The greatest bulwark of civil liberty is the famous _Magna Charta_. It is the foundation not only of British, but also of American constitutional freedom. Among other blessings contained in this instrument it establishes trial by jury and the right of _Habeas Corpus_, and provides that there shall be no taxation without representation. Who were the framers of this memorable charter? Archbishop Langton, of Canterbury, and the Catholic Barons of England. On the plains of Runnymede, in 1215, they compelled King John to sign that paper which was the death-blow to his arbitrary power and the cornerstone of constitutional government. Turning to our own country, it is with no small degree of satisfaction that I point to the State of Maryland as the cradle of civil and religious liberty and the “land of the sanctuary.” Of the thirteen original American Colonies, Maryland was the only one settled by Catholics. She was, also, the only one that raised aloft over her fair lands the banner of liberty of conscience, and that invited the oppressed of other colonies to seek an asylum beneath its shadow. Lest I should be suspected of being too partial in my praise of Maryland toleration, I shall take most of my historical facts from Bancroft, a New England Protestant clergyman. NOTE—The first edition of Bancroft’s History was published in 1834. From that date till nearly half a century afterward upwards of twenty editions were issued, all of which retain the passages I have cited on Maryland toleration. Early in the 80s a new edition was given out, which omits or abridges some of the passages quoted in this chapter. I may add that all of Bancroft’s eulogies of Lord Baltimore’s benevolent administration are borne out by the original documents, and by McMahon, Bozman and McSherry, and other historians of Maryland. Leonard Calvert, the brother of Lord Baltimore and the leader of the Catholic colony, having sailed from England in the _Ark_ and the _Dove_, reached his destination on the Potomac in March, 1634. “The Catholics took quiet possession of the little place, and religious liberty obtained a home, _its only home_ in the wide world, at the humble village which bore the name of St. Mary.”(303)