Part 27

We have thus endeavoured, by a careful reference to numerous and exact authorities, to which we have had access, to give some historical explanations of the present Polish question. It seems plain, that there is little room to hope for the re-establishment of Polish independence. The provinces belonging to Austria, have most of them been under the Austrian rule for nearly sixty years; and so, too, a large portion of Polish Prussia has belonged to the Prussian monarchy, since 1773. The still larger parts, which have been incorporated into the Russian monarchy, seem to have learnt acquiescence in their condition. A kindred dialect, and a sort of national relationship, have always rendered Russian supremacy more tolerable to the Polish provinces, than that of the dynasty of Hapsburg, or the court of Berlin. It is only in that portion of Poland, where, by the establishment of the Grand Dutchy of Warsaw under Napoleon, and by the erection of a nominally independent kingdom, a spirit of irritation and change has fostered the honourable passion for national existence, that the present revolution has been supported with enthusiasm. The world will do honour to this last effort of determined patriotism; but the liberties of Poland will be reconquered only by the gradual progress of the moral power of free-opinions, which is advancing in the majesty of its strength; over the ruins of centuries and the graves of nations.

[Footnote 9: The emperor in no wise confused, is said to have replied, "much obliged to you," and retained the present.]

ART. IX.--_A Historical View of the Government of Maryland, from its Colonization to the present day._ By JOHN V. L. M'MAHON. Baltimore: 1831. Vol. 1. pp. 539.

The history of Maryland under the proprietary government is little known, says our author, even to her own people. Yet, as that government was the mould of her present institutions, the school of discipline for her revolutionary men, it is to its history we must go back for just notions of both. The revolution was not wrought by a few master minds, miraculously born for the occasion, but was the natural development of a train of causes which leave us less surprised at our ancestors' manful and accordant resistance of usurpation, than at the strange ignorance of them which seems to have begot the unwise designs of the mother country.

Montesquieu has observed, with his usual antithesis, "In the infancy of societies, it is the leaders that create the institutions; afterwards, it is the institutions which make the leaders." Perhaps, the former event has in truth happened less often than received history would persuade us. The more dim the dawn of tradition, the oftener we find ascribed to the Lycurguses, the Numas, the Alfreds, either such original establishments or such fundamental changes as would seem to have created the civil or religious polity of their people anew. We know not how much they were indebted to precedent and concurrent circumstances; and thus obscurity may magnify their renown, as distant objects, according to a figure of our author's, are exaggerated to the eye in a misty morning. The vulgar, who do not trouble themselves with cavils, resolve the result they perceive into the effort of some moral hero, just as the Greeks referred to Hercules the feats which transcended the ordinary limits of physical prowess.

The same thing takes place in a less degree, at periods whose history is more authentically written. The leaders of revolutions may transmute, so to speak, into personal merit, some of the results which, more narrowly considered, are referrible to the pervading spirit and general movement of the occasion. To weigh justly these elements of their renown, is not invidiously to derogate from it, but only to vindicate the truth of history. It still leaves them the highest merit to which, perhaps, the leaders in any kind of reform can truly lay claim, that of seizing the spirit of their age, and employing and directing it with a just energy and discernment. As it has been said that Luther might have ineffectually preached the Reformation in the twelfth century, and Napoleon, if he had not been, in fact, but "the little corporal," might have been no more than a leader of _Condottieri_ in the fourteenth; so our revolutionary sages could hardly, in the circumstances of the crisis, and amidst the men of the age, have been other than what they were. Though they fought in the van of the war, they had, however, their _Triarii_ to sustain them, a nation, namely, accustomed to the discipline of liberty. The wave of opinion rolled high, and they had the praise of launching their barks on it, with strength and skill indeed, but yet with a propitious gale and a favouring current. The notices in the volume before us, of the character and history of the colonists of Maryland, show how the principles of liberty which they brought with them to "this rough, uncultivated world," (such is their own description of it,) they maintained with a uniform constancy and understanding. Though colonial dependence has seldom been less burdensome in point of fact than in their case, the abstract doctrines of political right were not on that account guarded with the less vigilance. Thus, in our author's language, "they were fitted for self-government before it came, and when it came, it sat lightly and familiarly upon them;" the first moments of its adoption being marked with little or none of that anarchy and licentiousness which mostly deform political emancipations. Their institutions had moulded them; a conclusion not more apparent from our colonial and revolutionary history, than apposite for estimating at least the immediate results of revolutions effected under moral circumstances less propitious. The political structure has often, as in our own case, been pulled down by an excusable impatience of the people; but seldom has it been repaired with such solidity, and just adaption to their wants.

We have said that the obscurity of history may have magnified the pretensions of some of its heroes; it is certain that it quite quenches the light of others. The state whose early transactions our author records, furnished its full share of the intelligent minds that contributed their impulse to the general movement of their time; and as the execution of his task has led him to a closer contemplation of their influence on its issue, he laments the comparative obscuration of merited fame, even in this brief lapse of time, in individuals who were the theme and boast of contemporaries. This is the law of our fate. As the series of events is prolonged, the greater part of the actors in them sink out of their place in the perspective, though their lesser elevation might be scarcely observable to their own age. In the twilight which falls on all past transactions, the rays of national recollections fade from summit to summit, and linger at length only on a few of the more "proudly eminent." Our author sketches some of these forgotten worthies in the melancholy spirit of a traveller who finds a stately column in the desert. With the reverence of "Old Mortality," he re-touches the inscription to the illustrious dead, that they may not wholly perish.

The first volume of the present work, the only one yet published, brings down the history of Maryland to the establishment of the state government. Besides a historical view of the transactions preceding this era, it contains, in an introduction, a view of the territorial limits of the colony as defined in the first grant to the proprietary, and of the disputes with neighbouring grantees by which they were successively retrenched. Two other chapters of the introduction are occupied with a sketch of the civil divisions of the state, and an essay on the sources of its laws. Appended to the historical sketch is a view of the distribution of the legislative power, of the organization of the two houses of assembly, their respective and collective powers, and the privileges of their members. This plan involves a critical inquiry into the political laws of the state, and a laborious examination of its records. The diligence with which the writer seems to have executed his task, is a voucher of his accuracy; and the body of information thus collected with painful research, will probably establish his work as one of authentic reference. This original collation of the materials from which history is _distilled_, includes a labour, and deserves a praise, which readers can hardly estimate competently. The writer's style is vigorous, but wants compression; he is occasionally inaccurate, but is often lively and striking; his scriptural phraseology is superabundant. As he understands the period and the men he describes, his views and reflections are just. The narrative would have been enlivened by a little more individuality in the portraits of the actors; but though some of the materials for this were probably at his command, at least as to the more recent ones, we are aware of the reasons which impose on this head, a partial silence on the historian of an age not remote. It is respecting its personages that Christina's saying of history is more emphatically true;--"_Chi lo sa, non scrive; chi lo scrive, no sa._"--"The one who knows it, does not write; the one who writes it, knows it not." It was this Mr. Jefferson meant, when he said the history of the revolution had never been written, and never would be written. On the whole, Mr. M'Mahon's is a valuable contribution to an interesting theme, and we must increase the obligations we are under to him, by borrowing the copious materials he supplies, for a hasty sketch, or rather some selections of the colonial history of Maryland, in which we shall take the liberty to make, without scruple, free use both of his language and thoughts.

The present state of Maryland is embraced within considerably narrower limits than those described in the original grant. By the charter which bears date the 20th of June, 1632, the province assigned to Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, had the following boundaries. On the south, a line drawn from the promontory on the Chesapeake, called Watkins's Point, to the ocean; on the east, the ocean, and the western margin of Delaware Bay and river, as far as the fortieth degree of latitude; on the north, a line drawn in that degree of latitude west, to the meridian of the true fountain of the Potomac; and thence, the western bank of that river to Smith's Point, and so by the shortest line to Watkins's Point. These limits, it is apparent, embrace the whole of the present state of Delaware; they comprehend also that part of Pennsylvania in which Chester lies, as far north as the Schuylkill, and a very considerable portion of Virginia. It may not be uninteresting to trace the controversies which resulted in this abridgment of territory, especially as it appears from Mr. M'Mahon's deduction of that with Virginia, that Maryland has a subsisting claim to a large and fertile portion of the latter state, lying between the south and north branches of the Potomac.

The proprietary's first contest, was with a personage who makes some figure in the early history of his colony, and who, though painted with little flattery by its chroniclers, seems to have possessed some talents, enterprise, and courage. This was the notorious William Clayborne, who, before the grant to Baltimore was carved out of the limits of Virginia, had made some settlements on Kent Island, in the Chesapeake, under the authority of that province. Clayborne defended his claims with pertinacity for several years, and was not brought to submission to the new grantee, till he had harassed the infant colony with commotions, and even prepared to make depredations. He subsequently gratified his resentment by exciting a rebellion, and driving the proprietary's governor to Virginia. That province also for some time persisted to assert its dominion over Maryland, in defiance of the royal grant; and, when that question was at length decided in the proprietary's favour, it was next necessary to fix the actual boundary between the two provinces, a matter not adjusted till June, 1668, when the existing southern line of Maryland was finally determined.

The proprietary's next territorial controversy had a greater duration, and a less fortunate issue, being prolonged nearly a century, and resulting in the dismemberment of a portion of his fairest and most fertile territory. It must be mentioned, that the charter of Maryland extended its northern boundary to the southern limit of what was then called New England. In the intermediate territory between the actual settlements of the two, the Dutch and the Swedes had planted some colonies and trading-houses on the banks of the Delaware Bay and river, in what is now the state of Delaware. The Swedish establishments were reduced by the Dutch in 1655, and appended, together with their own, in the same quarter, to the government of New Netherlands; on the English conquest of which, and the grant of them by Charles II. to his brother, the Duke of York, the settlements on the Delaware became dependencies on the government of New-York, and, though clearly within the limits of Maryland, being south of the latitude of 40 deg., remained so until the grant to Penn, and the foundation of Pennsylvania in 1681. The southern boundary of Penn's grant, was somewhat loosely established to be "a circle of twelve miles drawn round New Castle, to the beginning of the fortieth degree of latitude." Penn was eager to adjust his boundary with Maryland; but when it was found, on an interview between his agent and Baltimore, at Chester, then called Upland, that Chester itself was south of the required latitude, and that the boundaries of Maryland would extend to the Schuylkill, he very earnestly applied himself, to obtain from the Duke of York, a grant of the Delaware settlements mentioned above. In contravention of the claims of Baltimore, a conveyance was made to him in 1682, of the town of New Castle, with the district twelve miles round it, and also of the territory extending thence southward to Cape Henlopen.

Thus fortified, Penn was again eager to adjust the disputed boundary. The negotiations for this purpose, proving fruitless, were referred to the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, to whom Penn submits a case of hardship, more _naif_ than convincing. "I told him, (Baltimore,) that it was not the love of the land, but of the water;--that he abounded in what I wanted,--and that there was no proportion in the concern, because the thing insisted on was ninety-nine times more valuable to me, than to him." It must be recollected, that this reasonable claim involved nothing less than Baltimore's entire exclusion from Delaware Bay, and greatly abridged his territory on the coast of the ocean. Another objection was urged by Penn, which finally governed the award of the commissioners, who, in 1685, decided that Baltimore's grant "included only lands uncultivated, and inhabited by savages;" whereas the territory along the Delaware had been settled by Christians antecedently to his grant,--a decision, by the way, inconsistent with the previous ejectment of Clayborne, and with the determination in Baltimore's favour, of the jurisdiction claimed over his grant by Virginia. They directed also, for the avoidance of future contests, that the peninsula between the two bays, should be divided into two equal parts, by a line drawn from the latitude of Cape Henlopen, to the fortieth degree of latitude,--the western portion to belong to Baltimore, and the eastern to His Majesty, and, by consequence, to Penn. This is the origin of the eastern boundary of Maryland, which was thus cut off from the ocean, on the greater portion of her eastern side.

Her northern boundary still remained to be adjusted; but the embarrassments of both proprietaries with the crown, caused the controversy in this quarter to sleep nearly half a century. The mutual border outrages which meanwhile disturbed the debatable ground, led to the compact of the 10th of May, 1732, between Baltimore and the younger Penns, which provided, in the first place, for the extension of a line northerly, through the middle of the peninsula, so as to form a tangent to a circle drawn round Newcastle, with a radius of twelve miles. The northern boundary of Maryland was also to begin, not at the fortieth degree of latitude, but at a point fifteen miles south thereof; and in case the tangent before described should not extend to that point, it was to be prolonged by a line drawn due north from the point where the tangent met the circle; thus was ascertained the eastern extremity of the northern boundary line, which was thence to be extended due west. New obstacles intervened, however, to the execution of this agreement, which was subsequently carried into chancery, but on which no decision was had until 1750; and in the interval, some frightful excesses were committed by the borderers on both sides. The house of one Cresap, in Maryland, was fired by a body of armed men from Pennsylvania, who attempted to murder him, his family, and several of his neighbours, as they escaped from the flames. In retaliation, a little army of three hundred Marylanders invaded the county of Lancaster, and took summary measures to coerce submission to the government of Maryland. These mutual outrages occasioned, in 1739, an order from the king in council for the establishment of a provisional line; and in 1750, Chancellor Hardwicke pronounced a decree, which ordered the specific execution of the agreement of 1732. But Frederic, Lord Baltimore, the heir of Charles, with whom the agreement had been made, contending that he was protected from its operation by certain anterior conveyances in strict settlement, objected to the execution of the decree, until finally, and pending the chancery proceedings, a new agreement was entered into on the 4th of July, 1760, between himself and the Penns, which adopted that of 1732, and also the decree of 1750. Commissioners were appointed to run the lines accordingly, who in November, 1768, reported their proceedings to the proprietaries, and definitively adjusted the eastern and northern boundaries of Maryland, in the terms of the agreement before described. The northern line, from the names of the surveyors, is commonly known as "Mason and Dixon's line," so often referred to as the demarcation of the slave states from the others.

This controversy was not terminated in the north, when the proprietary found new pretensions to combat in the west. These grew out of the words of his charter, which described "the true fountain of the Potomac" as the common _terminus_ of his western and southern boundaries. A subsequent grant from the crown had conveyed to certain persons all the tract between the heads and courses of the Rappahannock and Potomac, and the Chesapeake Bay. This grant, which comprehended what was commonly known as "The Northern Neck" of Virginia, and which carried only the ownership of the soil, the jurisdiction remaining in Virginia, was finally vested solely in Lord Culpepper, and from him descended to his daughter, who marrying Lord Fairfax, the property in it passed to the Fairfax family. As it called only for lands on the south side of the Potomac, there was nothing on the face of it inconsistent with the call of the charter of Maryland; but the under-grants from Fairfax were soon pushed so far west as to raise the question of the true fountain of the Potomac. Commissioners appointed by Virginia to ascertain, as between that state and Fairfax, the limits of their respective ownership, determined the North Branch to be the fountain of that river; whereas, from information given to the council of Maryland, in 1753, by Colonel Cresap, one of the settlers in the eastern extremity of the state, it appeared, from its having the longest course, and from other circumstances, that the South Branch was to be considered the principal stream, and its source the true source of the Potomac. The British council for plantation affairs had, as early as 1745, on the petition of Fairfax, made a report, adopting the North Branch as such; but the proprietary of Maryland, who viewed his rights as disregarded in this decision, continued to assert his claim up to the first fountain of the Potomac, "be that where it might." Various circumstances prevented his bringing the matter before the king in council; and so the question hung, till the Revolution substituted the _state_ of Virginia for the British crown, as one party in the controversy, and that of Maryland as the other.

In the constitution of the former, adopted in 1776, there is an express recognition of the right of Maryland "to all the territory contained within its charter;" but the actual boundary was not brought into negotiation till 1795. New delays then interposed, and though Virginia named commissioners in the matter in 1801, she restricted their powers to the adjustment merely of the western line, unwilling to allow even a discussion of her claim to the territory between the two branches. The negociation consequently dropped for the time, and Maryland, wearied, it would seem, with various efforts to reclaim the territory south of the North Branch, agreed, at length, by an act passed in 1818, to adopt as the terminus, the most western source of that stream. But a new obstacle, interposed by Virginia, defeated the adjustment under this concession. Her commissioners were instructed to commence the boundary "at a stone, planted by Lord Fairfax on the head waters of the Potomac," being thus restricted to the old adjustment between Fairfax and the crown; those of Maryland were directed to begin at the true or most western source of the North Branch, be that where it might. Fairfax's stone, our author says, is not planted in fact at the extreme western source. The proffer of Maryland, by the act of 1818, to confine herself to the North Branch, being thus rejected by Virginia, she is remitted apparently to her original rights, which comprehend the sovereignty of all the territory between these two streams of the Potomac, and call for the South Branch as her south-western boundary in that quarter. In a letter of Mr. Cooke, then a distinguished lawyer of Maryland, and one of the commissioners named in 1795, to adjust the point, the territory in contest is stated to contain 462,480 acres; and he remarks, that prior occupancy gives, in such a case, no title to one party, and no length of time can bar the claim of the other.

We have thus abridged the author's copious and distinct account of the territorial wars, which resulted in the defeat of the proprietaries of Maryland on two parts of their frontier, and have left a legacy of debate on a third. We must now return to the era of the first grantee and proprietary, and take up the line of the general events of the colonial history.