of those who do go to these interesting and important fields are still such men as the Bishop describes.

The Rev. Dr. Hodge observes, that "the early ecclesiastical history of Maryland is very much of a riddle." It is easy, however, to solve the riddle, simply by considering what political party was uppermost in England at each particular period in the history of its changes. I have already stated that the colony of Maryland was established in the year 1634, by Lord Baltimore, a Roman Catholic nobleman, of the court of Charles the First, who designed it principally as a place of refuge and settlement for persons of the Romish communion. George Calvert, a brother of his lordship's, accordingly carried out to the new settlement about two hundred Roman Catholics, at its commencement, and many others must have gone out to it thereafter, during the seventeenth century; for, in the year 1694, there were six Roman Catholic priests resident in the colony. The Roman Catholics have always been exceedingly tolerant, when decidedly in the minority: Lord Baltimore accordingly established Christianity in Maryland agreeably to the old common law, as part and parcel of the law of the land, but without allowing pre-eminence to any particular sect.* In the year 1651, however, when the proprietary government was superseded by the authority of the English commonwealth, Papists and prelatists were unjustly excluded from this general toleration, by an act of the colonial legislature; although it does not appear that actual persecution was ever resorted to by the local authorities, either under that enactment, or after the re-establishment of the royal authority. For although it is stated, in reference to the latter of these periods, by the Rev. Dr. Hawks, an eminent Episcopalian minister of New York, the bitterness of whose feelings, however, is more easily dis

*Holmes' Annals.

cernible than the elegance of his style, that "there was a sort of wandering pretenders to preaching, that came from New England and other places, which deluded not only the Protestant dissenters from our church, but many churchmen themselves, by their extemporary prayers and preachments, for which they were admitted by the people, and got money of them;" "* it does not appear that these pretenders-in whom we are, of course, to recognize Puritan ministers from New England, and Presbyterians from Scotland and the north of Ireland-were actually banished from Maryland, as they had been from Virginia, in the year 1643, and as Dr. Hawks plainly insinuates they ought to have been there also. Nay, it even appears that the preachments of these pretenders had made a deep and general impression upon the colony of Maryland; for, when the Episcopal church was finally established in that colony, by act of the colonial legislature, under authority from England, in the year 1700,† that notorious insult upon the common sense and Christian feelings of the colonial community was perpetrated in favour of considerably less than a twentieth part of the whole population. In short, grievous as the Protestant Episcopal Establishment has ever been to the great majority of the people of Ireland, it has never been so outrageously opposed to the voice of the public, even in that misgoverned country, as it long was in the colonies of North America.

In the colony of William Penn, which, for a century and upwards, served as the principal inlet of the Scotch- Irish into the American colonies, there was no religious establishment-no pre-eminence of any particular denomination, from the first; and as South Carolina was originally colonized, in great measure, by Presbyterians

* Dr. Hawks, quoted by Dr. Hodge, Hist. Amer. Presb. Ch. † Holmes' Annals.

from Scotland and French Huguenots, it might perhaps have been deemed somewhat unreasonable and unnatural, if it had not unfortunately been the uniform practice of the times, to force an Episcopal establishment upon the people in that colony. In the year 1704, however, the governor, having doubtless received private instructions from England on the subject, and being sufficiently zealous himself to be very little scrupulous about the means of accomplishing so desirable an object, succeeded, by some manoeuvring, in getting a majority of members elected to the legislature, whom he could count upon for any thing. By an assembly constituted in this manner, the Church of England was not only voted the established church of the colony of South Carolina, but every future member of the legislature was bound to belong to its communion and to take the sacrament, before taking his seat, as a proof of the fact. This obnoxious measure, by which the religious liberties of a whole colony were voted away, was carried, after much opposition, only by a majority of one. In consequence of the change which it effected in the ecclesiastical system of the colony, and of the emoluments which it held forth to conformists, two of the French Huguenot ministers passed over, with their whole congregations, into the communion of the Episcopal church; being, probably, permitted to retain their own forms of worship while they continued to use the French language. The Episcopalians, however, were still a minority in the colony in the year 1710, notwithstanding this large addition to their communion; for it appears from a letter written at Charleston, in that year, and quoted by Dr. Hodge, that they were still outnumbered by the Presbyterians and the Huguenots who maintained their attachment to the discipline of Geneva.

It was thus to a system that not only identified the church with the world, but tended directly to eradicate

from the hearts of men all the finer feelings of humanity, to make them regard the profession of religion with a mean and mercenary spirit, and consider its holiest ordinances as a mere stepping-stone to political employment, that the Episcopal church was originally indebted for its civil establishment in all the colonies of America. It was impossible that religion could ever flourish, in any country, under such a system; and it was, therefore, a happy event, even for the American Episcopal church, as well as for the American people, that ensured its discontinuance.

CHAPTER III.

HISTORY OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE VOLUNTARY SYSTEM IN AMERICA.

It is universally believed in England, that the establishment of the Voluntary System, or, in other words, the entire separation of Church and State, in America, was exclusively the work of the civil government of that country; and that in the achievement of that work the American clergy were entirely passive, having no voice whatever in the matter. The whole credit of the measure is usually given to the celebrated President Jefferson, who, if I recollect aright, was, on some occasion, lauded in the highest terms by the " Edinburgh Review," for the admirable tact he was said to have exhibited in his management of the affair; the clergy being represented, at the same time, as having been fairly outwitted by that wily politician. I confess I entertained such ideas myself, up to the period of my visiting America; and although somewhat predisposed to regard the operation of the voluntary system in the United States with some degree of favour, as well from what I had heard and read on the subject as from my own experience of the operation and effects of a different system in the British colonies, I had nevertheless a lurking suspicion as to the general tendency of the voluntary system in America, simply on account of the man with whom its introduction was thus associated in