Chapter XIII: Front Matter (13)

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 assembly, the lower house transmitted a message to the upper, declaring itself the true assembly, 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 assembly 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 pronounced, 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 Association 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 shores, and around the estuaries of its rivers. Excepting St. Mary's, there appears to have been no place entitled 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 constitute 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 circumstance 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 lustre 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 assembly 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 assembly, 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 assembly 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 asserted, 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 association was formed, styling itself, "An Association in arms for the defence of the Protestant Religion, and for asserting 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 Associators 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 Associators 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 assembly, recommending "the making of wholesome laws, and the laying aside of all heats and animosities," was responded to by an act, the second passed after its meeting, "for the service of Almighty God, 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 mass, 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 circumstance 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 petition 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, entitled by the author "an act to keep the towns off the parish," which denied it the right of sending a delegate to the assembly, 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 title 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 assembly. 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 title, 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 entitle 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 assist 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 assembly, 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 principal 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 entitled 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 pronounces 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 circumstance 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, constituted, 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, coarse 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, molasses, 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 title 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 assembly claiming, however, to participate 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 assembly. 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 L6000, 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 L40,000, of which L11,000 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 Cumberland, 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 passes 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 Cumberland 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 L140,000, and the other exports, in 1761, to L80,000 currency; the imports, in the same year, to L160,000. 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 assent, 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 assemblies 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 Assembly adopted a series of resolves assertory 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 constitution of the province; and that this was declared, not from apprehension of the infringement of their liberties by the proprietary, but as an assertion of them, and to transmit their sense thereof, and the nature of their constitution, 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 country party," which embraced the lower house, and the great body of the people. On the latter side, were enlisted all the talents of the province; and the papers on this subject proceeding from the lower house, were marked by great ability and research. Some of them are from the pen of the elder Daniel Dulany, the father of another distinguished person of that name, and who transmitted to his son the talents, which, our author remarks, seem to have been the patrimony of the family in every generation. The controversy resulted in the recognition of the pretensions of the assembly, and thenceforth the courts of judicature continued to adopt such statutes as were accommodated to the condition of the province.

The spirit which begat and established these claims, appeared equally in the dissensions which succeeded them, respecting the proprietary revenues. A series of resolves was adopted by the lower house in 1739, denouncing, as arbitrary and illegal, the levying of certain duties, the settling of officers' fees by proclamation or ordinance, and the creation of new offices with new fees, without the assent of the assembly. The act proposing the appointment of an agent to present these grievances to the king was vindicated by a message from the lower house, "worthy to be preserved for its laconic boldness." "The people of Maryland," say they, "think the proprietary takes money from them unlawfully. The proprietary says he has a right to take that money. This matter must be determined by his majesty, who is indifferent to both. The proprietary is at home, and has this very money to enable him to negotiate this affair on his part. The people have no way of negotiating it on theirs, but by employing fit persons in London to act for them. These persons must be paid for their trouble, and this bill proposes to raise a fund for that purpose." Though the measures then adopted did not lead to a definitive suppression of the grievances complained of, some of them were removed in another mode. Thus, fines on alienation were relinquished by the proprietary in 1742; officers' fees were established by law in 1747; but the tobacco and tonnage duties formed a standing subject of complaint till the revolution, and a justification of the refusal of supplies, and of other opposition to the government. In voting supplies during the French war, the lower house had imposed an increased tax on "ordinary licenses," and a duty on convicts transported into the colony. The former was resisted as an invasion of proprietary prerogative; the latter, as in conflict with the acts of Parliament authorizing their importation, according to an opinion obtained from Mr. Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield. The assembly was not daunted by authoritative names. "Precarious," said they, "and contemptible indeed would the state of our laws be, if the bare opinion of any man, however distinguished in his dignity and office, yet acting in the capacity of private counsel, should be sufficient to shake their authority." "I remember," says Daniel Dulany, in his Considerations on the Stamp-Act, "many opinions of crown lawyers on American affairs. They have generally been very sententious;--they have all declared that to be legal, which the minister, for the time being, has deemed to be expedient." The opinion of Attorney-General Pratt, afterwards Lord Camden, prevailed as little on a subsequent occasion. In it he denied the legality of certain extensions of the taxing power, in a supply bill voted by the lower house. It is chiefly remarkable, however, for the distinction set up by one who was afterwards an advocate of American liberties, between the rights of the House of Commons and of the Colonial Assemblies. The Assembly entertained a very different judgment. "Being desirous," they said, "to pay the opinion all due deference, we cannot but wish it had been accompanied with the state of the facts on which it was founded." In nine successive sessions, the supply bill was passed in nearly its original form. With such exhibitions of the tempers of the colonies, it is a just subject of wonder that the Stamp-Act should ever have been ventured on.

The peace of Paris had now, however, not only secured the safety, and with it the gratitude of the colonies, but also confirmed over them, it was supposed, the authority of the mother country. But if the termination of the French war, says the author, seemed to the government a fair occasion for resuming designs never lost sight of, its progress, however calamitous, had nurtured the free and adventurous spirit of the colonists by privations and dangers, until their minds, as well as their resources, were matured for effectual resistance. Their trade, indeed, was burdened with duties imposed for its regulation and restriction; but no tax had yet been laid for the mere purpose of revenue. Sir Robert Walpole "had sagaciously remarked, that, contenting himself with the benefits of their trade, he would leave the taxation of the Americans to some of his successors, who had more courage, and less regard for commerce." The Stamp-Act, by which the experiment was now to be tried, being stripped of the odious machinery of collection, and operating indirectly, was a well contrived initiatory measure. Coupled with it, however, were certain harsh enforcements of the trade-laws at this time, which had the effect of raising higher the indignation of the colonists, and of confounding the distinction hitherto, though reluctantly admitted, between the right to regulate their commerce, and that of direct taxation.

Circumstances prevented Maryland from expressing her opposition to the measure through her legislature, before, and for some period after its adoption. The act was passed on the 22d of March, 1765, and that body was repeatedly prorogued, from November, 1763, to September, 1765. This delay, at such a juncture, did not escape strong remonstrance. There existed, however, at that time, another mirror of the public feeling, whose respectable antiquity deserves mention. This was a journal at Annapolis, conducted by Jonas Green, under the name of "The Maryland Gazette." It was established in 1745, and has ever since been conducted by his descendants, under the same title. Its pithy appeals to the popular sentiment are amusing at this day; and, though the government paper, its temperate support of colonial rights made it the vehicle of communications on that side, not only from the province, but from other colonies. In one from Virginia, the writer says, "it being well known that the only press we have here is totally engrossed for the vile purposes of ministerial craft, I must therefore apply to you, who have always appeared to be a bold and honest assertor of the cause of liberty." The person selected for the distribution of the stamps in Maryland, was Zachariah Hood, a native of the province, and at one time a merchant residing at Annapolis. His appointment was announced with due mock ceremony in the Gazette, and himself to be a gentleman whose conduct was highly approved by all "court-cringing politicians, since he was supposed to have wisely considered, that, if his country must be _stamped_, the blow would be easier borne from a native than a foreigner." His arrival also was greeted with customary honours; his effigy, according to a circumstantial narrative in the Gazette, being hung to the toll of bells, by the "assertors of British American privileges" at Annapolis, and afterwards at Baltimore, Elk-Ridge, Fredericktown, and other places, in emulation. These significant tokens of the popular temper seem to have been promoted, as acts of deliberate defiance, by men of authority and character; as among the "assertors" at Annapolis was the celebrated Samuel Chase, who, at twenty-four, was already the champion of colonial liberties, and gave promise of that combination of abilities, which afterward elevated him beyond rivalry in the province, as a lawyer and advocate, and a leader both of popular and deliberative assemblies. Talents thus employed would naturally provoke the calumny of opponents. A publication of the municipality of Annapolis, describes him as "a busy, restless incendiary, a ringleader of mobs, and a promoter of their excesses; a foul-mouthed and inflaming son of discord and faction." His reply, "abounding in personal reflections, and savouring too much of coarse invective," shows something of the spirit of a tribune of the people, who, thrown into a tumultuous scene, and into contests with the courtly adherents of power, might deem himself excused for some disdain of reserve, and some bluntness of phrase. I admit, he says, that I was one of those who committed to the flames the effigy of the Stamp-Distributor, and who openly disputed the parliamentary right to tax the colonies; while some of you skulked in your houses, and grumbled in corners, asserting the Stamp-Act to be a beneficial law, or not daring to speak out your sentiments. The reader may be curious to know Hood's subsequent adventures. Not daring to distribute the stamps, and finding the indignation which had been lavished on his effigy, taking a more dangerous direction towards his person, he absconded secretly, and never paused in his flight till he reached New-York, and had taken refuge under the cannon of Fort George. Having gone afterwards to reside on Long Island, a party surrounded the house where he was concealed, requiring the abjuration of his office, on pain of being delivered to the exasperated multitude, and carried back to Maryland, with labels upon him signifying his office and designs. Unwilling to run this gantlet through a country up in arms, he yielded, and was accompanied by upwards of a hundred gentlemen from Flushing to Jamaica, where he swore to his abjuration, and was discharged.

The first measure of the assembly, when at length convened, was to appoint commissioners to a general congress that was to be held in New-York; its next, to make an expression of its sentiments on the existing question. The tone and unanimity of the resolves adopted, sufficiently show, in the author's opinion, that the temper and course of Maryland at this juncture, have been too lightly considered, and may advantageously be compared with those of any other colony. Another of her contributions, and not the least effective, to the common cause, was an essay published at Annapolis, in October, 1765. "A style easy but energetic, perspicuous thoughts, illustrations simple, and arguments addressed to every understanding," betrayed it to be the production of Daniel Dulany, the younger, whom it placed at once in the first rank of political writers. Long signal for talents and professional learning, his "Considerations" earned him the more grateful distinction of the great champion of colonial liberties; and in the joyous celebrations of the repeal of the stamp-act, placed him in remembrance with Camden, and with Chatham, his admirer and eulogist. It is known, that in this essay Mr. Dulany, though bold and decided as to the question of right, urged the disuse of British commodities as the most advisable weapon of resistance. This appeal to the commercial cupidity of England would, also, he thought, be the most effectual. The course, even could it have been perseveringly adopted, was too pacific for the temper of the times.

Political integrity and abilities associated the name of Dulany with the history of Maryland, during the better part of a century. The father of the distinguished person just mentioned, was admitted to the bar of the provincial court in 1710, and for forty years held the first place in the confidence of the proprietary and in the popular affection, being a functionary in the highest post of trusts, and long a leader also of the country party in the assembly. He was a kinsman of the celebrated Delany, the intimate of Swift, some of whose letters to him breathe the tone both of friendship and reverend regard. His son, Daniel Dulany, _the Greater_, (as our author styles him,) came to the bar in 1747, and was named one of the council in 1757; in 1761, he was appointed secretary of the province, and thenceforward held these posts in conjunction, till the Revolution. His legal arguments and opinions, the praise of contemporaries, and the deference of courts, attest him to have been an _oracle_ of law; as a scholar and an orator, he was not only highly celebrated at home, but in the judgment of Mr. Pinkney, who saw him but in his "evening declination," unexcelled by the master minds abroad. Suavity of manners, and the graces of the person, combine to complete a most agreeable picture.

The stamp-paper had now arrived. The governor, to whom the lower house had refused all advice as to the disposal of that paper, found it expedient to pursue the suggestion of the upper, to retain it on board of the vessel. By a general consent, the ordinary transactions of business and of the courts proceeded without it, and on the 24th of February, 1766, an association, bearing the name of the "Sons of Liberty," was formed at Baltimore, with the object of compelling the government offices at Annapolis to dispense with it likewise. They assembled at that place on a day assigned, the 31st of March; and the provincial court and other offices, after first a peremptory refusal, and some delay, conceded the point. Thus was the stamp-act virtually annulled in Maryland; it had been repealed in England a few days before, on the 18th of March; so that, in the author's words, "Maryland was never polluted even by an attempt to execute it."

Of the subsequent revival of the scheme of taxing the colonies, the manner and the event are so well known, that we have only to notice the contemporary transactions in Maryland, which fanning the resentment of her people, kept her at an even pace with the other provinces in the march of resistance. The "Proclamation and Vestry Act questions," have lost indeed their momentary interest, but serve to show in how many schools of exercise the champions were trained, who afterward displayed their collected prowess in a more conspicuous arena.

The colonial legislature had always controlled the provincial officers by exercising the right to determine their fees, which, by way of further precaution, they had been in the habit of regulating by temporary acts. An act of this nature, passed in 1763, coming up for renewal in 1770, objections were made to the exorbitance of the fees themselves, abuses in the mode of charging, and the want of a proper system of commutation. Angry discussions were followed by a prorogation of the assembly, and subsequently by a proclamation of Governor Eden, ostensibly to prevent extortion in the officers, but with the real purpose of regulating the fees by the prerogative of his office; accordingly, he re-established the fee-act of 1763. The proclamation begat the usual array of parties for and against prerogative, in which our author includes the established clergy on the government side, and on the popular, the lawyers. In this conflict of influence and abilities, by a turn which is to be lamented, as it threw them into collision with the Revolutionary leaders, and exciting high resentments on both sides, kept him aloof from their measures, Daniel Dulany was, in this question, the prominent partisan of the governor and upper house. The grounds somewhat technical on which he defended their procedure as both legal and expedient, and the more large and comprehensive ones on which it was impugned, were set forth in a series of essays in the Maryland Gazette, in which Mr. Dulany's antagonist was Charles Carroll of Carrollton. The angry excitement of the day gave these essays one feature in common,--strong invective, and personalities,--"of which, some are now unintelligible, and all deserve to be forgotten." Their distinctive characteristics are,--in Mr. Dulany's, "the traces everywhere of a powerful mind, confident in its own resources, indignant at opposition, contemptuous, as if from conscious superiority, yet sometimes affecting contempt to escape from principles not to be resisted;" in his opponent's, the language of a man "confident in his cause, conscious that he is sustained by public sentiment, and exulting in the advantage of this position." When the discussion was dropped by these combatants, it was taken up by others, as vigorous and adroit. In this new controversy, John Hammond, no contemptible reasoner in behalf of the proclamation, found antagonists in Thomas Johnson, the first governor of the _state_ of Maryland, Samuel Chase, and his more conciliatory friend and coadjutor, William Paca. In the proceedings of the lower house relative to this subject, we find a sententious description of political liberty, which might serve as the motto of all _Constitutionalists_. "Who," says their address, "_who are a free people? Not_ those over whom government is reasonably and equitably exercised, but those who live under a government so constitutionally checked and controlled, that proper provision is made against its being otherwise exercised."

The "Vestry Act" related to _clergy dues_, and the controversy on it arose out of the technical objection, that the law imposing them, which was enacted in 1701-2, was passed by an assembly, which, being dissolved by the demise of the king, had nevertheless been convened with fresh writs of election. The law thus regarded as intrinsically defective, had the farther demerit of being revived, (as in the case of the officer's fees,) in default of an existing enactment, by proclamation of the governor. In this discussion the clergy naturally took a part, and "found in their own body an advocate of extraordinary powers, in the person of Jonathan Boucher." These questions filled the province with contention. An act regulating clergy dues, some time after, put that question to sleep; the other remained in angry suspense, till swallowed up, with all less disputes, in the vortex of the Revolution.

That event was now nearly impending. It may be remembered, that the duty act of 1767, in which the ministerial scheme of taxing the colonies had been revived, had been subsequently repealed, except as to the article of tea, on which the duty had been retained, "by way, it has been remarked, of pepper-corn rent, to denote the tenure of colonial rights." A new stratagem of the ministry in this matter was followed, it is also known, by "the burning of the tea in Boston," and by the retaliatory measure of the Boston-Port Bill; acts, respectively, which may be said to have made up the issue between the conflicting parties. The convention in 1774, assembled at Annapolis, in June of that year. In the October following, the _tea-burning_ at Boston was re-enacted in Maryland, with circumstances of deliberation and defiance that show what a flame was abroad. On the 14th of that month, the brig Peggy Stewart arrived at Annapolis, having, as a part of her cargo, seventeen packages of tea. The non-importation agreement, to which the act of 1767 had given rise, was understood to be retained as to this article, which still bore the badge of usurpation in the obnoxious duty. The consignees did not venture to incur the public indignation by landing the teas, without at least consulting the Non-Importation Committee; but in the meantime, the vessel was entered, and the duties paid by Anthony Stewart, a part owner of the vessel. The people, highly incensed, determined, _in a public meeting_, at Annapolis, that the tea should not be landed. It was proposed, in a subsequent one, to burn it; and at a county meeting which followed, it was decided, that this should be accompanied also by a most humiliating apology from Stewart and the consignees. As the people now threatened to burn the vessel itself, the former, by the advice of Carroll of Carrollton, proposed to destroy her with his own hands. Crowds repaired to the water-side to witness the atonement; the vessel was run ashore at _Windmill Point_, where Stewart set fire to his own vessel, with the tea on board.

All was now preparation for open hostilities. Military associations were formed, military exercises eagerly engaged in, and subscriptions set afoot for purchasing arms and ammunition. The planters were requested to cultivate flax, hemp, and cotton, and to enlarge their flocks with a view to the manufacture of woollens. At this point we must leave Mr. M'Mahon. On the appearance of his second volume, we may resume his narrative from this period, and take the same occasion to notice some other matters in his work, for the discussion of which we have not room at present.

[Footnote 10: New Travels by the Abbe Robin, one of the Chaplains to the French Army in N. America.]

ART. X.--_Notes on Italy._ By REMBRANDT PEALE. 1 vol 8 vo.
Carey & Lea: Philadelphia: 1831.