whom were included some of the most intelligent and thrifty citizens of the province. This is proven by various circumstances, as by the names of the persons who were members of the meeting, by the influence they exerted with the authorities, by their readiness and boldness in discussion, and by their threat to prosecute any priest or magistrate who should marry any Quaker children without their parents' or guardians' consent. This was done at a yearly meeting held in 1688, and of itself shows how secure they felt themselves to be. Their opposition we have seen was influential, but it was not finally effectual; for the king was content to secure for them the toleration of their separate assemblages, while they were required, along with all other persons, to contribute according to law to the support of the established church. For the act as finally passed, provided that the church of England should be established, and that for its support there should be levied annually a tax of forty pounds of tobacco per poll upon all the taxables of the colony; to be collected by the sheriff. appointment of ministers to parishes was to be by the governor without appeal, induction being in his hands; the minister was to keep and provide for a clerk out of his income. Other sections of the law regarded marriages, and a table declaring who might marry was to be set up in the Churches. Only a minister could marry when there was one resident, his fee being five shillings sterling. The number of vestrymen was set at six at the least, two to be dropped every year. By a subsequent law in 1730 the two eldest in office were to be dropped and not

The

to be liable again for three years. The minister was also a vestryman. A register of births, marriages and burials was to be kept, and by several clauses of the law the vestry was required to meet on a certain day in each month, the time fixed once for all "to prevent surprise." Provision was made for the current expenses of the parish, to be levied by the county courts. Persons refusing to become wardens were fined one thousand pounds of tobacco, to go to the king, a stronger assurance that the fine would be collected. No minister could hold more than two parishes, nor could he hold them without the consent of the vestries of both and the appointment of the ordinary. The vestry had the power of appointing lay readers during a vacancy, who were to take the oaths with which every office was surrounded in those days. The lay readers received compensation. A vestryman could be removed if he neglected his duties, and parishioners had the right to inspect the vestry books and to appeal to the governor and council against vestry acts. By the twenty-first section of the law Quakers and other dissenters. were to have the benefit of the toleration act, while their places of worship were required to be reported and a register of them kept. It will be observed that persons refusing to serve as wardens were to be fined, while there was no such provision covering the case of persons elected to the vestry. The duties of the wardens were in some degree the more onerous, they being conservators of the peace about the church. And so compulsion in their case was felt to be necessary. It was rather taken for granted that

a man elected vestryman, would serve because of the honor of the office, and would attend to his duties. If he did not he was to be disgraced by dismissal. It was found, however, that this law would not work, and by an act of 1730, the vestrymen were also subjected to fine, to be recovered by process before a justice of the peace, one half to go to the church and the other half to the informer. Dissenters also were eligible to the office of vestrymen, as was declared by order of the Governor and Council in 1751, Piscataway parish having refused to qualify one who had been elected. This act was passed at a time of extreme agitation in the colony concerning church matters. In 1706 provision, additional to that in the law, was made for the protection of Quakers and other Dissenters, by the passage of the English Act of Toleration; though some think, not with good intent, but because of the pains and penalties attached. For the whole English world then knew very little of religious liberty. Toleration, privilege, was granted; though often more as a political necessity than for any other reason. The right to say what persons should believe, and that they should believe something, was supposed to reside in the powers that be; and so Unitarians as well as Roman Catholics were excepted from the public grace bestowed, a grace that could at any time, according to the theory, be recalled. Toleration proved to be, however, the embryotic condition out of which has been developed by fostering circumstances, the full grown man of religious liberty, at least in the Protestant world. It may be advisable here to review for a

moment the relation of the province of Maryland to the home country, though what may be said of Maryland could generally be said of the other colonies. A law of England was not binding in the colonies unless it was expressly adopted there, or unless it was made for the colonies, as the Navigation Acts were, so that while persecution raged in England against all the various forms of dissent from the days of the settlement of Maryland, and cruel laws were passed for the purpose of repressing such dissenters, in New England, in New York, in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and in Maryland, there were to be found laws in every way contradictory of the English statutes. The freest asylums were provided in the New World for those who by the Test, Conventicle and similar acts, were debarred all the rights of religious freedom. And so the Toleration Act had to be passed by the Assembly of Maryland before it could become a law. On the other hand laws passed by the colonial legislature had to be approved by the King, or afterwards by the Proprietary, before they could become operative, as was the case with the act of establishment; though a law passed by the assembly went into effect immediately upon its passage and was regarded as binding until it was disapproved by the superior authority. And so the act of 1692 was carried out, the province laid out into parishes, other laws passed laying duties upon vestrymen, ministers settled and taxes levied for their support, years before the act finally became a law.

Several questions suggest themselves in regard to the act of 1702, one of which is, who were the

persons on whom the poll tax was levied ? A law passed in 1715 gives us the enumeration, the same providing for the duties of the constable in making up the list under the law: All males and all female slaves above the age of sixteen years. An act of 1662, had fixed the age for slaves at ten years. Also by a law of 1725 all female mulattoes born of white women, and all free negro women were taxables; the only exceptions being beneficed clergy, paupers and aged slaves. For from the foundation of Maryland the negroes had been found in the colony, one having landed in Maryland with the first settlers. Found also to be profitable in working the lands they soon increased in numbers. They early became, however, a great subject of agitation, and continued. to be until the institution of slavery ceased. Their great numbers were forced upon the colonies by the cupidity of the English merchants and government. The first matter however, about which difficulty arose with them, was not civil but religious. For it was argued by some that baptism was not possible for them, such being the position taken by some Quakers, as mentioned by the celebrated Thomas Story who was present at a meeting at West River, in the year 1699; the argument being that as the baptized are made in the rite "members of Christ, children of God and inheritors of the kingdom of Heaven" they could not any longer be detained as slaves; not that their care was in this for the slaves, which they themselves possessed for many years after this time, but they rejected the baptism. This is the same question, it will be remembered, St. Paul had to deal with.