The pregnant cause of dissensions in Carolina could not be removed till the question of powers should be definitively settled. The proprietaries were willing to believe that the cause existed in the want of dignity and character in the governor. That affairs might be more firmly established, James Colleton, a brother of a proprietary, was appointed governor, with the rank of landgrave and an endowment of forty-eight thousand acres of land; but when, in 1686, he met the colonial parliament which had been elected before his arrival, a majority refused to acknowledge the binding force of the constitutions. By a violent act of power, Colleton, like Cromwell in a similar instance, excluded the refractory members from the parliament. These, in their turn, protested against any measures which might be adopted by the remaining minority.

A new parliament, in 1687, was still more intractable; and the "standing laws" which they adopted were negatived by the court of the proprietaries. The strife between the parties extended to all their relations. When Colleton endeavored to collect quit-rents not only on cultivated fields, but on wild lands, the assembly, imprisoning the secretary of the province and seizing the records, defied the governor and his patrons.

Colleton resolved on one last desperate effort, and, in 1689, pretending danger from Indians or Spaniards, called out the militia and declared martial law. The assembly had no doubt of its duty to protect the country against a military despotism. The English revolution of 1688 was therefore imitated on the banks of the Ashley and Cooper. In 1690, soon after William and Mary had been proclaimed, a meeting of the representatives of South Carolina disfranchised Colleton, and banished him from the province.

CHAPTER IX.

MARYLAND AFTER THE RESTORATION.

THE progress of Maryland under the proprietary government was tranquil and rapid. Its staple was tobacco. It was vainly attempted to create towns by statute; each plantation was a world within itself. Its laborers were in part white indented servants, whose term of service was limited by persevering legislation; in part negro slaves, whose importation was favored both by English cupidity and by provincial statutes. The appointing power to nearly every office in the counties as well as in the province was not with the people, and the judiciary was beyond their control; the taxes imposed by the county officers were burdensome alike from their amount and the manner of their levy.

At the restoration, the authority of Philip Calvert, the proprietary's deputy, was promptly and quietly recognised. Fendall, the former governor, who had obeyed the popular will as paramount to the authority of Baltimore, was convicted of treason. His punishment was mild; a wise clemency veiled the incipient strife between the people and their sovereign under a general amnesty; but Maryland was not placed beyond the influence of the ideas which that age of revolution had set in motion.

The administration of Maryland was marked by conciliation and humanity. To foster industry, to promote union, to cherish religious peace-these were the honest purposes of Lord Baltimore during his long supremacy. The persecuted and the unhappy thronged to his domains. The white laborer rose rapidly to the condition of a free proprietor; the female emigrant was sure to improve her condition. From France

came Huguenots; from Germany, from Holland, from Sweden, from Finland, it may be, though most rarely, from Piedmont, and even Bohemia, the children of misfortune sought protection under the tolerant sceptre of the Roman Catholic, and were made citizens with equal franchises. The people called Quakers met for religious worship publicly and without interruption; and with secret satisfaction George Fox relates that members of the legislature and the council, persons of quality, and justices of the peace, were present at a large and very heavenly meeting. Once the Indian "emperor," attended by his "kings," listened to his evening disAt a later day, the heir of the province came to an assembly of Quakers. But the refusal to perform military duty subjected them to fines and imprisonment; the refusal to take an oath sometimes involved a forfeiture of property; nor was it before 1688 that indulgence was fully conceded.

course.

In 1662, Charles, the eldest son of the proprietary, came to reside in his patrimony. He visited the banks of the Delaware, and struggled to extend the limits of his jurisdiction. A duty was levied on the tonnage of every vessel that arrived. The Indian nations were pacified, and their rights, subordination, and commerce defined. By acts of compromise between Lord Baltimore and the representatives of the people, his power to raise taxes was precisely limited, and the mode of paying quit-rents established on terms favorable to the colony; while, on the other hand, a custom of two shillings a hogshead was levied on all exported tobacco, of which a moiety was appropriated to the defence of the gov ernment; the residue became conditionally the revenue of the proprietary.

The declining life of Cecilius Lord Baltimore, the father of Maryland, the tolerant legislator, was blessed with prosperity. The colony which he had planted in youth crowned his old age with its gratitude. A firm supporter of preroga tive, a friend to the Stuarts, a member of the Roman church, he established an incipient equality among sects. His benevolent designs were the fruit of his personal character, his proprietary interests, and the necessity of his position. He died,

in November, 1675, after a supremacy of more than fortythree years.

The death of Cecilius recalled to England the heir of the province, who had administered its government for fourteen years with a moderation which had been rewarded by the increasing prosperity of his dominions. Previous to his departure, the code of laws received a thorough revision; the memorable act of toleration was confirmed. Virginia had, in 1670, prohibited the importation of felons until the king or privy council should reverse the order. In Maryland, six years later, "the importation of convicted persons" was absolutely prohibited without regard to the will of the king or the English parliament, and, in 1692, the prohibition was renewed. The established revenues of the proprietary were continued.

As Lord Baltimore sailed for England, the seeds of discontent were already germinating. The office of proprietary, a feudal principality with extensive manors in every county, was an anomaly; the doctrine of the paramount authority of an hereditary sovereign was at war with the spirit which emigration fostered, and the principles of civil equality naturally grew up in all the British settlements. An insurrection in Virginia found friends north of the Potomac, and the tendency toward more popular forms of administration could not be repressed. The assembly which was convened during the absence of the proprietary shared in this spirit; and the right of suffrage was established on a corresponding basis. On the return of the proprietary to the province, he annulled, by proclamation, the rule which changed the elective franchise, and, by an arbitrary ordinance, limited the right of suffrage to freemen possessing a freehold of fifty acres, or having a visible personal estate of forty pounds. No difference was made with respect to color. The restrictions, which for one hundred and twenty-one years successfully resisted the principle of universal suffrage among freemen of the Caucasian race, were introduced in the midst of civil commotion. Fendall, the old republican, was again planning schemes of insurrection, and even of independence; and it was said, "The maxims of the old Lord Baltimore will not do in the present age."

The insurrection was for the time repressed; but its symp

toms were the more alarming from the religious fanaticism with which the principle of popular power was combined. The discontents were increased by hostility toward papists; and, as Protestantism became a political sect, the proprietary government was in the issue easily subverted; for it had rested mainly on a grateful deference.

On the death of the first feudal sovereign of Maryland, the archbishop of Canterbury had been solicited to secure an establishment of the Anglican church, which clamored for favor in the province where it enjoyed equality. Misrepresentations were not spared. Maryland," said a clergyman of the church, "is a pest-house of iniquity." The cure for all evil was to be "an established support of a Protestant ministry." The prelates demanded not freedom, but privilege; an establishment to be maintained at the common expense of the province. Inflexible in his regard for freedom of worship, Lord Baltimore resisted.

The opposition to a feudal sovereign easily united with Protestant bigotry. When, in 1681, an insurrection was suppressed by methods of clemency and forbearance, the government was accused of partiality toward papists; and the Eng. lish ministry issued an order that offices of government in Maryland should be intrusted exclusively to Protestants. Roman Catholics were disfranchised in the province which they had planted.

With the colonists Lord Baltimore was at issue for his hereditary authority; with the English church for his religious faith; the unhappy effects of the navigation acts on colonial industry involved him in opposition to the commercial policy of England. His rights of jurisdiction had been disregarded. The custom-house of Maryland had been placed under the superintendence of the governor of Virginia; the resistance of the officers of Lord Baltimore to the invasion of his rights had led to quarrels and bloodshed, and a controversy with Virginia. The accession of James II. seemed an auspicious event for a Roman Catholic proprietary; but the first result from parliament was a new tax on the consumption of colonial produce in England; and the king, who meditated the subversion of British freedom, resolved with