The American Quarterly Review Part 17

At the opening of the diet, April 27, 1817, Alexander declared his intention of gradually introducing into his immense empire, the salutary influence of liberal inst.i.tutions; and promised security of persons, and of property, and freedom of opinions. "Representatives of Poland," said he, "rise to the elevation on which destiny has placed you. You are called upon to give a sublime example to Europe, whose eye is fixed upon you." The Poles have in this latest period of their existence, shown no reluctance to be true to themselves and to the world; but the revolution of Spain, and Naples, and Greece, struck terror into the cabinet of Alexander, and led him to abandon the sympathies which he had professed for ameliorated forms of government. Accordingly, by an arbitrary decree, February 13, 1825, he abolished the publicity of the a.s.semblies of the diet, and taught the Poles the true value of an apparently liberal form of government, of which the fundamental principles might be altered according to the caprices or the fears of an individual.

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 pa.s.sion 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 ant.i.thesis, "In the infancy of societies, it is the leaders that create the inst.i.tutions; afterwards, it is the inst.i.tutions 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 circ.u.mstances; 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 trans.m.u.te, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 emanc.i.p.ations. Their inst.i.tutions 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 circ.u.mstances 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 a.s.sembly, 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 a.s.signed 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 lat.i.tude; on the north, a line drawn in that degree of lat.i.tude 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 hara.s.sed 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 a.s.sert 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 lat.i.tude of 40, 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 lat.i.tude." 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 lat.i.tude, 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 _naf_ 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 lat.i.tude of Cape Henlopen, to the fortieth degree of lat.i.tude,--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 embarra.s.sments 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 lat.i.tude, 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstances, that the South Branch was to be considered the princ.i.p.al stream, and its source the true source of the Potomac. The British council for plantation affairs had, as early as 1745, on the pet.i.tion 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 a.s.sert his claim up to the first fountain of the Potomac, "be that where it might." Various circ.u.mstances prevented his bringing the matter before the king in council; and so the question hung, till the Revolution subst.i.tuted the _state_ of Virginia for the British crown, as one party in the controversy, and that of Maryland as the other.

In the const.i.tution 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 pa.s.sed 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 t.i.tle 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.

Cecilius Calvert had no sooner obtained his grant, for which he is said to have been indebted to the influence of his father, George Calvert, who but for his death would have been himself the grantee, than he prepared for the establishment of a colony. The expedition, which he entrusted to his brother, Leonard Calvert, sailed from the Isle of Wight on the 22d of November, 1633, the emigrants consisting of about two hundred persons, princ.i.p.ally Catholics, and many of them gentlemen of family and fortune. They reached Point Comfort, in Virginia, on the 24th of February following, and thence proceeded up the Potomac, in search of an eligible site. Having taken formal possession of the province, at an island which they called St. Clements, they sailed upwards of forty leagues up the river, to an Indian town called Piscataway; but deeming it prudent to establish themselves nearer its mouth, they returned to what is now known as St. Mary's river, (an estuary of the Potomac,) on the eastern side of which, six or seven miles from its mouth, they disembarked, on the 27th of March, 1634. Here, near another Indian town, bearing the uncouth name of Yaocomoco, they laid the foundation of the old city of St. Mary's, and of the state of Maryland. The proprietary had made ample provision for his infant colony, of food and clothing, the implements of husbandry, and the means of erecting habitations; expending in the first two or three years upwards of 40,000, and governing, by all concurring accounts, with much policy and liberality.

The new colony seems to have been looked on a little coldly by Virginia, her next neighbour in the great continental wilderness, and to have had indeed more positive ground of complaint in the connivance given there to Clayborne, who has already been mentioned as the colonizer of Kent Island, and whose fancied or real injuries from the proprietary, made him the persevering foe of the colony during twenty-five years. His first essay was to kindle the jealousies of the natives against the colonists, which, in the beginning of 1642, broke out into an open war, that endured for some time, and was the cause of much expense and distress to the province. The distractions of the great rebellion of 1642, which began at this time to involve the colonies, furnished him the next pretences of disturbance, and with fit a.s.sociates. Richard Ingle, the most prominent of these, was a known adherent of the parliamentary cause; he had before this time been proclaimed a traitor to the king, and had fled the province. The insurrection promoted, therefore, by these confederates and others, (commonly known as "Clayborne and Ingle's rebellion,") was probably carried on in the name of the Parliament; though the loss of the greater part of the provincial records, anterior and relating to this period, the circ.u.mstance from which it acquired its chief notoriety, leaves us little other knowledge of the insurrection itself, than that it was attended with great misrule and rapacity, that it commenced in 1644, and that the proprietary government was suspended till August, 1646; Leonard Calvert, the governor, being compelled meanwhile to seek refuge in Virginia. Quiet was then restored by a general amnesty, from which only Clayborne, Ingle, and one Durnford, were excepted. During two or three years the province maintained this tranquillity, by pursuing a neutral course towards the contending parties in England, varied by the single unadvised act of proclaiming, on the 15th of November, 1649, the accession of Charles II., Governor Stone being absent at the moment.

This procedure was followed by very ill consequences to the proprietary.

The Parliament, now triumphant, issued a commission for the subjugation of the disaffected colonies, of which, ominously, for Maryland, _Captain_ Clayborne was named one, and which, after reducing Virginia, demanded of Stone, the Governor of Maryland, an express recognition of the parliamentary authority. Delaying compliance with this demand, he was threatened with the deprivation of his government; but it was arranged at length that he should continue to exercise it, till the pleasure of the commonwealth government could be known. This trust he seems to have discharged with due fidelity to the Parliament. He required, indeed, the inhabitants of the province to take the oath of allegiance to the proprietary government; an act which does not seem inconsistent with his engagements. It was alleged, however, to be an evidence of disaffection; and as intentions, says our author, are always easy to charge, and difficult to disprove, he was in the end compelled to resign his office to a commission named by Clayborne and his a.s.sociates. Stone now attempted resistance; but an engagement taking place near the Patuxent, his small force of two hundred men was entirely defeated, and himself taken prisoner. He was condemned to die; but he had, like another Marius, inspired, it seems, such respect and affection in the soldiery, that the party intrusted with his execution refused to proceed in it. A general intercession of the people procured a commutation of his sentence to imprisonment, which was continued, with circ.u.mstances of severity, during the greater part of the protectorate.

With him the proprietary government fell for the time.

The occasion was seized by Virginia, to urge with the Protector, her old claim of jurisdiction over Maryland. The proprietary's charter was a.s.sailed, and the story of Clayborne's wrongs, pathetically told at length. The fanaticism of the Protector was approached, by objecting the religious toleration, which, much to the honour of the proprietary, had consistently characterized his government. The union of the two provinces was urged, among other reasons, on the score of its preventing "the cutting of throats," and restraining the excessive planting of tobacco, thereby making way _for the more staple commodities_, such as _silk_. Cromwell, however, who could lay aside his fanaticism on occasion, but who, on the other hand, probably sought to keep the proprietary in his interests, by holding his rights in suspense, made no decision in the case; and the latter, who at first expected a speedy result in his favour, seems to have resolved at length to regain his province by force. His government had fallen without a crime, and, besides, the pretensions of Virginia had roused the pride and indignation of all parties. He had thus many adherents, among the most conspicuous of whom was Josias Fendall, who having, with a consistency that merits remark, signalized by treachery every measure he was concerned in, played for some years a part in the transactions of the colony, worthy of versatile politicians on a more extensive theatre. He is brought to our notice in 1655, when he was in custody before the provincial court, on a charge of disturbing the government, under a pretended power from the late governor, Stone, and was imprisoned. Being discharged, probably on taking an oath not to disquiet the government, he nevertheless appeared soon after as an open insurgent, acting under the proprietary's commission as his governor. We are uninformed of the particulars of his operations against the commissioners. During a part of 1657 and 1658, there seems to have been a divided empire in the province, the commissioners administering theirs at St. Leonard's, and Fendall and his council sitting at St. Mary's. An arrangement between the proprietary and the Virginian commissioners, then in England, at length put an end to these divisions. The latter ceased to push the claims of Virginia, and it was agreed that his province should be restored to the proprietary. On the 20th of March, 1658, it was formally surrendered to Fendall as his governor, under a stipulation for the security of the acts pa.s.sed during the defection;--a stipulation which the latter fulfilled, not only by declaring them void, but by causing them to be torn from the records.

Clothed thus with authority, Fendall was enabled to play off a kind of parody of Cromwell's proceedings, by "kicking away the ladder by which he had mounted." At the next convention of the a.s.sembly, the lower house transmitted a message to the upper, declaring itself the true a.s.sembly, and the supreme court of judicature, and demanding its opinion on this claim. The latter, not acceding with the required good grace and promptness to this new doctrine, which involved a complete independence, not only of itself, but of the proprietary, was visited in a body by the lower house, and ordered to sit no longer apart, with the privilege, nevertheless, of seats in the lower house. To the a.s.sembly thus reformed, Fendall surrendered his commission from the proprietary, accepting a new one from itself; and the inhabitants of the province were required to recognize no other authority but that of this new legislature, or of the king. The Restoration cut short the rule of this commonwealth party in the province. Baltimore obtained the countenance and aid of the new government,--and thus fortified, enjoined his brother, Philip Calvert, as his governor, to proceed against the insurgents even by martial law, and especially not to permit Fendall to escape with his life. Fendall, accordingly, with one Hatch, was excepted from the general indemnity, and proclamations were issued for their apprehension;--yet, on a subsequent voluntary surrender, he found means to be quits for a short imprisonment, with a disability to vote or hold office;--a lenity not more impolitic in the government, than unmerited by him, as he not long afterwards attempted to excite another rebellion.

An uninterrupted tranquillity of many years followed the commotions just narrated. In 1675, died Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, the first proprietary, leaving his estate in the province to his son and heir, Charles Calvert.

On a visit to England, the new proprietary found himself and his government the subject of complaint to the Crown, from the resident clergy of the Church of England, in the province. They represented that the province was no better than a Sodom,--religion despised,--the Lord's day profaned, and all notorious vices committed;--in short, it was in a deplorable condition for want of an established ministry, the Quakers providing for their speakers, and the Catholics for their priests, but no care taken to build up churches in the Protestant religion. Baltimore represented very honestly, that all religions were tolerated by his laws, and none established,--and was dismissed for the time, with the general injunction to restrain immorality, and provide for a competent number of clergy of the Church of England. But the jealousy of popery, now abroad in England, began to flame up in the colonies, and especially in Maryland, which, peopled chiefly by Protestants, was yet under the dominion of a Catholic. Complaints were poured into Charles's ear, of Catholic partialities in the proprietary administration; and, in reply to a communication from Baltimore, by which it was shown beyond doubt, that his offices were distributed without distinction of religion, and the military power almost exclusively in Protestant hands--"that exemplary monarch," says our author, "gave his commentary on religious liberty, by ordering all offices to be put into the hands of the Protestants." With a singular ill fortune, which must be put to the account of his tolerance, the proprietary, thus controlled by a Protestant king, and menaced, besides, with that then formidable weapon of royalty, a _quo warranto_, did not the less encounter an enemy in his Catholic successor, by whom, in 1687, a _quo warranto_ was actually issued. Before judgment was p.r.o.nounced, indeed, the monarch himself was an exile, by the judgment of his people; but the proprietary was now attacked, on the opposite quarter, by the "Protestant a.s.sociation of Maryland," which succeeded in overthrowing his government. This revolution marks one era in our author's historical narrative, before we proceed in which, we must pause a moment with him, to mention the condition of the colony, at the time this event occurred.

The two hundred original settlers were increased as early as 1660 to twelve thousand, and in 1671 to nearly twenty thousand; their exact number at the protestant revolution is unknown. The settlements had extended from St. Mary's a considerable distance up the Potomac, and all along the Chesapeake Bay on both sides, and were seated chiefly on its sh.o.r.es, and around the estuaries of its rivers. Excepting St. Mary's, there appears to have been no place ent.i.tled to the appellation of a town, unless, says the author, we adopt the same number of houses to make a town, which it requires persons to const.i.tute a riot. The _city_ of St. Mary's, which numbered fifty or sixty houses in two or three years from its planting, never much exceeded these humble limits. The colonists were almost universally planters of tobacco, and each plantation, according to an early writer, "was a little town of itself, every considerable planter's warehouse being a kind of shop," where inferior planters and others might obtain the necessary commodities.

Tobacco supplied the purposes of gold and silver; but as this currency was in some respects inconvenient, the lords proprietaries struck coin, and imitated more powerful sovereigns by attempting,--and, as may be supposed, with the like success,--to circulate it at a rate beyond its intrinsic value. The act of 1686, making coins a legal tender at a certain advance beyond their real worth, deserves mention as establishing the provincial currency in lieu of sterling. There was also at this time a printing-press and a public printer; a circ.u.mstance peculiar to this colony at that early period. _Toleration was coeval with the province._ The oath of office prescribed by the proprietary to his governors, recognising the freedom of religious opinion in the amplest manner, "is in itself a text-book of official duty," and ought to be remembered to the honour of Cecilius Calvert, "when the l.u.s.tre of a thousand diadems is pale." For the only two departures from this principle, the proprietary government is not responsible. An ordinance of Cromwell's Commissioners prohibited the profession of the Catholic religion; and the unscrupulous Fendall, at another time, banished the Quakers for refusing to subscribe an engagement of fidelity to the government. We are to seek, therefore, other causes than the intolerance of the proprietary for the Protestant revolution which we are now to notice.

A chasm in the colonial records, from November, 1688, to the beginning of 1692, leaves us without accurate information of its reasons and progress. Apparently, the alarm of Popery then general through the empire, was the true cause, and some indiscretions of the proprietary's governors the pretence. The government was at this time in a commission of nine deputies, who by summoning the lower house of a.s.sembly to take an oath of fidelity to the proprietary, were deemed to have committed a breach of its privilege. The president of the deputies was a Mr. Joseph, whose address on the opening of the a.s.sembly, being a very quaint but clumsy exposition of _jus divinum_, and of its derivation to himself, cannot claim the praise of a happy adaption to the humour of the moment.

The house refusing to take the oath, the a.s.sembly was prorogued. News now came of the expected invasion of England by the Prince of Orange; and, without any fixed views probably, even as to their own course in the existing distractions, much less against the Protestants of the province, the deputies awaked jealousy, and gave rumour wings by ordering the public arms to be collected, and attempting to check reports which might beget "disaffection to the proprietary government."

The whole colony resounded with the cry of a Popish plot; and as a treaty long subsisting with some Indian tribes happened to be renewed about this time, the plot thus engendered by the deputies was to be accomplished, it was a.s.serted, by the aid of the savages and the French.

An accidental delay of the proprietary's instructions for proclaiming William and Mary, heightened the alarm, or increased the exasperation; and at length, in April 1689, an a.s.sociation was formed, styling itself, "An a.s.sociation in arms for the defence of the Protestant Religion, and for a.s.serting the right of King William and Queen Mary to the province of Maryland." The deputies took refuge from the storm in a garrisoned fort at Mattapany, by whose surrender, in August 1689, the a.s.sociators gained undisputed possession of the province. The articles of surrender have preserved the names of the leaders, at the head of which is that of John Coode, another personage of colonial celebrity.

The first measure of the a.s.sociators was to summon a convention at St.

Mary's, which transmitted to the king an exposition of the motives of the recent revolution. Their charges against the provincial government are so much at war with the tenor of its history, under both Cecilius and George Calvert, that we can in reason only impute them to popular exaggeration. It was alleged that all the offices of the province were under the control of the Jesuits, and the churches all appropriated to the uses of popish idolatry; nay, that under connivance, if not permission of the government, all sorts of murders and outrages were committed by Papists upon Protestants. Another topic, not less prevailing, was the reluctant and imperfect allegiance of the proprietary rulers to the crown, which they accordingly solicited to take the province under its immediate guard and administration, William gratified his own wishes as well as theirs, by arbitrarily depriving the proprietary of his province, without even the usual forms of law, and by sending out, in 1692, Sir Lionel Copley as the royal governor. We blush, says our author, to name Lord Holt as having given the opinion, behind whose high authority the crown intrenched itself in this summary procedure. The new governor's message to the a.s.sembly, recommending "the making of wholesome laws, and the laying aside of all heats and animosities," was responded to by an act, the second pa.s.sed after its meeting, "for the service of Almighty G.o.d, and the establishment of the Protestant religion in the province." By this act, the Church of England was made the established church, and a poll-tax imposed of forty pounds of tobacco on every taxable, to build churches and support ministers.

But the new church was not only to be encouraged; penalties were to be added for the suppression of others. Under the act of 1704, "to prevent the growth of popery," Catholic priests were inhibited by severe penalties from saying ma.s.s, or exercising, except in private families, other spiritual functions, or in any manner persuading the people to be reconciled to the Church of Rome. Protestant children of Papists, might also compel their parents to furnish them adequate maintenance. The Quakers, too, shared these persecutions for a time; but the toleration of Protestant dissenters was established some years after; and thus, "in a colony founded by Catholics, and which had grown into power and happiness under the government of Catholics, the Catholic inhabitant was the only victim of religious intolerance." The next attempt was against the revenues and land rights of the proprietary; but these were sustained by the crown.

Another victim of the Protestant revolution seems to have been the ancient city of St. Mary's, which, being in a district inhabited chiefly by Catholics, had always been distinguished by its attachment to the proprietaries. This circ.u.mstance was not calculated to lessen the complaints long made of its inconvenient remoteness from the greater part of the present settlements. A natural feeling had nevertheless retained the government at its old seat, (antiquity is comparative,) and in 1674 a state-house was built, at an expense (40,000 pounds of tobacco) which, in our author's opinion, shows it to have been a work of some taste and magnitude. This edifice was habitable till the present year, when its remains, which it would have been better taste to spare at least, if not preserve, were removed to make room for a church, erected on or near its site. Notwithstanding this embellishment of his capital, the proprietary, in 1683, yielded to the wishes of the colonists, and removed the legislature, the courts, and the public offices, to "the Ridge," in Anne Arundel county, and thence to Battle Creek, on the Patuxent; but the want of the necessary accommodations drove them from the first after one session, and from the latter after the shorter experiment of three days. The government was brought back to St. Mary's, and remained there till the Protestant revolution, when its removal was again resolved on. The pet.i.tion of the ancient city against the measure, and the reply to it, exhibit the usual topics of the two parties which divide the world; on the one side, prescription and ancient privilege; utility, and the progress of events on the other. In vain the citizens expatiated also on their capacious harbour, in which five hundred sail might ride securely at anchor; and offered to keep up, at their own cost, a coach, or caravan, or both, to run daily during the session of the legislature and provincial courts, and weekly at other times; and at least six horses, with suitable furniture, for all persons having occasion to ride post. Neither their representations nor their offers begat any thing more than sarcasms on their leanness and poverty, and the intended removal took place in 1694-5.

The spot selected for the new seat of government, was a point of land at the mouth of the Severn; a town, according to the definition before given, but not yet possessing the qualification required by a colonial statute, ent.i.tled by the author "an act to keep the towns off the parish," which denied it the right of sending a delegate to the a.s.sembly, till inhabited by as many families as might defray his expenses, without being chargeable to the county. This place, known as "Proctor's," or "the town-land at Severn," was named, at the removal, Anne Arundel town; the following year it acquired the t.i.tle of the Port of Annapolis; it was erected in 1708 into a city, with the privilege, which it still retains, of sending two delegates to the a.s.sembly. Four or five years after it had become the seat of colonial legislation, it is described as containing about forty dwellings, seven or eight of which could afford good lodging and accommodation for strangers. One is curious to know what might have been the accommodations at "the Ridge,"

and at Battle Creek. Our informant continues, "there is also a statehouse and free-school, built of brick, which make a great show among a parcel of wooden houses; and the foundation of a church is laid, the only brick church in Maryland." He adds, "had Governor Nicholson continued there a few _months_ longer, he had brought it to _perfection_." This perfection it seems not to have acquired even as late as 1711, being then described by one "E. Cooke, gentleman," in his poem called "The Sotweed Factor," yet, by rare accident, extant, as--

"A city situate on a plain, Where scarce a house will keep out rain; The buildings, fram'd with cypress rare, Resemble much our Southwark Fair;-- And if the truth I may report, It's not so large as Tottenham-court."

This tobacco merchant, as we translate his t.i.tle, a gentleman apparently of a caustic vein, the prototype of English travellers in America, reflects also on the hospitality of the new capital; an allegation doubtful, considering its source, but at any rate amply refuted at a subsequent day, as this little city, though it never acquired a large population or commerce, was, long before the American revolution, proverbial for the profuse hospitality of its inhabitants, their elegant luxury, and liberal accomplishments. A French writer thus describes it during the revolution, when it may be presumed to have shared the distresses and gloom of the period: "In that very inconsiderable town, of the few buildings it contains, at least three-fourths may be styled elegant and grand. Female luxury here exceeds what is known in the provinces of France. A French hair-dresser is a man of importance among them; and it is said a certain dame here hires one of that craft at one thousand crowns a year. The state-house is a very beautiful building; I think the most so of any I have seen in America."[10] To these habits of profusion, our author is inclined to add others less excusable, and hints at "dangerous allurements," administering neither to happiness nor purity. This early seat of colonial elegance and luxury is still the political metropolis of Maryland. From the lofty dome of its state-house the visiter may still look down on mansions that betoken ancient opulence, and on a landscape of quiet beauty, varied with gardens and ancient trees, and picturesquely watered by winding estuaries of the Chesapeake, whose breeze attempers a climate rich in early flowers and fruits. It was at this time the residence, of course, of the royal governors, of whose administration we find little to record in this hasty narrative. One of them, indeed, Francis Nicholson, though a pliant minister of the crown, seems to have acquired some popularity in the province, his versatility of temper combined with some energy and talent, and a courteous demeanour, enabling him to fall easily into the prevailing humour. Having arrived when the enthusiasm of the Protestant revolution was yet fresh, he became a great patron of the clergy, and promoter of orthodoxy, and in that capacity we find him engaged in proceedings against Coode, though the latter had figured in the events by which the Protestant ascendency had been established, when his services were deemed of such merit as to ent.i.tle him to the reward of one hundred thousand pounds of tobacco, and an office. Coode seems not to have elevated his private virtues to the level of his public. He subsequently appears exercising the incompatible functions of a clergyman, a collector of customs, and a lieutenant-colonel of militia, at the same time alleging that religion was a trick, and that all the morals worth having were contained in Cicero's offices. If the orthodoxy of Governor Nicholson was offended by these opinions, his vanity was not less so by intimations from Coode, that as he had pulled down one government, he might a.s.sist in overthrowing another. The agitator, on the ground of his being in holy orders, was prevented by the governor from serving as a delegate in the a.s.sembly, and was then dismissed from his employments, and indicted for atheism and blasphemy. He fled to Virginia, but afterwards, on the removal of Nicholson from the government, came in and surrendered himself. In consideration of former services, his sentence was suspended; age and adversity probably tamed his unquietness, as thenceforward we hear no more of him in the colonial history. Nicholson's next proceedings were against some persons whose princ.i.p.al offence seems to have been the ascription to him of certain acts of early licentiousness not very consistent with his orthodox zeal, and which, as they have come down to posterity, might, the author says, be ent.i.tled the _Memorabilia_ of Governor Nicholson. Whatever these _Memorabilia_ were, they seem not to have impaired the popularity of his administration, which was also remarkable for the establishment, in 1695, of a public _post_, before unknown in the colonies. The route of this post extended from some point on the Potomac through Annapolis to Philadelphia. The postman was bound to travel the route _eight times a year_, for which he received a salary of 50_l._ The scheme dropped on the death of the first postman in 1698, and appears not to have been revived afterwards. A general post-office for the colonies was established by the English government in 1710.

Though our author p.r.o.nounces the administration of the royal governors to have been favourable in general to the liberties and prosperity of the colony, its population and resources appear to have increased extremely little during that era. In 1689 it contained about twenty-five thousand inhabitants, and in 1710 only thirty thousand. Immigration had in a great measure ceased; a circ.u.mstance imputable to nothing so probably as the change in its religious policy. Complaints are made of the distressed condition of its husbandry, and the years 1694 and 1695 were years of unusual scarcity, and of surprising mortality among the cattle and swine. The artisans, including the carpenters and coopers, const.i.tuted, according to a statement in 1697, only one-sixtieth of the whole population. The colonists depended entirely on England for the most necessary articles; in a few families, coa.r.s.e clothing was manufactured out of the wool of the province; and some attempts were made in the counties of Somerset, and Dorchester, to manufacture linen and woollen cloths on a more extensive scale. Even these imperfect attempts seem to have offended the commercial jealousy of the mother country; for the difficulty of getting English goods at the time, is mentioned by way of excuse for them. There was an inconsiderable export to the West Indies, and a small trade with New-England for rum, mola.s.ses, fish, and wooden wares, for their traffic in which latter article the New-Englanders were already conspicuous. The shipping of the colony was very trifling, the trade with England being carried on entirely in English, and that with the West Indies, chiefly in New-England vessels.

The proprietary government had now been suspended twenty-five years. It had fallen through jealousy of the Catholics, and Charles Calvert, who submitted in his own person to the loss of power for the sake of the religion in which he had grown up, had yielded to the anxieties of a parent, and induced his son and heir, Benedict Leonard Calvert, to embrace the doctrines of the established church. By his own death, in February, 1714, and that of his heir in April, 1715, the t.i.tle to the province devolved to Charles Calvert, the infant son of the latter, who was also educated in the Protestant faith. The reason for excluding the proprietary family then subsisted no longer; their claims were in fact soon after acknowledged by George I. and their government restored in the person of the infant proprietary, in May, 1715. The only consequence of this event meriting notice, was the imposition of a test-oath, requiring of Catholics the abjuration of the Pretender, and the renunciation of some of the essential points of their faith. Private animosity gave edge to these civil persecutions; Catholics were excluded from social intercourse, _nor permitted to walk in front of the State-House_; swords were worn by them for personal defence. Charles Calvert died in 1751, leaving the province to his infant son Frederic, after acquiring for his administration the praise of moderation and integrity. Yet it was fruitful in internal dissensions, which no policy could have averted. The controversy respecting the extension of the English statutes to the colony, originated in 1722, and was succeeded in 1739 by the disputes relating to the proprietary revenue; controversies full of heat at the time, but which will be more conveniently considered in connexion with some subsequent transactions of the same sort. One dispute may be mentioned here, as indicating the spirit of all the rest.

The "Six Nations," a tribe of Indians, occupying a border position between the French and English colonies, had claims to a considerable portion of the territory of Maryland lying along the Susquehanna and the Potomac, and in 1742 it was resolved to depute commissioners to Albany for the purpose of extinguishing them by treaty. The lower house of a.s.sembly claiming, however, to partic.i.p.ate in the appointment of the commissioners, and also to restrict the amount of expenditure, a dispute arose on this point of prerogative, which was only adjusted, two years after, by the governor's appointing the commission on his own responsibility, and defraying its charges from the ordinary revenue. The claims in question were extinguished by the Indian treaty of Lancaster, in June, 1744.

Questions of this sort now became frequent between the lower house of the colonial legislature and the proprietary governors. At this period the French settlements in Canada had begun to be formidable, and their fortifications had been extended along the northern lakes, with a view of connecting them by a chain of posts on the Mississippi, with their possessions in Louisiana. They had encountered much resistance in this quarter from the Six Nations, just mentioned, whose hostility to France made them usually the allies of the English, but whose consistent aid was only to be bought. As early as 1692, New-York had asked pecuniary succors of the other colonies, of Maryland among them, for securing the faith of these savage allies, and repelling the common enemy. A general injunction to the like effect was issued by the crown, and this was followed by more particular instructions, defining the respective quotas of the colonies. Thus began the system of "crown requisitions," which, always received with an ill grace, were often entirely disregarded. In the "French war," which began in 1754, a few years after the death of the last mentioned proprietary, Maryland scarcely co-operated, and the want of her aid was seriously felt in several of its campaigns; a course construed by the mother country into a pertinacious and unreasonable opposition to its wishes, and by the sister colonies into a selfish disregard of the obligations of mutual defence. Mr. Pitt himself, the subsequent champion of American liberties, was so highly incensed at the conduct of Maryland, as to avow his resolution to bring the colonies to a more submissive temper. Dr. Franklin appreciated more correctly, and explained, the course of the Maryland a.s.sembly. We have his authority, that it voted considerable aids, only rendered abortive by unhappy disputes between the two houses as to the mode of raising the requisite revenue. The popular branch claimed also the privilege of exercising its judgment as to the details of defence, and of directing its efforts with a view to the more immediate interests of Maryland, and to the dangers which seemed most instant. In 1754, it voted 6000, however, for the defence of Virginia; and on the disastrous defeat of Braddock, by which the frontiers of Maryland herself were left defenceless, and the terror of her borderers borne to the very heart of her settlements, her legislature waived the pending disputes, and entered into the extensive plan of operations concerted by a council of the colonial governors at New-York. A supply was voted of 40,000, of which 11,000 were to be applied to the erection of a fort and block-house on her own western frontier.

At this period, the westernmost settlements of the province scarcely extended beyond the mouth of the Conococheague, a tributary of the Potomac, though a few of the more adventurous of the borderers had plunged perhaps a little deeper into the wilderness. The settlement at Fort c.u.mberland, was not then a settlement of Maryland; and, being separated from the inhabited limits of the latter, by a deep and almost trackless forest of eighty miles, the fort at that place could afford no protection to the frontiers of the colony. Its very situation was, at that not remote day, a subject of conjecture to the good people of Maryland. There were many pa.s.ses of approach for the Indian foe, beyond its range; and a few stockade forts erected by the settlers were the only retreats for their families in case of these sudden and frightful inroads. A more eligible defensive position was sought, therefore, on the Potomac, a few hundred yards from its bank, and ten or eleven miles above the mouth of the Conococheague. On this spot was erected Fort Frederick, the only monument of ante-revolutionary times remaining in Western Maryland, every vestige of the fortification at c.u.mberland having disappeared. It was constructed of durable materials, in the most approved manner, and was seen by our author in the summer of 1828, the greater part still standing, in good preservation, in the midst of cultivated fields.

At the peace of Paris, which ended the French war, the population of the province had rapidly increased to about 165,000. The number of convicts alone, imported since the proprietary restoration, was estimated at fifteen or twenty thousand. The annual shipment of tobacco to England, according to the best information obtainable, amounted to 28,000 hogsheads, valued at 140,000, and the other exports, in 1761, to 80,000 currency; the imports, in the same year, to 160,000. Iron was the only manufacture that had made any progress. As early as 1749, there were eight furnaces and nine forges, manufacturing, by an estimate in 1761, 2,500 tons of pig, and 600 of bar iron. Such were the resources of Maryland, at the commencement of the civic struggle for her liberties, beginning with the Stamp Act.

For the honour of originating and sustaining the resistance to this, and the like measures of the British government at this time, our author justly remarks, that there is little room for rivalry among the colonies. They had all brought with them, as a familiar principle of English liberty, their right of exemption from taxes, unsanctioned by their a.s.sent, for mere purposes of revenue. There was nothing in the political establishments of Maryland to efface this original impression.

Its charter exhibits the most favourable form of proprietary government; and its benignant provisions for the security of rights, were the cause that it retained, till the revolution, the anxious attachment of the colonists. It designed entirely to exclude the taxation of the province by the mother country; and, though the proprietary rights were leniently exercised by a family which seems to have been especially characterized by mildness and moderation, they also were limited and modified by the spirit of the colonists, to a consistency with public welfare, and their broad notions of the privileges of freemen. Several branches of the proprietary revenue proving burdensome, or vexatious in the mode of their collection, were commuted, or partially diverted to the public defence and uses; and, even when the provincial a.s.semblies failed of effecting these objects, their pretensions served to familiarize the people with the principle, that all impositions were illegal, not sanctioned by their consent. Our limits do not permit us to go into the history of these questions, which forms an interesting portion of the present work.

The resistance of the colony to external aggressions was not less resolute. We have noticed her neglect of the royal rescripts in the case of the _quotas_; she opposed with like firmness, the plan originated in 1701, and revived in 1715, for destroying the charters, converting the colonies into royal governments, and forming a confederacy of them, at whose head was to be a royal commissioner, residing at New York. She was as adverse to the plan of colonial union, aiming at much the same object, proposed in 1753. We have already alluded to the controversy respecting the extension of the English statutes to the province, which began in 1722, and lasted ten years. In their session of that, year, the lower House of a.s.sembly adopted a series of resolves a.s.sertory of their liberties, and declaring the grounds on which they claimed the benefit of the statutes. These resolves, which became the Magna Charta of the province, and were afterwards substantially re-adopted on every occasion, involving its rights and liberties, declared that the province was not to be regarded as a conquered country, but as a colony planted by English subjects, who had not forfeited by their removal any part of their English liberties; that, as such, they had always enjoyed the common law, and those general statutes of England, which were not restrained by words of local limitation, and such acts of the colonial legislature, as were made to suit the particular const.i.tution of the province; and that this was declared, not from apprehension of the infringement of their liberties by the proprietary, but as an a.s.sertion of them, and to transmit their sense thereof, and the nature of their const.i.tution, to posterity. These resolves divided the whole province into two parties, "the court party," consisting of the immediate retainers and adherents of the proprietary, and "the coun