Catholics and Puritans were not so happily
situated, and, accordingly, they sought, in the new world an exemption
from the disabilities and persecutions they experienced at home. Can it
be credited, that, under such vexations, the Catholic Lord Baltimore
would have drawn a charter, or, his Catholic son and successor, sent
forth a colony, under a Catholic Governor, when the fundamental law,
under which alone he exercised his power, did not secure liberty to him
and his co-religionists? It is simply necessary to ask the question, in
order to demonstrate the absurdity of such a supposition.

III: 1634.--If we show, then, that Catholic conscience was untrammeled
in Maryland, I think we may fairly assume the general ground as
satisfactorily proved. What was, briefly, the first movement of this
sect, under the Lord Proprietary's auspices? When Lord Caecilius was
planning his colonial expedition in 1633, one of his earliest cares was
to apply to the Order of Jesus for clergymen to attend the Catholic
planters and settlers, and to convert the natives. Accordingly, under
the sanction of the Superior, Father White joined the emigrants,
_although, under previous persecutions in England, he had been sent into
perpetual banishment, to return from which subjected the culprit to the
penalty of death_! These facts are set forth, at page 14 of the 2nd
volume of Challoner's Memoirs. Historia Anglo-Bavara, S. J. Rev. Dr.
Oliver's collections illustrative of the Scotch, English and Irish
Jesuits, page 222, and in the essay on the Early Maryland Missions, by
Mr. B. U. Campbell. Fathers Andrew White and John Altham, and two lay
brothers, named John Knowles and Thomas Gervase, accompanied the first
expedition, and were active agents in consecrating the possession of the
soil, and converting _Protestant immigrants_ as well as heathen natives.
The colony, therefore, cannot properly be called a Protestant one, when
its _only_ spiritual guides were Catholics; and consequently if it was
more of a Catholic than a Protestant emigration, it must, by legal
necessity, have been free from the moment it quitted the shores of
England. If the Catholic was free, all were free.

IV: 1637.--Our next authority, in regard to the _early interpretation_
of religious rights in Maryland, is found in a passage in Chalmers's
Political Annals, page 235. "In the oath," says he, "taken by the
Governor and Council, _between_ the years 1637 and 1657, there was the
follo