[25] In refreshing contrast with this record of persecution is the proclamation of religious liberty in Maryland, 1650. “The Catholics took quiet possession [of Maryland], and religious liberty obtained a home, its only home in the wide world ... every other country had persecuting laws.... Protestants were sheltered against Protestant intolerance. The disfranchized friends of Prelacy in Massachusetts and the Puritans from Virginia were welcomed to equal liberty of conscience and political rights as Roman Catholics in the province of Maryland.... In 1649 the General Assembly of Maryland passed an Act to this effect, yet five years later, when the Puritans obtained the ascendency there, they rewarded their benefactors by passing an Act forbidding that liberty of conscience be extended to ‘popery,’ ‘prelacy,’ and ‘licentiousness of opinion’” (Bancroft’s _History of the United States_, I, VII.). Lecky corroborates this statement: “Hôpital and Lord Baltimore were the two first legislators who uniformly maintained liberty of conscience, and Maryland continues the one solitary home for the oppressed of every sect till Puritans succeeded in subverting Catholic rule, when they basely enacted the whole penal code against those who had so nobly and so generously received them” (_History of Rationalism_, II, 58). An abridged copy of the Act of 1650, the first Act of religious toleration, will be found in the Appendix. The original from which I copied is in the archives of the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore. [26] On November 9th, 1906, the Socialist minister Viviani, after “putting out the lights in heaven,” exclaimed, “What shall we say to these sovereigns who are slaves economically speaking, to these men who enjoy universal suffrage yet suffer in servitude? How shall we appease them?” [27] Hall Caine, explaining the title of his book, _The Eternal City_, expressed himself as follows: “In the new methods of settling international disputes, the old mother of the Pagan and the Christian worlds will have her rightful rank.... Her religious and historical interest, her artistic charm, above all the mystery of eternal life seem to point to Rome as the seat of the great court of appeal which the future will see established.” [28] _Paradise Lost_, Book IV. * * * * * Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: their precedessors=> their predecessors {pg 97} evacute Rome=> evacuate Rome {pg 111} public shools=> public schools {pg 206} End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Religious Persecution in France 1900-1906, by Jane Milliken Napier Brodhead