The Indian chief, to whom he addressed his proposition of occupying a portion of the country, answered at first with a sullen affectation of indifference,--the result most probably of aversion to the measure and of conscious inability to resist it, that he would not bid the English go, neither would he bid them stay, but that he left them to their own discretion.

3. The liberality and courtesy, however, of the governor's demeanor succeeded at length in conciliating the Indian's regard so powerfully, that he not only established a friendly league between the colonists and his own people, but persuaded the other neighboring tribes to accede to the treaty, and warmly declared, "I love the English so well, that, if they should go about to kill me, if I had so much breath as to ask to speak, I would command my people not to revenge my death; for I know they would not do such a thing, except it were through my own fault."

4. Having purchased the rights of the aborigines at a price which gave them perfect satisfaction, the colonists obtained possession of a large district, including an Indian town, which they forthwith occupied, and distinguished by the name of St. Mary's. It was not till their numbers had undergone a considerable increase that they judged it necessary to frame a code of laws and establish their political constitution. They lived for some time in a social union, resembling the domestic regimen of a patriarchal family; and con

fined their attention to the providing of food and habitations for themselves and the associates by whom they expected to be reinforced.

5. The lands which were ceded to them yielded a ready increase, because they had already undergone the discipline of Indian villages; and this circumstance, as well as the proximity of Virginia, which now afforded an abundant supply of the necessaries of life, enabled the colonists of Maryland to escape the ravages of that calamity which had afflicted the infancy of, and nearly proved fatal to, the other settlements of the English in America. So luxuriant were their crops, that, within two years after their arrival in the province, they exported ten thousand bushels of Indian corn to New England, for the purchase of salted fish and other provisions.

6. The tidings of their safe and comfortable establishment, conspiring with the uneasiness experienced by the Roman Catholics in England, induced considerable numbers of the professors of this faith to follow the original emigrants to Maryland; and no efforts of wisdom or generosity were spared by Lord Baltimore to promote the population and the happiness of the colony. The transportation of people and of necessary stores and provisions, during the first two years, cost him upward of forty thousand pounds.

7. To every emigrant he assigned fifty acres of land in absolute fee; and with a liberality unparalleled in

that age, he united a general recognition of Christianity as the established faith of the land, with an exclusion of the political predominance or superiority of any one particular sect or denomination of Christians. This wise administration soon converted a desolate wilderness into a flourishing commonwealth,2 enlivened by industry and adorned by civilization. It is a proof at once of the success of his policy, and of the prosperity and happiness of the colonists, that, a very few years after the first occupation of the province, they granted to their proprietary a large subsidy of tobacco, in grateful acknowledgment of his liberality and beneficence. Similar tributes continued, from time to time, to attest the merit of the proprietary, and the attachment of the people.

8. In the Assembly a magnanimous attempt was made to preserve the peace of the colony, by extinguishing within its limits one of the most fertile sources of human strife and animosity. It had been proclaimed from the very beginning by the proprietary that religious toleration should constitute one of the fundamental principles of the social union over which he presided; and the Assembly of the province composed chiefly of Roman Catholics, now proceeded, by a memorable Act concerning Religion, to interweave this noble principle into its legislative constitutions (1649).

9. The statute commenced with a preamble, declar ing that the enforcement of the conscience had been of

dangerous consequence in those countries wherein it had been practiced; and ordained that, thereafter, no persons professing to believe in Jesus Christ should be molested on account of their faith, or denied the free. exercise of their particular modes of worship; that persons molesting any individual, on account of his religious tenets or ecclesiastical practices, should pay treble damages to the party aggrieved, and twenty shillings to the proprietary; that those who should reproach their neighbors with opprobrious names or epithets, inferring religious distinctions, should forfeit ten shilling to the persons so insulted; that any one speaking reproachfully against the blessed Virgin or the apostles should forfeit five pounds; and that blasphemy against God should be punished with death.

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10. By the enactment of this statute, the Catholic planters of Maryland procured to their adopted country the distinguished praise of being the first of the American States in which toleration was established by law; and graced their peculiar faith with the signal and unwonted merit of protecting those rights of conscience which no other Christian association in the world was yet sufficiently humane and enlightened to recognize. It is a striking and instructive spectacle to behold at this period the Puritans persecuting their Protestant brethren in New England; the Protestant Episcopalians inflicting similar gor and injustice on

the Puritans in Virginia; and the Catholics, against whom all the others were combined, forming in Maryland a sanctuary where Christians of every denomination might worship, yet none might oppress, and where even Protestants sought refuge from Protestant intolerance.

I UM'-BRAGE, offense.

COM'-MON-WEALTH, the common
good or happiness; that form
of government best suited to
procure the public good.
SUB-SI-DY, Supply given to aid
the noprietary, by which name

the government of Maryland was formerly known.

4 EC-CLE-SI-AS-TI-CAL, pertaining to the Church.

• OP-PRO-BRI-OUS, contemptuous; scurrilous.

EP'-I-THETS, words used in reproach.

XLIV. THE GOOD OLD TIMES.

NEALE.

1. Oh! the good old times of England, ere in her evil

day,

From their Holy Faith, and her ancient rites, her people

fell away;

When her gentlemen had hands to give, and her yeomen hearts to feel;

And they raised full many a bead-house, but never a bastile;

And the poor they honored, for they knew that He who for us bled,

Had seldom, when He came on earth, whereon to lay His head;