The result of what we have written, established the truth, that the fall of Poland was an event which destiny had been preparing for centuries. In an age of barbarism, a great nation had become resolved into separate principalities, and an aristocracy, not definitely limited, if not absolute, had sprung up. The family of the Jagellons came to the throne by a compromise with that nobility; at the extinction of that family, a tumultuous mob exercised tumultuously, by a sort of general enthusiasm, the privilege of electing a monarch; enthusiasm declining, a faction of the high oligarchy succeeded in the election of Sigismund III.; with Michael, the inferior nobility came into power; with Sobieski was introduced the influence of the high nobility, and of female intrigue; with Augustus II. came the reign of gross and undisguised venality; with Augustus III. the controlling presence of a foreign army and domestic anarchy; with Stanislaus the wild fury of religious bigotry, in collision with the treacherous liberality of foreign influence. Every thing had had its day but the real nation; of them no notice had been taken; and though Poland was called a republic, it was a republic without a people. The royal power, the tumultuous patriotism of a nobility, the oligarchical feuds, the democracy of the nobility, the high aristocracy, downright bribery, the direct presence and interference of foreign troops, each had had its period; and is it strange that the anarchy of Poland had become complete? There was not only no government virtually, but even the forms did not exist, by which a government could be effectually set in motion. Is it strange, then, that the party of the patriots was unable to triumph over the obstacles in their path, since they had to contend with the strongest foreign powers, with a domestic political chaos, and with a destiny, which had for ages doomed their country to destruction? The Russians and their coadjutors could never have accomplished their purpose, if the ancestors of the Poles had not themselves prepared the way.
The world would have heard no more of the Polish state, but for the simultaneous revolution in France. There the issue was as different, as the abuses which required remedy, and the instruments which could be applied for their correction. In Poland there was no middling class; in France the revolution sprung from the middling class; in Poland the contest was against the anarchy of an oligarchy; in France against the impending anarchy of superannuated absolutism. Both nations were fertile in great men; both had patriots disciplined in the school of America; both sufferedfrom internal dissensions; both were attacked by the refugees from their own country, under the banners of foreign monarchs; both suffered from the hesitancy of inefficient kings; both contended with the greatest financial difficulties; but in France there existed a free yeomanry, a free class of mechanics, a free, numerous, and cultivated order of citizens; while in Poland, there was almost no intermediate class between the nobility and the serfs. In that lies the secret of the different issue of their struggles. Poland was the victim of the American revolution; France its monument. Poland was erased from among the nations of the earth; while France put forth a gigantic strength in the triumphant defence of its nationality. Poland, brightly though it had shone for ages in the eastern heavens, was blotted out, while the star of France, rising in a lurid sky, through clouds of blood, was at length able to unveil the peerless light of liberty, and lead the host of modern states in the high career of civil improvement.
After the victories of Napoleon over Prussia, the peace of Tilsit restored a portion of Poland to an independent existence as a Grand Dutchy. The loss of national existence, and the disgust at submitting to foreign forms, had excited discontent; and the race still lived, which had witnessed the two last partitions of their country. Napoleon's answer to the Polish deputies, "that he was willing to see if the Poles still deserved to be a nation," resounded through the provinces; and troops assembled hastily between the Vistula and the Niemen. But in Posen, the French emperor set Austria at rest as to Galicia; and when he became the personal friend of Alexander, nothing could be wrested from Russia. Thus the relations of Napoleon enabled him to dispose only of Polish Prussia; and of that, Bialystock was ceded to the Czar, while Prussia still retained a territory sufficient to connect East-Prussia with Brandenburgh. Thus the new Grand Dutchy of Warsaw, under the hereditary sway of the Saxon king, and constituting a portion of the French empire, contained but less than twenty-nine thousand square miles, and less than two and a half millions of inhabitants. Its constitution was given, July 22, 1807. Slavery was abolished, and equality before the law decreed. Two chambers were created, and a diet was to be convened at least once in two years, for fifteen days. Theinitiativeof laws belonged to the Grand Duke; the chamber of deputies was to be renewed, one-third every three years. The code of Napoleon was made the law of the land.
In the peace of 1809, the Grand Dutchy was increased by further restorations from Austria; though Russia took advantage of that emergency to demand from its Austrian ally, also a territory of great value, with a population of four hundred thousand souls.
The great expedition against Russia, in 1812, was called by Napoleon his second Polish war. It was his professed object to restrain Russia, and to circumscribe her limits. A proclamation to the Poles promised the restoration of their state, with larger boundaries even than under their last king; and the Poles rose with their wonted enthusiasm. It was a point of honour with their young men to serve in the army; the middling class would accept no pay, while the rich lavished their fortunes, and the women their ornaments, for the defence and restoration of their nation.
Yet, when in June, Napoleon entered Wilna, the Lithuanians showed little disposition to unite with their brethren of Warsaw; and the emperor's answers, as to the future condition of Poland, were too vague to inspire confidence. The eventual defeat of Napoleon, brought the Russians into the pursuit, and the Grand Dutchy was occupied by their armies.
In the close of 1814, the fate of Poland was at issue on the deliberations of the congress of Vienna. While Prussia demanded the cession of all Saxony, Russia claimed Poland, including Austrian Galicia. Encountering strong opposition, the emperor Alexander in his turn formed a Polish army, and issued a proclamation to the Poles, inviting them to arm under his auspices for the defence of their country, and the preservation of their political independence, while Austria, Great Britain, and France, formed a treaty for resistance. But for the return of Napoleon from Elba, the congress of Vienna would probably have issued in a war between its members. A compromise ensued, it conformity with which, Russia retained nearly all which in had gained of Prussia in the peace of Tilsit, and of Austria in 1809, and further acquired all the Grand Dutchy of Warsaw, except Posen, which fell to Prussia, and Cracau, which was left in neutral independence. Constitutions were promised to the respective parts, and have been, after a manner, conceded.
The constitution issued for Poland, November 27, 1815, by the emperor Alexander, was an attempt to conciliate the liberal sympathies of the people. Religious equality, freedom of the press, security of personal liberty against arbitrary procedures, the responsibility of all magistrates, and an assurance of all civil and military offices in Poland to Poles, were the leading features of the compact. The power of making treaties, of declaring war, of controlling the armed force, and of pardoning, was assured to the king; but all his commands were to be countersigned by a minister, who should be held responsible in case of any violation of the constitution. The diet, composed of two chambers, was to be assembled once in two years; the king had theinitiativeand aveto.
At the opening of the diet, April 27, 1817, Alexander declaredhis intention of gradually introducing into his immense empire, the salutary influence of liberal institutions; 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 assemblies 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 passion for national existence, that the present revolution has been supported with enthusiasm. The world will do honour to this last effort of determined patriotism; but the liberties of Poland will be reconquered only by the gradual progress of the moral power of free-opinions, which is advancing in the majesty of its strength; over the ruins of centuries and the graves of nations.
[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.ByJohn V. L. M'Mahon. Baltimore: 1831. Vol. 1. pp. 539.
The history of Maryland under the proprietary government is little known, says our author, even to her own people. Yet, as that government was the mould of her present institutions, the school of discipline for her revolutionary men, it is to its history we must go back for just notions of both. The revolution was not wrought by a few master minds, miraculously born for the occasion, but was the natural development of a train of causes which leave us less surprised at our ancestors' manful and accordant resistance of usurpation, than at the strange ignorance of them which seems to have begot the unwise designs of the mother country.
Montesquieu has observed, with his usual antithesis, "In the infancy of societies, it is the leaders that create the institutions; afterwards, it is the institutions which make the leaders." Perhaps, the former event has in truth happened less often than received history would persuade us. The more dim the dawn of tradition, the oftener we find ascribed to the Lycurguses, the Numas, the Alfreds, either such original establishments or such fundamental changes as would seem to have created the civil or religious polity of their people anew. We know not how much they were indebted to precedent and concurrent circumstances; and thus obscurity may magnify their renown, as distant objects, according to a figure of our author's, are exaggerated to the eye in a misty morning. The vulgar, who do not trouble themselves with cavils, resolve the result they perceive into the effort of some moral hero, just as the Greeks referred to Hercules the feats which transcended the ordinary limits of physical prowess.
The same thing takes place in a less degree, at periods whose history is more authentically written. The leaders of revolutions may transmute, so to speak, into personal merit, some of the results which, more narrowly considered, are referrible to the pervading spirit and general movement of the occasion. To weigh justly these elements of their renown, is not invidiously to derogate from it, but only to vindicate the truth of history. It still leaves them the highest merit to which, perhaps, the leaders in any kind of reform can truly lay claim, that of seizing the spirit of their age, and employing and directing it with a just energy and discernment. As it has been said that Luther might have ineffectually preached the Reformation in the twelfth century, and Napoleon, if he had not been, in fact, but "the little corporal," might have been no more than a leader ofCondottieriin the fourteenth; so our revolutionary sages could hardly, in thecircumstances 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, theirTriariito sustain them, a nation, namely, accustomed to the discipline of liberty. The wave of opinion rolled high, and they had the praise of launching their barks on it, with strength and skill indeed, but yet with a propitious gale and a favouring current. The notices in the volume before us, of the character and history of the colonists of Maryland, show how the principles of liberty which they brought with them to "this rough, uncultivated world," (such is their own description of it,) they maintained with a uniform constancy and understanding. Though colonial dependence has seldom been less burdensome in point of fact than in their case, the abstract doctrines of political right were not on that account guarded with the less vigilance. Thus, in our author's language, "they were fitted for self-government before it came, and when it came, it sat lightly and familiarly upon them;" the first moments of its adoption being marked with little or none of that anarchy and licentiousness which mostly deform political emancipations. Their institutions had moulded them; a conclusion not more apparent from our colonial and revolutionary history, than apposite for estimating at least the immediate results of revolutions effected under moral circumstances less propitious. The political structure has often, as in our own case, been pulled down by an excusable impatience of the people; but seldom has it been repaired with such solidity, and just adaption to their wants.
We have said that the obscurity of history may have magnified the pretensions of some of its heroes; it is certain that it quite quenches the light of others. The state whose early transactions our author records, furnished its full share of the intelligent minds that contributed their impulse to the general movement of their time; and as the execution of his task has led him to a closer contemplation of their influence on its issue, he laments the comparative obscuration of merited fame, even in this brief lapse of time, in individuals who were the theme and boast of contemporaries. This is the law of our fate. As the series of events is prolonged, the greater part of the actors in them sink out of their place in the perspective, though their lesser elevation might be scarcely observable to their own age. In the twilight which falls on all past transactions, the rays of national recollections fade from summit to summit, and linger at length only on a few of the more "proudly eminent." Our author sketches some of these forgotten worthies in the melancholy spirit of a traveller who finds a stately column in the desert. With the reverence of "Old Mortality," he re-touches theinscription to the illustrious dead, that they may not wholly perish.
The first volume of the present work, the only one yet published, brings down the history of Maryland to the establishment of the state government. Besides a historical view of the transactions preceding this era, it contains, in an introduction, a view of the territorial limits of the colony as defined in the first grant to the proprietary, and of the disputes with neighbouring grantees by which they were successively retrenched. Two other chapters of the introduction are occupied with a sketch of the civil divisions of the state, and an essay on the sources of its laws. Appended to the historical sketch is a view of the distribution of the legislative power, of the organization of the two houses of assembly, their respective and collective powers, and the privileges of their members. This plan involves a critical inquiry into the political laws of the state, and a laborious examination of its records. The diligence with which the writer seems to have executed his task, is a voucher of his accuracy; and the body of information thus collected with painful research, will probably establish his work as one of authentic reference. This original collation of the materials from which history isdistilled, 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 withinconsiderablynarrower limits than those described in the original grant. By the charter which bears date the 20th of June, 1632, theprovince assigned to Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, had the following boundaries. On the south, a line drawn from the promontory on the Chesapeake, called Watkins's Point, to the ocean; on the east, the ocean, and the western margin of Delaware Bay and river, as far as the fortieth degree of latitude; on the north, a line drawn in that degree of latitude west, to the meridian of the true fountain of the Potomac; and thence, the western bank of that river to Smith's Point, and so by the shortest line to Watkins's Point. These limits, it is apparent, embrace the whole of the present state of Delaware; they comprehend also that part of Pennsylvania in which Chester lies, as far north as the Schuylkill, and a very considerable portion of Virginia. It may not be uninteresting to trace the controversies which resulted in this abridgment of territory, especially as it appears from Mr. M'Mahon's deduction of that with Virginia, that Maryland has a subsisting claim to a large and fertile portion of the latter state, lying between the south and north branches of the Potomac.
The proprietary's first contest, was with a personage who makes some figure in the early history of his colony, and who, though painted with little flattery by its chroniclers, seems to have possessed some talents, enterprise, and courage. This was the notorious William Clayborne, who, before the grant to Baltimore was carved out of the limits of Virginia, had made some settlements on Kent Island, in the Chesapeake, under the authority of that province. Clayborne defended his claims with pertinacity for several years, and was not brought to submission to the new grantee, till he had harassed the infant colony with commotions, and even prepared to make depredations. He subsequently gratified his resentment by exciting a rebellion, and driving the proprietary's governor to Virginia. That province also for some time persisted to assert its dominion over Maryland, in defiance of the royal grant; and, when that question was at length decided in the proprietary's favour, it was next necessary to fix the actual boundary between the two provinces, a matter not adjusted till June, 1668, when the existing southern line of Maryland was finally determined.
The proprietary's next territorial controversy had a greater duration, and a less fortunate issue, being prolonged nearly a century, and resulting in the dismemberment of a portion of his fairest and most fertile territory. It must be mentioned, that the charter of Maryland extended its northern boundary to the southern limit of what was then called New England. In the intermediate territory between the actual settlements of the two, the Dutch and the Swedes had planted some colonies and trading-houses on the banks of the Delaware Bay and river, in what is now the state of Delaware. The Swedish establishments werereduced by the Dutch in 1655, and appended, together with their own, in the same quarter, to the government of New Netherlands; on the English conquest of which, and the grant of them by Charles II. to his brother, the Duke of York, the settlements on the Delaware became dependencies on the government of New-York, and, though clearly within the limits of Maryland, being south of the latitude of 40°, remained so until the grant to Penn, and the foundation of Pennsylvania in 1681. The southern boundary of Penn's grant, was somewhat loosely established to be "a circle of twelve miles drawn round New Castle, to the beginning of the fortieth degree of latitude." Penn was eager to adjust his boundary with Maryland; but when it was found, on an interview between his agent and Baltimore, at Chester, then called Upland, that Chester itself was south of the required latitude, and that the boundaries of Maryland would extend to the Schuylkill, he very earnestly applied himself, to obtain from the Duke of York, a grant of the Delaware settlements mentioned above. In contravention of the claims of Baltimore, a conveyance was made to him in 1682, of the town of New Castle, with the district twelve miles round it, and also of the territory extending thence southward to Cape Henlopen.
Thus fortified, Penn was again eager to adjust the disputed boundary. The negotiations for this purpose, proving fruitless, were referred to the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, to whom Penn submits a case of hardship, morenaïfthan convincing. "I told him, (Baltimore,) that it was not the love of the land, but of the water;—that he abounded in what I wanted,—and that there was no proportion in the concern, because the thing insisted on was ninety-nine times more valuable to me, than to him." It must be recollected, that this reasonable claim involved nothing less than Baltimore's entire exclusion from Delaware Bay, and greatly abridged his territory on the coast of the ocean. Another objection was urged by Penn, which finally governed the award of the commissioners, who, in 1685, decided that Baltimore's grant "included only lands uncultivated, and inhabited by savages;" whereas the territory along the Delaware had been settled by Christians antecedently to his grant,—a decision, by the way, inconsistent with the previous ejectment of Clayborne, and with the determination in Baltimore's favour, of the jurisdiction claimed over his grant by Virginia. They directed also, for the avoidance of future contests, that the peninsula between the two bays, should be divided into two equal parts, by a line drawn from the latitude of Cape Henlopen, to the fortieth degree of latitude,—the western portion to belong to Baltimore, and the eastern to His Majesty, and, by consequence, to Penn. This is the origin of the eastern boundary ofMaryland, which was thus cut off from the ocean, on the greater portion of her eastern side.
Her northern boundary still remained to be adjusted; but the embarrassments of both proprietaries with the crown, caused the controversy in this quarter to sleep nearly half a century. The mutual border outrages which meanwhile disturbed thedebatableground, led to the compact of the 10th of May, 1732, between Baltimore and the younger Penns, which provided, in the first place, for the extension of a line northerly, through the middle of the peninsula, so as to form a tangent to a circle drawn round Newcastle, with a radius of twelve miles. The northern boundary of Maryland was also to begin, not at the fortieth degree of latitude, but at a point fifteen miles south thereof; and in case the tangent before described should not extend to that point, it was to be prolonged by a line drawn due north from the point where the tangent met the circle; thus was ascertained the eastern extremity of the northern boundary line, which was thence to be extended due west. New obstacles intervened, however, to the execution of this agreement, which was subsequently carried into chancery, but on which no decision was had until 1750; and in the interval, some frightful excesses were committed by the borderers on both sides. The house of one Cresap, in Maryland, was fired by a body of armed men from Pennsylvania, who attempted to murder him, his family, and several of his neighbours, as they escaped from the flames. In retaliation, a little army of three hundred Marylanders invaded the county of Lancaster, and took summary measures to coerce submission to the government of Maryland. These mutual outrages occasioned, in 1739, an order from the king in council for the establishment of a provisional line; and in 1750, Chancellor Hardwicke pronounced a decree, which ordered the specific execution of the agreement of 1732. But Frederic, Lord Baltimore, the heir of Charles, with whom the agreement had been made, contending that he was protected from its operation by certain anterior conveyances in strict settlement, objected to the execution of the decree, until finally, and pending the chancery proceedings, a new agreement was entered into on the 4th of July, 1760, between himself and the Penns, which adopted that of 1732, and also the decree of 1750. Commissioners were appointed to run the lines accordingly, who in November, 1768, reported their proceedings to the proprietaries, and definitively adjusted the eastern and northern boundaries of Maryland, in the terms of the agreement before described. The northern line, from the names of the surveyors, is commonly known as "Mason and Dixon's line," so often referred to as the demarcation of the slave states from the others.
This controversy was not terminated in the north, when theproprietary 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 commonterminusof his western and southern boundaries. A subsequent grant from the crown had conveyed to certain persons all the tract between the heads and courses of the Rappahannock and Potomac, and the Chesapeake Bay. This grant, which comprehended what was commonly known as "The Northern Neck" of Virginia, and which carried only the ownership of the soil, the jurisdiction remaining in Virginia, was finally vested solely in Lord Culpepper, and from him descended to his daughter, who marrying Lord Fairfax, the property in it passed to the Fairfax family. As it called only for lands on the south side of the Potomac, there was nothing on the face of it inconsistent with the call of the charter of Maryland; but the under-grants from Fairfax were soon pushed so far west as to raise the question of the true fountain of the Potomac. Commissioners appointed by Virginia to ascertain, as between that state and Fairfax, the limits of their respective ownership, determined the North Branch to be the fountain of that river; whereas, from information given to the council of Maryland, in 1753, by Colonel Cresap, one of the settlers in the eastern extremity of the state, it appeared, from its having the longest course, and from other circumstances, that the South Branch was to be considered the principal stream, and its source the true source of the Potomac. The British council for plantation affairs had, as early as 1745, on the petition of Fairfax, made a report, adopting the North Branch as such; but the proprietary of Maryland, who viewed his rights as disregarded in this decision, continued to assert his claim up to the first fountain of the Potomac, "be that where it might." Various circumstances prevented his bringing the matter before the king in council; and so the question hung, till the Revolution substituted thestateof Virginia for the British crown, as one party in the controversy, and that of Maryland as the other.
In the constitution of the former, adopted in 1776, there is an express recognition of the right of Maryland "to all the territory contained within its charter;" but the actual boundary was not brought into negotiation till 1795. New delays then interposed, and though Virginia named commissioners in the matter in 1801, she restricted their powers to the adjustment merely of the western line, unwilling to allow even a discussion of her claim to the territory between the two branches. The negociation consequently dropped for the time, and Maryland, wearied, it would seem, with various efforts to reclaim the territory south of the North Branch, agreed, at length, by an act passed in 1818, to adopt as the terminus, the most western source of that stream. But a new obstacle, interposed by Virginia, defeated the adjustmentunder this concession. Her commissioners were instructed to commence the boundary "at a stone, planted by Lord Fairfax on the head waters of the Potomac," being thus restricted to the old adjustment between Fairfax and the crown; those of Maryland were directed to begin at the true or most western source of the North Branch, be that where it might. Fairfax's stone, our author says, is not planted in fact at the extreme western source. The proffer of Maryland, by the act of 1818, to confine herself to the North Branch, being thus rejected by Virginia, she is remitted apparently to her original rights, which comprehend the sovereignty of all the territory between these two streams of the Potomac, and call for the South Branch as her south-western boundary in that quarter. In a letter of Mr. Cooke, then a distinguished lawyer of Maryland, and one of the commissioners named in 1795, to adjust the point, the territory in contest is stated to contain 462,480 acres; and he remarks, that prior occupancy gives, in such a case, no title to one party, and no length of time can bar the claim of the other.
We have thus abridged the author's copious and distinct account of the territorial wars, which resulted in the defeat of the proprietaries of Maryland on two parts of their frontier, and have left a legacy of debate on a third. We must now return to the era of the first grantee and proprietary, and take up the line of the general events of the colonial history.
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, principally 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 associates. 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 circumstance 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,CaptainClayborne 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 dischargedwith 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 associates. 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 circumstances 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 assailed, 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 wayfor the more staple commodities, such assilk. 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 commissionas 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 passed 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 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 subjectof 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, aquo warranto, did not the less encounter an enemy in his Catholic successor, by whom, in 1687, aquo warrantowas 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. Thecityof St. Mary's, which numbered fifty or sixty houses in two or threeyears 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 ofjus 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 undisputedpossessionof 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 allpersons 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 BattleCreek. 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 fewmonthslonger, he had brought it toperfection." 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—