was a member of the commission fruitlessly sent by
the continental congress to Canada for the purpose of persuading the
Canadians to join the thirteen revolting colonies. From 1776 to 1779 he
sat in the continental congress, rendering important services as a
member of the board of war, and signing on the 2nd of August 1776 the
Declaration of Independence, though he had not been elected until the
day on which that document was adopted. He out-lived all of the other
signers. He was a member of the United States Senate from 1789 to 1792.
From 1801 until his death, at Baltimore, on the 14th of November 1832,
he lived in retirement, his last public act being the formal ceremony of
starting the construction of the Baltimore and Ohio railway (July 4,
1828). In politics, after the formation of parties, he was a staunch
Federalist. Of unusual ability, high character and great wealth, he
exercised a powerful influence, particularly among his co-religionists
of the Roman Catholic faith, and he used it to secure the independence
of the colonies and to establish a stable central government.

See the _Life_ by Kate Mason Rowland (1898).

CARROLL, JOHN (1735-1815), American Roman Catholic prelate, was born at
Upper Marlborough, Prince George's county, Maryland, on the 8th of
January 1735, the son of wealthy Catholic parents and a cousin of
Charles Carroll "of Carrollton." He was educated at St Omer's in
Flanders, becoming a novitiate in the Society of Jesus in 1753, and then
at the Jesuit college in Liege, being ordained priest in 1769 and
becoming professor of philosophy and theology. In 1771 he became a
professed father of the Society of Jesus and professor at Bruges. As
tutor to the son of Lord Stourton, he travelled through Europe in
1772-1773. After the papal brief of the 21st of July 1773 suppressed the
Society of Jesus, he accompanied its English members then in Flanders
to England. In 1774 he returned to America, and set to work at a mission
at Rock Creek, Montgomery county, Maryland, where his mother lived. He
shared the feeling for independence growing among the American
colonists, foreseeing that it would mean greater religious freedom. In
1776, at the request of the continental congress, he accompanied
Benjamin Franklin, Charles Carroll and Samuel Chase on their mission to
secure the aid or neutrality of the French-Canadians, and though
unsuccessful it gained for him the friendship of Franklin. In 1783 he
took a