statute penalizing intermarriage was
enacted.80
Maryland now had a state church
which alone could hold public worship
and evangelize, and which alone could
perform valid marriages and burials.
By 1749 Protestant worship was placed
strictly on a sufferance basis, and to
celebrate the Mass publicly was for-
bidden.81 The assembly repeatedly de-
nied incorporation rights to dissenting
churches, despite the well-known diffi-
culties of the trustee system.82
In 1746 Governor Bladin ordered a
proclamation imprisoning any priest
found converting Catholics.83 So keen
was the persecution in Maryland that,
six years later, the Catholic community
authorized Charles Carroll, father of the
Signer of the Declaration of Independ-
ence, to apply for a tract of land in
Louisiana.84 In 1756 a double tax was
levied upon Catholics for the support
of the colony's militia.85
Said the Reverend Thomas Bacon,
"Religion among us seems to wear the
face of the country; part moderately
cultivated, the greater part wild and
savage."86
80 Bacon's Laws ch. 24, §12 (1729).
81 cobb, supra note 78 at 376-77. In 1700
the Book of Common Prayers had been made
standard in the English Church, and the Act
of 1704 had permitted Mass to be held only
within a private family setting. Id. at 388-89,
397.
82 P. dignan, history of the legal in-
CORPORATION OF CATHOLIC CHURCH PROP-
ERTY in the united states, 1784-1932, at
27-28 and 38-39 (1935).
83 Maryland Gazette, July 22, 1746.
84 russell, supra note 71 at 414.
85 1 archives 419 (1883).
86 Quoted in russell, supra note 71 at
458.
26
|
INDEPENDENCE TO THE FIRST
AMENDMENT IN MARYLAND
1776-1791
A leading historian of Maryland sug-
gests that one of the major causes behind
this State's participation in the Amer-
ican Revolution was the proprietary's in-
tolerance toward Catholics and other
dissenters.87 This theory is undoubt-
edly valid. Maryland led her sister
colonies in the struggle to be free from
taxes for the support of a particular
religion to which the taxpayer did not
belong; the struggle to be free from laws
compelling dissenters to attend services
of the Established Church; and the
struggle for equal economic opportuni-
ties for dissenters and an end to all
preferences held by members of the
dominant faith.
By its Declaration of Rights (1776)
Maryland became the first of the orig-
inal thirteen colonies to extend legal
toleration of all Christian sects.88 In
short, no person was to be compelled to
frequent any particular place of wor-
ship.89 This was but a step; after al-
most a century of Protestant domi-
nation, change could not be overly
abrupt.90 The first Constitution still
empowered the legislature to "lay a gen-
eral and equal tax, for the support of
87 When in 1763 a tax for the support of
the Established Church was revived, "a war
of essays, as fierce as the war of words that
preceded it," began in the press. It ultimately
sparked the debate between Daniel Dulaney,
the provincial secretary, and Charles Carroll
of Carrollton, who spearheaded Maryland's
fight for religious freedom and entry into the
united Revolution. 2 J. scharf, history of
maryland 125ff. (1879).
88 werline, supra note 52 at 196.
89 Md. Const., Dec. of Rights, art. 33
(1776).
90 See A. niles, maryland constitu-
tional law 54-56 (1915) (Articles XXXVI,
XXXVII, XXXVIII).
|
