20 MARYLAND.

included all the extensive region, north of
Mexico, lying between the Mississippi and the
Rocky Mountains. They claim also, in virtue
the right of discovery, the country on the west
side of these mountains, watered by the ri-
ver Columbia, and bounded on one side by the
Pacific Ocean. And, in 1821, they obtained
East and West Florida from Spain by cession."
Maryland was amongst the foremost of the
colonies in leading the way to emancipation.—
From the earliest history of the Province, the
inhabitants were distinguished for attachment to
liberty. The first emigrants of tht state, evinced
immediately after their landing, the spirit with
which they were determined to guard their
rights as men, as well as their privileges as
Christians. They too were "Pilgrim Fathers"
driven by persecution from their country and
their friends, to seek a land even beyond oceans
and in a wilderness, where God might be wor-
shipped in peace. What is more, the laws and
institutions they built up, were consistent with
their professions. They kindly opened the doors
of the temple of liberty which they set about to
erect, to receive others, their fellow men, that
might, as they had been, be driven to setk shel-
ter from oppression. If Maryland has been the
last state in the Union to extinguish the sha-
dow of religious distinctions from her laws, it is
probabl) because those distinctions have been
always so mild, as scarcely to be felt. Fanati-
cism has never prevailed over the councils of