  It is a venerable and beautiful rite which commands the Chinese not only to establish in their dwellings a Hall of Ancestors, devoted to memorials of kindred who are dead, but which obliges them, on a certain day of every year, to quit the ordinary toils of life and hasten to the tombs of their Forefathers, where, with mingled services of festivity and worship, they pass the hours in honoring the manes of those whom they have either loved or been taught to respect for their virtues. This is a wholesome and ennobling exercise of the memory. It teaches neither a blind allegiance to the past, nor a superstitious reverence for individuals; but it is a recognition of the great truth that no man is a mere isolated being in the great chain of humanity, and that, while we are not selfishly independent of the past, so also, by equal affinity, we are connected with and control the fate of those who are to succeed us in the drama of the world. The Time that merges in Eternity, sinks like a drop in the ocean, but the deeds of that Time, like the drop in the deep, are again exhaled and fitted for new uses; so that although the Time be dead, the acts thereof are immortal—for the achieved action never perishes. That which was wrought, in innocence or wrong, is eternal in its results or influences. This reflection inculcates a profound lesson of our responsibility. It teaches us the value of assembling to look over the account of the past; to separate the good from the false; to winnow the historical harvest we may have reaped; to survey the heavens, and find our place on the ocean after the storm. And if such conduct is correct in the general concerns of private life, how much more is it proper when we remember the duty we owe to the founders of great principles,—to the founders of great states,—of great states that have grown into great nations! In this aspect the principle rises to a dignity worthy our profoundest respect. History is the garnered treasure of the past, and it is from the glory or shame of that past, that nations, like individuals, take heart for the coming strife, or sink under irresistible discouragement. Is it not well, then, that we, the people of this large country, divided as we are in separate governments, should assemble, at proper seasons, to celebrate the foundations of our time-honored commonwealths; and, while each state casts its annual tribute on the altar of our country, each should brighten its distinctive symbols, before it merges their glory in that great constellation of American nations, which, in the political night that shrouds the world, is the only guiding sign for unfortunate but hopeful humanity! When the Reformation in England destroyed the supremacy of the Roman Church, and the Court set the example of a new faith, it may readily be supposed, that the people were sorely taxed when called on to select between the dogmas they had always cherished, and those they were authoritatively summoned to adopt. The age was not one either of free discussion or of printing and publication. Oral arguments, and not printed appeals, were the only means of reaching the uncultivated minds of the masses, and even of a large portion of the illiterate gentry and aristocracy. If we reflect, with what reverence creeds are, even now, traditionally inherited in families, we must be patient with their entailed tenure in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The soul of When the world contained only one great Christian Church, the idea of Union betwixt that Church and the State, was not fraught with the disgusts or dangers that now characterize it. There were then no sects. All were agreed on one faith, one ritual, one interpretation of God's law, and one infallible expositor; nor was it, perhaps, improper that this law—thus ecclesiastically expounded and administered in perfect national unity of faith—should be the rule of civil and political, as well as of religious life. Indeed, it is difficult, even now, to separate the ideas; for, inasmuch as God's law is a law of life, and not a mere law of death—inasmuch as it controls all our relations among ourselves and thus defines our practical duty to the Almighty—it is difficult, I repeat, to define wherein the law of man should properly differ from the law of God. Mere morality—mere political morality,—is nothing but a bastard policy, or another name for expediency, unless it conforms in all its motives, means and results, to religion. In truth, morality, social as well as political, to be vital and not hypocritical, must be religion put into practical exercise. This is the simple, just, and wise reconciliation of religion and good government, which I humbly believe to be, ever and only, founded upon Christianity. But it was a sad mistake in other days, to confound a Primitive Christianity and the dogmas of a Historical Church. Unfortunately for the ancient union of Church and State, this great identification of the true christian action of the civil and ecclesiastical bodies, was but a mere fiction, so far as religion was concerned, and a fact, only so far as power was interested. Christianity ever has remained, and ever will remain, the same radiant unit; but a church, with irresponsible power—a church which, at best, is but an aggregation of human beings, with all the passions, as well as all the virtues of our race—soon, But the idea of honest union between church and state was naturally destroyed, in the minds of all right thinking persons, from the moment that there was a secession from the Church of Rome. The very idea, I assert, was destroyed; for the Catholic Princes and the sects into which Protestants divided themselves, began an internecine war, which, in effect, not only forever obliterated supremacy from the vocabulary of ecclesiastical power, but almost destroyed, by disgracing, the religion in whose name it perpetrated its remorseless cruelties. The social as well as religious anarchy consequent upon the Reformation, was soon discerned by the statesmen of England, who took council with prudent ecclesiastics, and, under the authority of law, erected the Church of England. In this new establishment they endeavored to substitute for Romanism, a new ecclesiastical system, which, by its concessions to the ancient faith, its adoption of novel liberalities, its compromises and its purity, might contain within itself, sufficient elements upon which the adherents of Rome might gracefully retreat, and to which the Reformers might either advance or become reconciled. This scheme of legislative compromise for a national religion, was doubtless, not merely designed as an amiable neutral ground for the spiritual wants of the people, but as the nucleus of an institution which would gradually, if not at once, transfer to the Royalty of England, that spiritual authority which its sovereigns had found it irksome to bear or to control when wielded by the Pope. The architects of this modern faith were not wrong in their estimate of the English people, for, perhaps, the great body of the nation willingly adopted the new scheme. Yet there were bitter opponents both among the Catholics and Calvinists, whose extreme violence admitted no compromise, either with each other, or with the Church of England. For them there was no resource but in dumbness or rebellion; and, "About the middle of the reign of Queen Elizabeth there arose among the Calvinists, a small body, who bore nearly the same relation to them, which they bore to the great body of the Reformed; these were ultra Puritans, as they were ultra Protestants. These persons deemed it their religious duty to separate themselves entirely from the church, and, in fact, to war against it. The principle upon which they founded themselves, was, that there should be no national church at all, but that the whole nation should be cast in a multitude of small churches or congregations, each self-governed, and having only, as they believed, the officers of which we read in the New Testament,—pastor, teacher, elder and deacon." Such was the ecclesiastical and political aspect of England, and of a part of Scotland, about the period when the First James ascended the British throne. As there is nothing that so deeply concerns our welfare as the rights and duties of our soul, it is not at all singular to find how quickly men became zealous in the assertion of their novel privileges, as soon as they discovered that there were two ways of interpreting God's law, or, at least, two modes of worshiping him,—one wrapped in gorgeous ceremonial, the other stripped in naked simplicity,—and that the right to this interpretation or worship was not only secured by law, Religious Conscience, therefore, is the firmest founder of the right of forming and asserting Free Opinions; and when it has securely established the great fact of Religious Freedom, it at once, as an immediate consequence, realizes Political Freedom, which is nothing but the individual right independently to control our personal destinies, as well as to shape our conscientious spiritual destinies. The right of free judgment asserts that Christianity put into vital exercise, in our social or national relations, is, in fact, the essence of pure democracy. It is liberty of action that produces responsibility—it is equal responsibility that makes us one before the law. To teach man the humility and equality of his race, as rights; and to illustrate the glorious lesson that from the cottage and cabin have sprung the intellects that filled the world with light, it pleased the Almighty to make a stable the birth-place of our Redeemer, and a manger his lowly cradle! When the valiant men of olden times had checked the corporate system of theology in England and Germany, and established their right, at least, to think for themselves; and when the Reformation had subsequently received a countercheck in The Reformation was the work of the early part of the sixteenth century. The close of the fifteenth had been signalized by the discovery of America, and by the opening of a maritime communication with India. The East, though now accessible by water, was still a far distant land. The efforts of all navigators, even when blundering on our continent, were, in truth, not to find a new world, but to reach one already well known for the richness of its products, and the civilization of its people. But distant as it was, it presented no field for colonization. It was the temporary object of mercantile and maritime enterprise, and although colonial lodgments were impracticable on its far off shores, it nevertheless permitted the establishment of factories which served, in the unfrequent commerce of those ages, as almost regal intermediaries between Europe and Asia. But the Western World was both nearer, and, for a while, more alluring to avarice and enterprise. It was not a civilized, populous, and warlike country like the East, but it possessed the double temptation of wealth and weakness. The fertility of the West Indies, the reports of prodigious riches, the conquests of Cortez and Pizzaro, the emasculated semi-civilization of the two Empires, which, with a few cities and royal courts, combined the anomaly of an almost barbarous though tamely tributary people—had all been announced throughout Europe. Yet, the bold, brave and successful Spaniard of those days contrived for a long while to reap the sole benefit of the discovery. What he effected was done by conquest. Colonization, which is a gradual settlement, either under enterprise or persecution, was to follow. The conquest and settlement of the Southern part of this continent are so well known, that it is needless for me to dwell on them; but it is not a little singular that the very first effort at what may strictly be called colonization, within the present The Bull of the Pope, in its division of the world, had assigned America to Spain. Florida, which had been discovered by Ponce de Leon, and the present coast of our Republic on the Gulf of Mexico, were not, in the sixteenth century, disputed with Spain by any other nation. Spain claimed, however, under the name of Florida, the whole sea-coast as far as Newfoundland and even to the remotest north, so that, so far as asserted ownership was involved, the whole of our coast was Spanish domain. The poor, persecuted, weather-beaten Huguenots of France, had been active in plans of Colonization for escape from the mingled imbecility and terrorism of Charles IX. They saw that it was not well to stay in the land of their birth. The Admiral de Coligny, one of the ablest leaders of the French Protestants, was zealous in his efforts to found a Gallic empire of his fellow subjects and sufferers on this continent. He desired, at least, a refuge for them; and in 1562, entrusted to John Ribault, of Dieppe, the command of an expedition to the American shores. The first soil of this virgin hemisphere that was baptised by the tread of refugees flying from the terrors of the future hero of St. Bartholomew—of men who were seeking freedom from persecution for the sake of their religion—was that of South Carolina. Ribault first visited St. John's River, in Florida, and then slowly coasted the low shores northward, until he struck the indenture where Hilton-Head Island, and Hunting and St. Helen's Islands are divided by the entrance into the ocean of Broad River at Port Royal. It was a beautiful region, where venerable oaks shadowed a luxuriant soil, while the mild air, delicious with the fragrance of forest-flowers, forever diffused a balmy temperature, free alike from the fire of the tropics and the frost of the north. Here, in this pleasant region, he built Fort Carolina, and landed his humble colony of twenty persons who were to keep possession of the chosen land. But Frenchmen are not precisely at home in the wilderness. They require the aggregation of large villages or cities. The Frenchman is a social being, and regret for the loss of civil comforts soon spoils his vivacious temper, and fills him with discontent. Accordingly, dissensions broke forth in the colony soon after the departure of Ribault for France; and, most of the dissatisfied colonists, finding their way back to Europe as best they could, the settlement was broken up forever. Yet, Coligny was not to be thwarted. In 1564, he again resolved to colonize Florida, and entrusted LaudonniÈre—a seaman rather than a soldier, who had already visited the American coasts,—with three ships which had been conceded by the king. An abundance of colonists, not disheartened by the failure of their predecessors, soon offered for the voyage, and, after a passage of sixty days, the eager adventurers hailed the American coast. They did not go to the old site, marked as it was by disaster, but nestled on the embowered banks of the beautiful St. John's, or, as it was then known—"The River of May." But the French of that era, when in pursuit of qualified self-government or of any principle, either civil or religious, were not unlike their countrymen of the present time. They found it difficult to make enthusiasm subordinate to the mechanism of progress, and to restrain the elastic vapor which properly directed gives energy to humanity, but which heedlessly handled destroys what it should impel or guide. Religious enthusiasm is not miraculously fed by ravens in the wilderness. Coligny's emigrants were improvident or careless settlers. Their supplies wasted. They were not only gratified by the sudden relief from royal oppression, but the removal of a weight, gave room for the display of that secret avarice, which, more or less, possesses the hearts of all men. They had heard of the Spaniard's success, and were seized with a passion for sudden wealth. They became discontented with the toil of patient labor and slow accretion. Mutiny ripened into rebellion. A party compelled LaudonniÈre to suffer it to embark for Mexico; but its two vessels were soon employed in The main body of the colonists who had either remained true to their duty or were kept in subjection, had, meanwhile, become greatly disheartened by these occurrences and by the failing supplies of their settlement, when they were temporarily relieved by the arrival of the celebrated English adventurer—Sir John Hawkins. Ribault soon after came out from France to take command, and brought with him new emigrants, seeds, animals, agricultural implements, and fresh supplies of every kind. These occurrences, it will be recollected, took place in Florida, within the ancient claim of Spain. It is true that the country was a wilderness; but Spain still asserted her dominion, though no beneficial use had been made of the neglected forest and tangled swamp. At this epoch, a certain Pedro Melendez de Aviles—a coarse, bold, bloody man, who signalized himself in the wars in Holland against the Protestants, and was renowned in Spanish America for deeds which, even in the loose law of that realm, had brought him to justice, was then hanging about the Court of Philip II. in search of plunder or employment. He perceived a tempting "mission" of combined destruction and colonization in the French Protestant settlement in Florida; and, accordingly, a compact was speedily made between himself and his sovereign, by which he was empowered, in consideration of certain concessions and rights, to invade Florida with at least five hundred men, and to establish the Spanish authority and Catholic religion. An expedition, numbering under its banner more than twenty-five hundred persons, was soon prepared. After touching, with part of these forces, on the Florida coast, in the neighborhood of the present river Matanzas, the adventurer sailed in quest of the luckless Huguenots, whose vessels were soon descried escaping seaward from a combat for which But Melendez, whose ships suffered slightly from this tempest, had no sooner placed his colonists in security, at St. Augustine, than he set forth with a resolute band across the marshy levels which intervened between his post and the St. John's. With savage fury the reckless Spaniard fell on the Huguenots. The carnage was dreadful. It seems to have been rather slaughter than warfare. The Huguenots, unprepared for battle, little dreamed that the wars of the old world would be transferred to the new, and vainly imagined that human passion could find victims enough for its malignity without crossing the dangerous seas. Full two hundred fell. Many fled to the forest. A few surrendered, and were slain. Some escaped in two French vessels that fortunately still lingered in the harbor. The wretches who had been providentially saved from the wreck, were next followed and found by this Castilian monster. "Let them surrender their flags and arms," said he, "and thus placing themselves at my discretion, I may do with them what God in his mercy desires!" Yet, as soon as they yielded, they were bound and marched through the forest to St. Augustine, and, as they approached the fort which had been hastily raised on the level shores, the sudden blast of a trumpet was the signal for the musketeers to pour into the crowd a volley that laid them dead on the spot. It was asserted that these victims of reliance on Spanish mercy, were massacred, "not as Frenchmen, but as Lutherans;"—and thus, about nine hundred Protestant human beings, were the first offering on the soil of our present Union to the devilish fanaticism of the age. But the bloody deed was not to go unrevenged. A bold Gascon, Dominic de Gourgues, in 1567, equipped three ships The revenge was merciless; and thus terminated the first chapter in the history of religious liberty in America. BLOOD stained the earliest meeting between Catholic and Protestant on the present soil of our Union! The power of Spain, the unattractiveness of our coast, the indifferent climate, and the failure to find wealthy native nations to plunder, kept the northern part of our continent in the back ground for the greater part of a century after the voyages of Columbus and Cabot. There were discouragements at that time for mercantile or maritime enterprise, which make us marvel the more at the energy of the men who with such slender vessels and knowledge of navigation, tempted the dangers of unknown seas. Emigration from land to land, from neighboring country to neighboring country, was, at that epoch, a formidable enterprise; what then must we think of the hardihood, or compulsion, which could either tempt or drive men, not only over conterminous boundaries, but across distant seas? Feudal loyalty and the strong tie of family, bound them not only to their local homes, but to their native land. The lusty sons of labor were required to till the soil, while their stalwart brethren, clad in steel, were wandering on murderous errands, over half of Europe, fighting for Protestantism or Catholicity. Adventure, then, in the shape of colonization, must hardly be thought of, from the inland states of the old world; and, even from the maritime nations, with the exception of Spain and Portugal, we find nothing worthy of record, save the fisheries on the Banks, the small settlements of the French in Acadia and along the St. Lawrence, and the holy efforts of Catholic Missionaries among the Northern Indians. If we Soon after the return of De Gourgues from his revengeful exploit, the report of the daring deed and its provocation, was spread over Europe, and excited the people's attention to America more eagerly than ever. Among those who were attracted to the subject, was a British gentleman, whose character and misfortunes have always engaged my sincere admiration. Sir Walter Raleigh was the natural offspring of the remarkable age in which he lived. We owe him our profoundest respect, for it was Sir Walter who gave the first decided impulse to our race's beneficial enjoyment of this continent. It was his fortune to live at a time of great and various action. The world was convulsed with the throes of a new civilization, and the energy it exhibited was consequent upon its long repose. It was an age of transition. It was an age of coat and corselet—of steel and satin—of rudeness and refinement,—in which the antique soldier was melting into the modern citizen. It was the twilight of feudalism. Baronial strongholds were yielding to municipal independence. Learning began to teach its marvels to the masses; warfare still called chivalrous men to the field; a spirited queen, surrounded by gallant cavaliers, sat on a dazzling throne; adventurous commerce armed splendid navies and nursed a brood of hardy sailors; while the mysterious New World invited enterprise to invade its romantic and golden depths. It was peculiarly an age of thought and action; and is characterized by a vitality which is apparent to all who recollect its heroes, statesmen, philosophers and poets. Sir Walter Raleigh was destined, by his deeds and his doom, to bring this northern continent, which we are now enjoying, into prominent notice. He was the embodiment of the boyhood of our new world. In early life he had been a soldier, but the drift of his genius led him into statesmanship. He was a well known favorite of the Virgin Queen. A spirit of adventure bore him across the Atlantic, where, if the occasion had offered, he would have rivalled Do we not detect in this first adventurous and practical patron of North America, many of the seemingly discordant qualities which mingle so commonly in the versatile life of our own people? If the calendar of courts had its saints, like the calendar of the church, well might Sir Walter have been canonized as protector of the broad realm for which the brutal James made him a martyr to the jealousy and fear of Spain. Queen Elizabeth was the first British Sovereign who built up that maritime power of England which has converted her magnificent Island—dot as it is, in the waste of the sea—into the wharf of the world. She was no friend of the Spaniards, and she had men in her service who admired Spanish galeons. Wealth, realized in coin, and gold or silver, in bulk, were tempting merchandize in frail vessels, which sailors, half pirate, half privateer, might easily deliver of their burden. It was easier to rob than to mine; and, while Spain performed the labor in the bowels of the earth, England took the profit as a prize on the sea! Such were some of the elements of maritime success, which weakened Spain by draining her colonial wealth, while it enriched her rival and injured the Catholic sovereign. Yet, in the ranks of these adventurers, there were men of honest purpose; and, among the first whose designs of colonization on this continent were unquestionably conceived in a spirit of discovery and speculation, was the half brother of Sir Walter Raleigh—Sir Humphrey Gilbert. But Sir Humphrey, while pursuing his northern adventures, was unluckily lost at sea, and Sir Walter took up the thread where his relative dropped it. I regret that I have not time to pursue this subject, and can only say that his enterprises were, doubtless, You will remember the striking difference between colonization from England, and the colonization from other nations of ancient and modern times. The short, imperfect navigation of the Greeks, along the shores and among the islands of their inland sea, made colonization rather a diffusive overflow, than an adventurous transplanting of their people. They were urged to this oozing emigration either by personal want, by the command of law, or by the oracles of their gods, who doubtless spoke under the authority of law. Where the national religion was a unit in faith, there was no persecution to drive men off, nor had the spirit of adventure seized those primitive classics with the zeal of "annexation" that animated after ages. The Roman colonies were massive, military progresses of population, seeking to spread national power by conquest and permanent encampment. Portugal and Spain, mingled avarice and dominion in their conquests or occupation of new lands. The French Protestants were, to a great extent, prevented by the bigotry of their home government, as well as by foreign jealousy, from obtaining a sanctuary in America. France drove the refugees chiefly into other European countries, where they established their manufacturing industry; and thus, fanaticism kept out of America laborious multitudes who would have pressed hard on the British settlements. In the islands, a small trade and the investment of money, rather than the desire to acquire fortune by personal industry, were the motives of the early and regular emigration of Frenchmen. The Dutch, devoted to trade, generally located themselves where they "have just room enough to manifest the miracles of frugality and diligence." Thus, wherever we trace mankind abandoning its home, in ancient or modern days, we find a selfish motive, a superstitious command, a love of wealth, a lust of power, or Virginia had been a charter government, but, in 1624, it was merged in the Royal Government. The crown reassumed the dominion it had granted to others. Virginia, in the first two decades of the seventeenth century, although exhibiting some prosperous phases, was nothing more than a delicate off-shoot from the British stock, somewhat vigorous for its change to virgin soil, but likely to bear the same fruit as its parent tree. Virginia was a limb timidly transplanted,—not a branch torn off, and flung to wither or to fertilize new realms by its decay. This continent, with all that a century and a half of maritime coasting had done for it, was but thinly sprinkled with settlements, which bore the same proportion to the vast continental wilderness that single ships or small squadrons bear to the illimitable sea. But the spirit of adventure, the desire for refuge, the dream of liberty, were soon to plant the seeds of a new civilization in the Western World. Henry VIII, Founder of the English Church, as he had, whilom, been, Defender of the Roman Faith, was no friend of toleration; but the rigor of his system was somewhat relaxed during the reign of the sixth Edward. Mary, daughter of Henry, and sister of Edward, re-constructed the great ancestral church, and the world is hardly divided in opinion as to the character of her reign. Elizabeth re-established the church that had been founded by her father; and her successor James I of England and VI of Scotland,—the Protestant son of a Catholic mother,—while he openly adhered to the church of his realm, could not avoid But, amid all these changes, there was one class upon which the wrath of the Church of England and of the Church of Rome, met in accordant severity;—this was the Puritan and ultra Puritan sect,—to which I have alluded at the commencement of this discourse,—whose lot was even more disastrous under the Protestant Elizabeth, than under the Catholic Mary. The remorseless courts of her commissioners, who inquisitorially tried these religionists by interrogation on oath, imprisoned them, if they remained lawfully silent and condemned them if they honestly confessed! A congregation of these sectaries had existed for some time on the boundaries of Lincoln, Nottingham and York, under the guidance of Richard Clifton and John Robinson, the latter of whom was a modest, polished, and learned man. This christian fold was organized about 1602; but worried by ceaseless persecution, it fled to Holland, where its members, fearing they would be absorbed in the country that had entertained them so hospitably, resolved in 1620 to remove to that portion of the great American wilderness, known as North Virginia. Such, in the chronology of our Continent, was the first decisive emigration of our parent people to the New World, for the sake of opinion. It is neither my purpose, nor is it necessary, to sketch the subsequent history of this New England emigration, or of the followers, who swelled it into colonial significance. Its great characteristic, seems to me, to have been, an unalterable will to worship God according to its own sectarian ideas, and to afford an equal right and protection to all who thought as it did, or were willing to conform to its despotic and anchoritic austerity. It is not very clear, what were its notions of abstract political liberty; yet there can be very little doubt what its practical opinions of equality must have been, when we remember the common dangers, duties, and interests of such a band of emigrants on the dreary, ice-bound, savage haunted, coasts of Massachusetts. "When Adam delved, and Eve span, Pray who was then the gentleman?" may well be asked of a community which for so long a time, had been the guest of foreigners, and now saw the first great human and divine law of liberty and equality, taught by the compulsion of labor and mutual protection, on a strip of land between the sea and the forest. The colonists were literally reduced to first principles; they were stripped of the comforts, pomps, ambitions, distinctions, of the Old World, and they embraced the common destiny of a hopeful future in the New. These occurrences took place during the reign of the prince who united the Scottish and English thrones. At the Court of James, and in his intimate service, during nearly the whole period of his sovereignty, was a distinguished personage, who, though his name does not figure grandly on the page of history, was deeply interested in the destiny of our continent. Sir George Calvert, was descended from a noble Flemish family, which emigrated and settled in the North of England, where, in 1582, the Founder of Maryland was born. After taking his Bachelor's degree at Oxford and travelling on the Continent, he became, at the age of twenty-five, private Secretary to Sir Robert Cecil, the Lord Treasurer—afterwards the celebrated Earl of Salisbury. In 1609, he appears as one of the patentees named in the new Charter then granted to the Virginia Company. After the death of his ministerial patron, he was honored with knighthood and made clerk of the crown to the Privy Council. This brought him closely to the side of his sovereign. In 1619, he was appointed one of the Secretaries of State, and was then, also, elected to Parliament; first for his native Yorkshire, and subsequently for Oxford. He continued in office, under James, as Secretary of State, until near that monarch's death, and resigned in 1624. Born in the Church of England, Sir George, had, in the course of his public career, become a Roman Catholic. With the period or the means of his conversion from the court-faith to an unpopular creed, we have now no concern. Fuller, in his "Worthies of England," asserts that Calvert resigned in consequence of his change of religion;—other writers, relying, perhaps, more on the obiter dicta of memoirs and history, believe that his convictions as to faith had changed some Whilst Sir George was in office, his attention, it seems, had been early directed towards America; and in 1620, he is still mentioned in a list of the members of the Virginia Company. Soon after, he became concerned in the plantation of Newfoundland, and finally, obtained a patent for it, to him and his heirs, as Absolute Lord and Proprietary, with all the royalties of a Count Palatine. We must regret that the original, or a copy of this grant for the province of Avalon, in Newfoundland, has not been recently seen, or, if discovered, transmitted to this country. Here, Sir George built a house; spent £25,000 in improvements; removed his family to grace the new Principality; manned ships, at his own charge, to relieve and guard the Yet, it was soil and climate alone that disheartened the Northern adventurer:—he had not turned his back on America. In 1629 he repaired to Virginia, in which he had been so long concerned, and was most ungraciously greeted by the Protestant royalists, with an offer of the Test-Oaths of Allegiance and supremacy. Sir George, very properly refused the challenge, and departed with his followers from the inhospitable James River, where the bigotry of prelacy denied him a foothold within the fair region he had partly owned. But, before he returned to England, he remembered that Virginia was now a Royal Province and no longer the property of corporate speculation;—he recollected that there were large portions of it still unoccupied by white men, and that there were bays and rivers, pouring, sea-like, to the ocean, of which grand reports had come to him when he was one of the committee of the Council for the affairs of the Plantations. Accordingly, when he left the James River, he steered his keel around the protecting peninsula of Old Point Comfort, and ascending the majestic Chesapeake, entered its tributary streams, and laid, in imagination, at least, the foundations of Maryland. His examination of the region being ended, Calvert went home to England, and in 1632, obtained the grant of Maryland from Charles I, the son of his royal patron and friend. The charter, which is said to have been the composition of Sir George, did not, however, pass the seals until after the death of its author; but was issued to his eldest son and heir, Cecilius, on the 20th of June, 1632. The life of Sir George had been one of uninterrupted personal and political success; his family was large, united and happy; if he did not inherit wealth, he, at least, contrived to secure it; and, although his conscience taught him to abandon the faith of his fathers, his avowal of the change had been the signal for princely favors instead of political persecution. Here the historic connexion of the first Lord Baltimore with Maryland ends. The real work of Plantation was the task of Cecilius, the first actual Lord Proprietary, and of Leonard Calvert, his brother, to whom, in the following year, the heir of the family intrusted the original task of colonial settlement. If anything was done by Sir George, in furtherance of the rights, liberties, or interests of humanity, so far as the foundation of Maryland is concerned, it was unquestionably effected anterior to this period, for we have no authority to say, that after his death, his children were mere executors of previous designs, or, that what was then done, was not the result of their own provident liberality. I think there can be no question that the charter was the work of Sir George. That, at least, is his property; and he must be responsible for its defects, as well as entitled to its glory. I presume it is hardly necessary for me to say what manner of person the King was, whom Calvert had served so intimately during nearly a whole reign. James is precisely the historical prodigy, to which a reflective mind would suppose the horrors of his parentage naturally gave birth. In royal chronology he stands between two axes,—the one that cleft the ivory neck of his beautiful mother—the other that severed the irresolute but refined head of his son and heir. His father, doubtless, had been deeply concerned in the shocking murder of his mother's second husband. Cradled on the throne of Scotland; educated for Kingship by strangers; the ward of a regency; the shuttle-cock of ambitious politicians; the hope and tool of two kingdoms,—James lived during an age in which the struggle of opinion and interest, of prerogative and You will readily believe that a man like George Calvert found it sometimes difficult to serve such a sovereign, in intimate state relations. In private life he might not have selected him for a friend or a companion. But James was his King; the impersonation of British Royalty and nationality. In serving him, he was but true to England; and, even in that task, it, no doubt, often required the whole strength of his heart's loyalty, to withstand the follies of the royal buffoon. Calvert, I think, was not an enthusiast, but, emphatically, a man of his time. His time was not one of Reform, and he had no brave ambition to be a Reformer. Accustomed to the routine of an observing and technical official life, he was, essentially a practical man, and dealt, in politics, exclusively with the present. Endowed, probably, with but slender imagination, he found little charm or flavor in excursive abstractions. His maxim may perhaps have been—"quieta ne movete,"—the motto of moderate or cautions men who live in disturbed times, preceding or succeeding revolutions, and think it better— Yet, with all these characteristics, no one will hesitate to believe that Calvert was a bold and resolute person, when it is recollected that he visited the wilderness of the New World in the seventeenth century, and projected therein the formation of a British Province. 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. The charter which Sir George Calvert framed, and the successor of James granted, was precisely the one we might justly 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 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 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 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 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 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! 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 "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 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, 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. Calvert, a protestant officer of the crown, became a catholic, and, retiring to private life, was rewarded by his king, with a pension, estates, and an American principality;—Penn, the son of a British Admiral, and who is only accurately known to us by a portrait which represents him in armor, began life as an adherent of the Church of England, and having conscientiously, doffed the steel for the simple garb of Quakerism, was persecuted, not only by his government but his parent. Calvert took the grant of a feudal charter, and asserting all its legislative and baronial powers, sought to fasten its Chinese influence, in feudal fixedness, on his colonists;—but Penn, knowing that feudalism was an absurdity, in the necessary equality of a wilderness, embraced his great authority in order "to leave himself and his successors no power of doing mischief, so that the will of one man might not hinder the good of a whole community." Calvert seems to have thought of English or Irish emigration alone;—Penn, did not confine himself to race, but sought for support from the Continent as well as from Britain. Calvert was ennobled for his services;—Penn rejected a birthright which might have raised him to the peerage. Calvert's public life was antecedent to his American visit—Penn's was almost entirely subsequent to the inception of his "holy experiment." Calvert laid the foundations of a mimic kingdom;—Penn, with the power of a prince, stripped himself of authority. The one was naturally an aristocrat of James's time; the other, quite as naturally, a democrat of the transition age of Sidney. Calvert imagined that mankind stood still; but, Penn believed, that mankind ever moves, or, that like an army under arms, when not marching, it is marking time. While to Calvert is due the honor of a considerable religious advance on his age, as developed in his charter,—Penn is to be revered for the double glory of civil and perfect religious liberty. Calvert mitigated man's lot by toleration;—Penn expanded the germ of toleration into unconditional freedom. Calvert was the founder of a Planting Province, mainly agricultural, and creative of all the manorial dependencies;—but Penn seems to have heartily cherished the idea of a great City, and of the commerce it was to gather and develope from a wilderness over which it was to stand as guardian sentinel. As farming was the chief interest of the one, trading, became, also, a favorite of the other; and thus, while the transient trader visited, supplied, and left the native Indian free,—the permanent planter settled forever on his "hunting grounds," and drove him further into the forest. Calvert recognized the law of war;—Penn made peace a fundamental institution. They both felt that civilized nations have a double and concurrent life,—material and spiritual;—but Calvert sought rather to develop one, while Penn addressed himself to the care of both. Calvert's idea was to open a new land by old doctrines, and to form his preserving amber around a worthless fly;—but Penn's Pennsylvania was to crystalize around the novel and lucid nucleus of freedom. Calvert supposed that America was to be a mere reflex of Britain, and that the heart of his native Island would pulsate here; but Penn, seeing that the future population of America, like the soil of the Mississippi Valley, would be an alluvial deposit from the overflow of European civilization, thought it right to plant a new doctrine of human rights, which would grow more vigorously for its transplanting and culture. The germs of Civil and Religious freedom may be found elsewhere in the foundation of American provinces and colonies. I know they are claimed for the cabin of the Mayflower, the rock of Plymouth, and the sands of Rhode Island. But I think that William Penn is justly entitled to the honor of adopting them on principle, after long and patient reflection, as the seed of his people, and thus, of having taken from their introduction by him into this country, all the disparagement of originating either in discontent or accident. His plan was the offspring of beautiful design, and not the gypsey child of chance or circumstance. History is to man what water is to the landscape,—it mirrors, but distorts in its reflection, and the great founder of Pennsylvania has suffered from this temporary distortion. But, at length, the water will become still, and the image will be perfect. Penn is one of those majestic figures that loom up on the waste of time, in the same eternal permanence and simple grandeur in which the Pyramids rise in relief from the sands of Egypt. Let no Arab displace a single stone! |
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