ted to the King for his approval,
nor had he the important _right of taxation_, which was expressly
relinquished. In the early legislation of Maryland, this supposed
exclusive right of proposing laws by the Proprietary, was soon tested by
mutual rejections, both by the legislative Assembly and by Cecilius, of
the Acts, which each had separately passed or prepared.

But the other clause, touching "God's Holy Rights and the true Christian
Religion," was one, in regard to the practical interpretation of which,
I apprehend, there was never a moment's doubt in the mind either of the
people or of the Proprietary. It is a radiant gem in the antique setting
of the charter. It is the glory of Calvert. It is the utter obliteration
of prejudice among all who professed Christianity. Toleration was
unknown in the old World; but this was more than toleration, for it
declared freedom at least to _Christians_,--yet it was not perfect
freedom, for it excluded that patient and suffering race--that chosen
people--who, to the disgrace even of republican Maryland, within my
recollection, were bowed down by political disabilities.

I am aware that many historians consider the religious freedom of
Maryland as originating in subsequent legislation, and claim the act of
1649 as the statute of toleration. I do not agree with them. Sir George
Calvert had been a Protestant;--he became a Catholic. As a Catholic, he
came to Virginia, and in the colony where he sought to settle, he found
himself assailed, for the first time in his life, by Protestant
virulence and incapacitation. He was now, himself, about to become a
Lord Proprietor. The sovereign who granted his charter was a Protestant,
and moreover, the king of a country whose established religion was
Protestant. The Protestant monarch, of course, could not _grant_
anything which would compromise him with his Protestant subjects; yet
the Catholic nobleman, who was to take the beneficiary charter, could
not _receive_, from his Protestant master, a grant which would assail
the conscience of co-religionists over whom he was, in fact, to be a
sovereign. In England, the King had no right to interfere with the
Church of England; but in America, which was a vacant, royal domain, his
paramount authority permitted him to abolish invidious ecclesiastical
distinctions. Calvert, the Catholic, must have been less than a man, if
he forgot his fellow sufferers and their disabilities when he drew his
charter. H