olonies, with
three exceptions--the earliest Virginia, the latest Georgia, and the
Catholic community of Maryland--were formed by Dissenters,[8] exiles
themselves from persecution, but not necessarily forbearing to others,
and, in the case of the New England Puritans, bitterly intolerant. It is
interesting to observe that the Quakers and the Catholics, men standing
at the opposite poles of theology, set the highest example of tolerance.
Quaker Pennsylvania enforced absolute liberty of conscience, and Quakers
in all the Provinces worked for religious harmony and freedom. Catholic
Maryland, as long as its government remained in Catholic hands, and
under the guidance of the wise and liberal Proprietary, Lord Baltimore,
pursued the same policy, and attracted members of sects persecuted in
New England.[9] The parallel with Ireland is significant. At the end of
the seventeenth century, when a quarrel was raging between the Crown and
Massachusetts over the persecution of Quakers in that Colony, and for a
further period in the eighteenth century, Quaker missionaries and
settlers were conducting a campaign of revivalism in Ireland with no
molestation from the Catholics, though with intermittent obstruction
from magistrates and Protestant clergy. Wesleyans received the same
sympathetic treatment.[10] The tolerance shown by Irish Catholics, in
spite of terrible provocation, is acknowledged by all reputable
historians. Nor was Protestant intolerance, whether Anglican or
Nonconformist, of a deeper dogmatic shade than anywhere else in the
King's dominions. But in Ireland it was political, economic, and social,
while in America it was purely theological, and, moreover, purely
American. The Episcopalian ascendancy in Ireland represented foreign
interests, and therefore struck against Dissent as well as against
Popery, and estranged both. The root of the American trouble, leading to
the separation of the Colonies, was political and wholly unconnected
with religion. The root of the Irish trouble, adventitiously connected
with religion, lay, and lies still, in the Irish political system. Other
evils were transient and curable; this was permanent. The Penal Code was
eventually relaxed; the disabilities of the Dissenters were eventually
removed; the commercial servitude was abolished, but the political
system _in essentials_ has never been changed. Let us see what it was
and how it worked at the period we are considering, again by comparison