in Philadelphia, of the history of WILLIAM PENN;--of him, who, as a lawgiver and executive magistrate,--a practical, pious, Quaker,--_first_ developed in state affairs, and reduced to practice, the liberty and equality enjoined by his religion and founded on liberal christianity;--of him who _first_ taught mankind the sublime truth, that--

"Beneath the rule of men entirely great "The PEN _is mightier than the sword? Behold_ "The arch-enchanter's wand,--itself a nothing! "But taking sorcery from the master hand "To paralyse the Cesars! _Take away the sword_, "_States can be saved without it!_"

It would be idle to detail the facts of his life or government, for, not only have Pennsylvanians recorded and dwelt upon them until they are household lessons, but they have been favorite themes for French, British, Italian, German and Spanish philosophers and historians.

* * * * *

It was Penn to whom the charter of 1681 was granted, half a century after the patent issued to Cecilius Calvert. The instrument itself, has many of the features of the Maryland grant; but it is well known that the absolute powers it bestowed on the Proprietary, were only taken by him in order that he might do as he pleased in the formation of a new state, whose principles of freedom and peace, might, first in the World's history, practically assume a national aspect.

I shall not recount the democratic liberalities of his system, as it was matured by his personal efforts and advice. Original, as he unquestionably was, in genius; bold as he was in resisting the pomp of the world, at a time when its vanities sink easiest and most corruptingly into the heart,--we may nevertheless, say, that the deeds and history of his time, as well as of the previous fifty years, had a large share in moulding his character.

In William Penn, the crude germs of religious originality, which, in Fox, were struggling, and sometimes almost stifling for utterance, found their first, ablest, and most accomplished expounder. He gave them refinement and respectability. His intimacy with Algernon Sidney taught him the value of introducing those principles into the doctrines of government;--and thus, he soon learned that when political rights grow into the sanctity of religious duties, they receive thereby a vitality which makes them irresistible. Penn, in this wise, become an expanded embodiment of Fox and Sidney; and, appropriating their mingled faith and polity, discarded every thing that was doctrinal and not practical, and realized, in government, their united wisdom. Nobly _in his age_, did he declare: "I know what is said by the several admirers of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, which are the rule of one, of a few, and of the many, and are the three common ideas of government when men discourse on that subject. But I choose to solve the controversy with this small distinction, and it belongs to all three:--_any government is free to the people under it, whatever be the frame, where the laws rule and the people are a party to those laws; and more than this is tyranny, oligarchy, and confusion._"[15]

In these historical illustrations, I have striven to show that Primitive Christianity was the basis of equal rights and responsibilities. The alleged defence of this christianity, in the land of its birth, gave rise to "holy wars," in which Feudalism and Chivalry originated. Feudalism was the source of the strictest military dependence, as well as of manifold social perversions. The knight expanded into a lord,--the subject commoner dwindled to a soldier or a serf. Thus Feudalism and a great historical Church, grew up in aristocratic co-partnership over the bodies and souls of mankind, until the one, by the omnipotence of its spiritual authority, ripened into an universal hierarchy, while the other, by the folly of its "divine right," decayed into a temporal despotism that fell at the first blow of the heads-man's axe. The reformation and revolution broke the enchanter's wand; and, when the cloud passed from the bloody stage, instead of seeing before us a magician full of the glories of his art and almost deceived himself, by the splendor of his incantations, we beheld a meagre and pitiful creature, who though blind and palsied, still retained for a while, the power of witch-like mischief. But his reign was not lasting. The stern Puritan,--the pioneer of Independence,--advanced with his remorseless weapon,--while quietly, in his shadow, followed the calm and patient Friend, sowing the seed of Peace and Good-Will in the furrows plowed by the steel of his unrelenting predecessor. And thus again, after ages of corrupt and desolating perversion, the selfish heart of man came humbly back to its original faith that Liberal Christianity is the true basis of enlightened freedom, and the only foundation of good and lasting government.

* * * * *

The bleak winds of March were blowing in Maryland, when Calvert conciliated and purchased from the Indians at Saint Mary's; but Autumn was

"Laying here and there "A fiery finger on the leaves,"

when Penn, also, established a perfect friendship with the savages at Shackamaxon.[16]