Anglo-American colonies. It is
not less in harmony with the supposition of King Charles' regard for the
rights of his Anglo-Catholic brethren, who subsequently came to St.
Mary's, than with that generally admitted sincerity of Lord Baltimore,
which cannot be reconciled to the notion of his accepting a grant
directly opposed to the principles or to the practice of his own faith.
It is supported by the fact that the object of the Calverts, in asking
for the charter, was to found a colony, including the members
respectively of the English and of the Roman Church--an object which, we
cannot doubt, was known to the King who signed the instrument. And it is
fully confirmed by the action of the provincial Legislature--the best
commentary upon the spirit of the charter--and by one of the first
judicial decisions still preserved upon the records.

Such is the meaning of the charter historically interpreted, and such
the earliest principle and practice of the government--freedom to the
Anglican and freedom to the Roman Catholic--a freedom of conscience, not
allowed, but exacted. A freedom, however, of a wider sort springs forth
at the birth of the colony--not demanded by that instrument, but
permitted by it--not graven upon the tables of stone, or written upon
the pages of the statute-book, but conceived in the very bosom of the
Proprietary and of the original pilgrims--not a formal or constructive,
but a living, freedom--a freedom of the most practical sort. It is the
freedom which it remained for them, and for them alone, either to grant
or to deny--a freedom embracing within its range, and protecting under
its banner, all those who were believers in Jesus Christ. And the grant
of this freedom is that which has placed the Proprietary among the first
law-reformers of the world, and Maryland in advance of every State upon
the continent.

Our ancestors had seen the evils of intolerance; they had tasted the
bitter cup of persecution. Happy is he whose moral sense has not been
corrupted by bigotry, whose heart is not hardened by misfortune, whose
soul--the spring of generous impulse--has never been dried up by the
parching adversities of life! The founders of Maryland brought with
them, in the Ark and the Dove, the elements of that liberty they had so
much desired, themselves, in the Old World, and which to others in the
New, of a different faith, they were too good and too just to deny.

Upon the banks of the St. Mary's, in the s