The scope of my discourse is confined to the illustration of principles either announced, or acted on, in the founding of Maryland and Pennsylvania. I have contended that Sir George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, so framed the charter which was granted by Charles I, that, without express concessions, the general character of its language in regard to religious rights, would secure liberty of conscience to christians.

I: 1632.—Language can scarcely be more perspicuously comprehensive, than in the phrase: "God's Holy Rights and the true Christian Religion." Under such a clause, in the charter, no particular church could set up a claim for its exclusive christianity. There was no mention, in the instrument, of "the Established Church," or, of "the Church of England." The Catholic could not deny the Episcopalian's christianity; the Episcopalian could not deny the Catholic's, nor could the Puritan question the christianity of either. All professed faith in Christ. Each of the three great sects might contend that its form of worship, or interpretation of the Bible, was the correct one; but all came lawfully under the great generic class of christians. And, while the political government of the colonists was to be conducted by a Catholic magistrate, in a province belonging to a Catholic Lord,—the interpretation of the law of religious rights was to be made, not by the laws of England, but exclusively under the paramount law of the provincial charter. By that document the broad "rights of God," and "the true christian religion," could not "suffer by change, prejudice or diminution."

This view is strengthened by a clause in the 4th section of the charter, by which the king granted Lord B. "the patronages and advowsons of ALL churches which, with the increasing worship and Religion of Christ, (crescenti Christi cultu et religione,") should be built within his province. The right of advowson, being thus bestowed on the Lord Proprietary, for all Christian Churches; his majesty, then, goes on, empowering Lord B. to erect and found churches, chapels, &c. and to cause them to be dedicated "according to the Ecclesiastical laws of our kingdom of England." The general right of advowson, and the particular privilege, conceded to a Catholic, of causing the consecration of Episcopal churches, are separate powers and ought not to be confounded by a hasty reader of the charter.

I think there can hardly be a fair doubt that the interpretation I give to the 22nd clause is the one assigned to it by the immigrants from the earliest colonial movement in 1633. We may assert, therefore, the fact, that religious freedom was offered and secured for christians, in the province of Maryland, from the very beginning.

II: 1633.—We must recollect that under the English statutes, adherents of the national church required no protection; they were free in the exercise of their faith; but Catholics and Puritans were not so happily situated, and, accordingly, they sought, in the new world an exemption from the disabilities and persecutions they experienced at home. Can it be credited, that, under such vexations, the Catholic Lord Baltimore would have drawn a charter, or, his Catholic son and successor, sent forth a colony, under a Catholic Governor, when the fundamental law, under which alone he exercised his power, did not secure liberty to him and his co-religionists? It is simply necessary to ask the question, in order to demonstrate the absurdity of such a supposition.

III: 1634.—If we show, then, that Catholic conscience was untrammeled in Maryland, I think we may fairly assume the general ground as satisfactorily proved. What was, briefly, the first movement of this sect, under the Lord Proprietary's auspices? When Lord CÆcilius was planning his colonial expedition in 1633, one of his earliest cares was to apply to the Order of Jesus for clergymen to attend the Catholic planters and settlers, and to convert the natives. Accordingly, under the sanction of the Superior, Father White joined the emigrants, although, under previous persecutions in England, he had been sent into perpetual banishment, to return from which subjected the culprit to the penalty of death! These facts are set forth, at page 14 of the 2nd volume of Challoner's Memoirs. Historia Anglo-Bavara, S. J. Rev. Dr. Oliver's collections illustrative of the Scotch, English and Irish Jesuits, page 222, and in the essay on the Early Maryland Missions, by Mr. B. U. Campbell. Fathers Andrew White and John Altham, and two lay brothers, named John Knowles and Thomas Gervase, accompanied the first expedition, and were active agents in consecrating the possession of the soil, and converting Protestant immigrants as well as heathen natives. The colony, therefore, cannot properly be called a Protestant one, when its only spiritual guides were Catholics; and consequently if it was more of a Catholic than a Protestant emigration, it must, by legal necessity, have been free from the moment it quitted the shores of England. If the Catholic was free, all were free.

IV: 1637.—Our next authority, in regard to the early interpretation of religious rights in Maryland, is found in a passage in Chalmers's Political Annals, page 235. "In the oath," says he, "taken by the Governor and Council, between the years 1637 and 1657, there was the following clause, which ought to be administered to the rulers of every country. 'I will not, by myself or any other, directly or indirectly, trouble, molest or discountenance, any person professing to believe in Jesus Christ, for or on account of his religion.'" This shows, that "belief in Jesus Christ," under the constitutional guaranty of the charter, anterior to the enactment of any colonial law by the Maryland Assembly, secured sects from persecution. The language of the oath, which was doubtless promulgated by the Lord Proprietor, is as broad as the language of the charter. The statement of Chalmers has been held to be indefinite as to whether the oath was taken from 1637 to 1657, or, whether it was taken in some years between those dates; but, if the historian did not mean to say that it had been administered first in 1637, and continued afterwards, why would he not have specified any other, as the beginning year, as well as 1637? The objection seems rather hypercritical than plausible. Chalmers was too accurate a writer to use dates so loosely, and inasmuch as he was an old Maryland lawyer and custodian of the Maryland provincial papers, he had the best opportunity to designate the precise date. A Governor's oath was a regular and necessary official act. No one can doubt that an oath was required of that personage in Maryland; and the oath in question, is precisely such an one as Protestant settlers, in that age, might naturally expect from a Catholic Magistrate, who, (even from motives of the humblest policy,) would be willing to grant to others what he was anxious to secure for himself. If ever there was a proper time for perfect toleration, it was at this moment, when a Catholic became, for the first time in history, a sovereign prince of the first province of the British Empire!

Mr. Chalmers could not have confounded the oath whose language he cites, with other oaths which the reader will find cited in the 2nd volume of Bozman's History of Maryland, at pages 141, 608, 642. The oath prepared for Stone in 1648, appears to have been an augmented edition of the one quoted by Chalmers, and is so different in parts of its phraseology as well as items, that it cannot have been mistaken by the learned annalist. Bancroft, McMahon, Tyson, C. F. Mayer and B. U. Campbell, adopt his statement as true.

V: 1638.—In regard to the early practice of Maryland tribunals, on the subject of tolerance, we have a striking case in 1638. In that year a certain Catholic, named William Lewis, was arraigned before the Governor, Secretary, &c., for abusive language to Protestants. Lewis confessed, that, coming into a room where Francis Gray and Robert Sedgrave, servants of Captain Cornwaleys, were reading, he heard them recite passages so that he should hear them, that were reproachful to his religion, "viz: that the Pope was anti-Christ, and the Jesuits anti-Christian Ministers, &c: he told them it was a falsehood and came from the devil, and that he that writ it was an instrument of the devil, and so he would approve it!" The court found the culprit "guilty of a very offensive speech in calling the Protestant ministers, the ministers of the devil," and of "exceeding his rights, in forbidding them to read a lawful book." In consequence of this "offensive language," and other "unreasonable disputations, in point of religion, tending to the disturbance of the peace and quiet of the Colony, committed by him, against a public proclamation set forth to prohibit all such disputes," Lewis was fined and remanded into custody until he gave security for future good behaviour.[19]

Thus, four years, only, after the settlement, the liberty of conscience was vindicated by a recorded judicial sentence, and "unreasonable disputations in point of religion," rebuked by a Catholic Governor in the person of a Catholic offender. There could scarcely be a clearer evidence of impartial and tolerant sincerity. The decision, moreover, is confirmatory of the fact that the Governor had taken such an oath as Chalmers cites, in the previous year, 1637; especially as there had already been a "proclamation to prohibit disputes!"

VI: 1638.—At the first efficient General Assembly of the Colony, which was held in this year, only two Acts were passed, though thirty-six other bills were twice read and engrossed, but not finally ripened into laws. The second of the two acts that were passed, contains a section asserting that "Holy Church, within this province, shall have all her rights and liberties;" thus securing the rights of Catholics;—while the first of the thirty-six incomplete acts was one, which we know only by title, as "An act for Church liberties." It was to continue in force until the end of the next General Assembly, and then, with the Lord Proprietary's consent, to be perpetual. Although we have no means of knowing the extent of the proposed "Church liberties," we may suppose that the proposed enactment was general, in regard to all Christian sects besides the Catholics.

VII: 1640.—At the session of 1640, an act for "Church liberties" was passed on the 23d October, and confirmed, as a perpetual law, in the first year of the accession of Charles Calvert, 3d Lord Baltimore, in 1676. This Act also declares that "Holy Church, within this province, shall have and enjoy all her rights, liberties and franchises, wholly and without blemish." Thus, in 1640, legislation had already settled opinion as to the rights of Catholics and Protestants. Instead of the early Catholics seeking to contract the freedom of other sects, their chief aim and interest seem to have been to secure their own. I consider the Acts I have cited rather as mere declaratory statutes, than as necessary original laws.

VIII: 1649.—In this year, an assembly, believed to have been composed of a Protestant majority, passed the act which has been lauded as the source of religious toleration. It is "An Act concerning Religion," and, in my judgment, is less tolerant than the Charter or the Governor's Oath, inasmuch as it included Unitarians in the same category with blasphemers and those who denied our Saviour Jesus Christ, punishing all alike, with confiscation of goods and the pains of death. This was the epoch of the trial and execution of Charles I, and of the establishment of the Commonwealth.

IX: 1654.—The celebrated act I have just noticed, however, was passed fifteen years after the original settlement, which exceeds the period comprised in the actual founding of Maryland. Besides this, the political and religious aspect of England was changing, and the influence of the home-quarrel was beginning to be felt across the Atlantic. In 1654, during the mastery of Cromwell, religious freedom was destroyed: Puritanism became paramount; Papacy and Prelacy were denounced by law; and freedom was assured only to Puritans, and such as professed "faith in God by Jesus Christ, though differing in judgment, from the doctrine or worship publicly held forth."

X.—It has been alleged that the clause in the Maryland Charter securing "God's holy rights and the true Christian religion," is only an incorporation into Lord Baltimore's instrument, of certain clauses contained in the early Charters of Virginia. If the reader will refer to the 1st volume of Henning's Statutes at large, he will find all those documents in English, but unaccompanied by the original Latin. Thus, we have no means of judging the accuracy of the translation, or identity of language in the Maryland and Virginia instruments. Adopting, however, for the present, the translation given by Henning, we find no coincidence of phraseology either to justify the suspicion of a mere copy, or to subject our charter to the limitations contained in the Virginia patents. Disabilities are to be construed strictly in law, and our charter is not to be interpreted by another, but stands on its own, independent, context and manifest signification.

The first Virginia Charter or Patent was issued to Sir Thomas Gates and others, April 10th, 1606, in the 4th year of James's English reign. Among the "Articles, Orders, Instructions," &c., set down for Virginia, 20th Nov., 1606,—(though nothing is said about restrictions in religion, while the preamble commends the noble work of propagating the Christian religion among infidel savages,)—is the following clause:—"And we doe specallie ordaine, charge, and require the presidents and councills," (of the two Colonies of Virginia,) "respectively, within their severall limits and precincts, that they with all diligence, care and respect, doe provide, that the true word and service of God and Christian faith, be preached, planted and used, not only within every of the said severall colonies and plantations, but alsoe, as much as they may, among the salvage people which doe or shall adjoine unto them, or border upon them, according to the DOCTRINE, RIGHTS, and RELIGION, now professed and established within our realme of England."—1st Henning, 69.

The second charter or patent, dated 23d May, 1609, 7th "James I," was issued to the Treasurer and Company for Virginia, and in its XXIX section, declares: "And lastly, because the principal effect, which we can desire or expect of this action, is the conversion and reduction of the people in those parts unto the Worship of God and Christian religion, in which respect we should be loath, that any person be permitted to pass, that we suspected to affect the superstitions of the Church of Rome; we do hereby declare that it is our will and pleasure that none be permitted to pass in any voyage, from time to time, to be made unto the said country, but such as shall first have taken the Oath of Supremacy; &c., &c.—1st Henning, 97.

The third Charter of James the I, in the 9th year of his English reign, was issued 12th March, 1611-12 to the Treasurer and Company for Virginia. The XIIth section empowers certain officers to administer the Oath of Supremacy and Allegiance, to "all and every persons which shall at any time or times hereafter go or pass to said Colony of Virginia."

The Instructions to Governor Wyatt, of 24th of July, 1621, direct him:—"to keep up the Religion of the Church of England, as near as may be," &c., &c.—1st Henning.

All these extracts, it will be observed, contain limitations and restrictions, either explicitly in favor of the English Church, or against the, so called, "superstitions of the Church of Rome." The Maryland Charter shows no such narrow clauses, and consequently, is justly free from any connexion, in interpretation, with the Virginia instruments. Besides this, we do not know that the language of the original Latin of the Virginia Charters, is the same as ours, and, therefore, it would be "reasoning in a circle," or, "begging the question," if we translated the Maryland Charter into the exact language of the Virginian. The phraseology—"God's holy rights and the true Christian religion,"—unlimited in the Maryland Patent,—was a distinct assertion of broad equality to all professing to believe in Jesus Christ. It was not subject to any sectarian restriction, and formed the basis of religious liberty in Maryland, until it was undermined during the Puritan intolerance in 1654.