ter upon this
moth-eaten claim for fear of merely repeating what others have more
exhaustively stated. Catholics seem to forget what Bishop Perry has
called attention to: "The Maryland charter of toleration was the gift of
an English monarch, the nominal head of Church of England, and the
credit of any merit in this donative is due the giver, and not the
recipient, of the kingly grant." Prof. Fisher has called attention to
another fact: "Only two references to religion are to be found in the
Maryland charter. The first gives to the proprietary patronage and
advowson of churches. The second empowers him to erect churches,
chapels, and oratories, which he may cause to be consecrated according
to the ecclesiastical laws of England. The phraseology is copied from
the Avalon patent (drawn up in England in 1623 for a portion of the
colony of Newfoundland) that was given to Sir George Calvert (first
Lord Baltimore) when he was a member of the Church of England. Yet the
terms were such that recognition of that Church as the established form
of religion does not prevent the proprietary and the colony from the
exercise of full toleration toward other Christian bodies." (_Colonial
Era_, p. 64.) The Maryland Colony was admittedly organized as a
business venture, and its original members were largely Protestants. It
was to secure the financial interests of the proprietary that tolerance
was shown the colonists. Prof. Fisher says: "Any attempt to proscribe
Protestants would have proved speedily fatal to the existence of the
colony. In a document which emanated partly from Baltimore himself, it
is declared to be evident that the distinctive privileges 'usually
granted to ecclesiastics of the Roman Catholic Church by Catholic
princes in their own countries could not be possibly granted hero (in
Maryland) without great offense to the King and State of England.'" (p.
63.) We have not the space in this review of Catholic charges and claims
to go into the religious history of the Maryland Colony as we should
like to do; otherwise we should explain the machinations of the Jesuits
in this colony, and prove that what tolerance Maryland in its early days
enjoyed it owed to the preponderating influence of non-Catholic forces.

It requires an unusual amount of courage for a Catholic writer at this
late day to parade his Church as the mother and protectress of religious
liberty and tolerance. Any person who has but a smattering knowledge of
the h