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The Catholic Democracy of America, 45
one 1 which will reflect unfading glory on that State as long as
liberty is cherished in the hearts of men." It runs:—
" Whereas the enforcing of conscience in matters of religion hath
frequently fallen out to be of dangerous consequence in those commonwealths
where it has been practised, and for the more quiet and peaceable
government of this province, and the better to preserve mutual love and
unity amongst the inhabitants, no person whatsoever within this province
professing to believe in Jesus Christ shall be anyways troubled or molested
for his religion, nor in the free exercise thereof, nor anyway compelled to
the belief or exercise of any other religion against his consent."
If the grim and narrow religious tests of the New England
governments be compared with the Maryland profession of
Christianity it will not be a matter of wonder that the Protestant
historian we have quoted, himself a New Englander,
declared that here " Conscience was without restraint."
The same eminent writer proceeds to describe how the disfranchised
friends of prelacy from Massachusetts, and the
Puritans from Virginia, were welcomed to equal liberty of
conscience and political rights in Roman Catholic Maryland,
and he tells the shameful story how, five years later, when the
Puritans gained the ascendancy in the colony, they had neither
the gratitude to respect the rights of the government by which
they had been hospitably received, nor the magnanimity to
continue the toleration which alone had enabled them to
reside in Maryland. It was now the turn of the Puritan
majority to pass " an Act concerning religion," which forbade
liberty of conscience to be extended to " Popery, prelacy or
licentiousness of opinion."
Nearly forty years later this contraband § prelacy " became
predominant, and in 1692 the Assembly established the Anglican
Church in Maryland, erecting parishes throughout the
colony, and levying a tax on all citizens for the support of the
clergy, and in 1704 was passed "an Act to prevent the increase
of Popery in the province," which inter alia enabled a child
born of Catholic parents, on becoming a Protestant, to exact
from its father in his lifetime the share of his property which
would otherwise devolve upon it after his death. Roman