wing clause, which ought to be administered to the rulers of every
country. 'I will not, by myself or any other, directly or indirectly,
trouble, molest or discountenance, any person professing to believe in
Jesus Christ, for or on account of his religion.'" This shows, that
"belief in Jesus Christ," under the constitutional guaranty of the
charter, anterior to the enactment of any colonial law by the Maryland
Assembly, secured sects from persecution. The language of the oath,
which was doubtless promulgated by the Lord Proprietor, is as broad as
the language of the charter. The statement of Chalmers has been held to
be indefinite as to whether the oath was taken _from_ 1637 to 1657, or,
whether it was taken in some years _between_ those dates; but, if the
historian did not mean to say that it had been administered _first_ in
1637, and continued afterwards, why would he not have specified any
other, as the beginning year, as well as 1637? The objection seems
rather hypercritical than plausible. Chalmers was too accurate a writer
to use dates so loosely, and inasmuch as he was an old Maryland lawyer
and custodian of the Maryland provincial papers, he had the best
opportunity to designate the precise date. A Governor's oath was a
regular and necessary official act. No one can doubt that an oath was
required of that personage in Maryland; and the oath in question, is
precisely such an one as Protestant settlers, in that age, might
naturally expect from a Catholic Magistrate, who, (even from motives of
the humblest policy,) would be willing to grant to others what he was
anxious to secure for himself. If ever there was a proper time for
perfect toleration, it was at this moment, when a Catholic became, _for
the first time in history_, a sovereign prince of the _first province_
of the British Empire!

Mr. Chalmers could not have confounded the oath whose language he cites,
with other oaths which the reader will find cited in the 2nd volume of
Bozman's History of Maryland, at pages 141, 608, 642. The oath prepared
for Stone in 1648, appears to have been an augmented edition of the one
quoted by Chalmers, and is so different in parts of its phraseology as
well as items, that it cannot have been mistaken by the learned
annalist. Bancroft, McMahon, Tyson, C. F. Mayer and B. U. Campbell,
adopt his statement as true.

V: 1638.--In regard to the early _practice of Maryland_ tribunals, on
the subject of tolerance, we have a strikin