ment, but the enforcement of such laws, divesting subjects of rank, character, and education, and in all the classes of society, simply because of their religious opinions, of all the rights of the social compact, and all the happiness of life, it is, one does not know whether to say, most wicked or most stupid, to talk of and dwell upon the revocation of the edict of Nantes, as an act of unexampled and unequalled bigotry and atrocity. Whatever bigotry is perceptible in France is more evident in England, as there of a later and more enlightened day. The bishops and priests around Louis XIV in 1655, consented, at least the greater number, to the revocation, but it was an act of the civil authority; and the ministers of the establishment in England, with one or two exceptions, in 1828, opposed the emancipation, and advised George III, at least as bigoted as Louis XIV, that his coronation oath bound him to prevent its relief. The duke of Burgundy, the expectant successor of Louis XIV, approved in 1670, of the revocation, on political reasons exclusively, in a paper which he drew up, and which remains to prove how much France lost in his death. The duke of York opposed emancipation in 1826, he being the presumptive heir to the throne, and bound himself by a solemn pledge, which is not, however, a monument of genius, never to consent to it. But in truth, in France, in 1685, and in England, in 1828, bigotry was not so much the motive, as political necessities and theories.

The reformation in England owes its origin to the amorous desires of Henry VIII, who had determined to marry Anna Boleyn, to do which the divorce by the Pope from Catherine was necessary. This the Pope refused to grant, as against all the principles and practice of the Catholic Church; and the change in religious faith was then enacted by parliament. The power of the crown came in aid of it, under Elizabeth, and those who had refused to acknowledge the divorce by the council, denied of course the legitimacy of Anna's daughter, the really bloody Elizabeth. The consequence was quarrels and bitterness, of which the use was religion, and the motive

politics; and the animosity which in all probability would have been soothed, if the mildness of the present day had then prevailed, resulted in fixing Elizabeth, who was certainly, strangely for a Protestant, impressed with the feelings and ideas of a Catholic, in direct and unchangeable opposition to the Catholic religion. It is not at this day pretended that the refusal of the sovereignty of the Pope was then meant to involve, though it led to a total loss of all the marks of a Church. From her reign through all the changes of the times and parties, the Catholics uniformly faithful to the constitution, were courted for a moment by each successive party, only to be rejected or sacrificed. And during all this period, her nobles and her commoners transmitted their faith from generation to generation, with scarcely an instance of abjuration or infidelity. The lapse of time from Elizabeth down to Charles II rather compounded than diminished the sources of hatred; and the national madness and universal folly prevailing in the reign of Charles II and directed against the Catholics, incredible as it is that such delusion should ever have existed, required one hundred and forty years, not to pass away, for one cannot but see around him some traces of its lingering and unwelcome stay, but even to lose its violence and cruelty. And he who wishes to ascertain and compare the toleration of a Catholic and Protestant country, may look to the revocation of the edict of Nantes, where the orders of a government, in perfect keeping with the principles of the age, and the natural cruelty of a soldiery, disapproved of by many of the kingdom, were alleviated and mitigated by all; and to the universal people of England in the reign of Charles II and James II, ready to tear the Catholics to pieces, driving the public officers to persecute and murder them for impossible offences, believing steadily for twenty years that the Jesuits meant to burn down the city of London. Gulled with and wrought to madness by the stupid and ill contrived villainy of Oates and Braloe, staking all that a man was worth in head, heart or estate upon his belief of a divine mystery, not singular in its difficulty, re

jecting at the same time the speaking evidence of the believer's charity and Christianity in the real protection and assistance which he afforded to the destitute Huguenots who sought refuge in England, and sustaining a nobleman when he declared as a legislator that "he would not have so much as a Popish man nor a Popish woman, to remain here, not so much as a Popish dog, or a Popish bitch,-nay, not so much as a Popish cat, to pur and mew about the king" a speech which gained him. great honor in his day, from his intelligent and liberal countrymen, and for which or for any thing like it, Louis XIV, or any French gentleman would have been laughed out of the kingdom of France.

From this time through the reigns of William and Anne they were the objects of most severe enactments and prosecutions, directed against them as supporters of the Stewarts, and after the final destruction of the hopes of that family in 1745, they are not heard of as connected with politics, nor in fact in any way until the No-Popery riots of 1780. But in the interval the power of the establishment had at first so completely engrossed the public mind, and the rise of other sects had afterwards so divided it, that the Catholics were looked upon as almost insolent when they claimed to be Englishmen, and as rebels when they asked to come into parliament. The gross conceptions of their adversaries had spread through the nation, falsehoods so dull and obvious, that it requires great credulity to believe that any man could have been so stupid and so ignorant as to give them credit. But the few had in the meantime become liberal, and down to 1828 Catholic emancipation was the watchword of the enlightened. From the event of the repeal of those badges of intolerance yet remaining in a country which is suffered to teach us, they have gone on in peace, spreading themselves with humility and charity, and dispelling the errors which ignorance and spite had disseminated and almost planted in the nation.

In like manner in France, though the opposition of the Catholics was at first exclusively directed against the tenets of the new

religionists, yet gradually political interests were mingled with, and perhaps increased this repugnance into hatred. The dukes of Guise were sincerely and most faithfully attached to their own religion, and headed the Catholic party. They were men of great courage, skill, gallantry, eminently gifted with all the more brilliant and generous qualities of the head and heart, so imposing and splendid in their exterior that in their presence all other princes were insignificant, and possessing also all the traits which command the confidence and attract the affection of equals and inferiors. No subject ever rose to so great power in spite of, and against the will of a monarch, as Henry duke of Guise, without shaking the order of the monarchy, and but for his participation in the St. Bartholomew massacre, to which if it is any excuse he lent himself to revenge his father's murder, none ever left a grander reputation, but it was the intention of his family to ascend the throne, on the death of Henry III, in exclusion of Henry IV. In this view he was supported by the will of the people, and in it he probably would have succeeded but that Henry III, whose imbecile vanity he had wounded, privately assassinated him and his brother. The remaining brother the duke de Mayenne preserved the same intention, and headed the Catholic armies against Henry IV, whose abjuration of Calvinism weakened the duke, and after Henry had ascended the throne, the same elements of religious and political hatred remained to embitter the followers of each sect. At the time of the revocation, their religion which had made no progress in France was not so much the object of attack, as their preference of a republican government, and their connection with foreign nations, which it can scarcely be questioned, it was the honest and natural duty of the government of France to oppose and even punish, and after this revocation had worked its effect in breaking up and shivering their party and designs, the Protestants about 1745, returned to and remained in France in complete security, which a few years afterwards by the unanimous consent of the kingdom was extended into, and is now perfect and

entire equality, not only by law but by the charity and good feeling of the people.

From this brief and imperfect sketch of the progress of toleration it may be seen that, odious as bigotry must always be, it is comparatively harmless when civil rights or political interests are not connected with it, and that when men's religious belief is made the ground of affecting their rights, their interests, or even their tempers, the usual result has been violence and civil war, that it is but of late that the principle of toleration has been recognized in Protestant countries, that though some at this day admit that a man may believe in doctrines in which they do not coincide without being a bad citizen, yet in this they do but imitate the example of Catholic countries, and that certain as it is, and even declared by law, it is not yet universally and sincerely felt that the faith of no one sect, when it is tolerated, leads to injustice or crime, to tyranny, or to dissension.

But the right of public toleration is not enough, without the acknowledgment of its principle, which is charity. To no one sect is it given to limit its duties now to expound and describe the rights-social, legal, or municipal-of others. In this matter

among us the majority has no more value than the smallest quantity. Nor can a union of all against one find either its justification in numbers or authority, or its excuse in hasty passion, shallow judgment, or even in the forgetfulness of all that their Bible and all Christianity dictate. To the timorous must be left their fears, to the ignoraut their prejudices, to the vain their glory of opposition, and to the unworthy their desire of a vulgar and antichristian popularity. But if even madness should so rule the hour, that the union of all these and surely none others could join in such a purpose, shall tend to the oppression, the persecution, the violation of the rights of any religious class, then, instead of fears, or doubts, or hostile alliances, the persecuted may safely trust to the good sense and honor of the community, and well believe that their foolish adversaries will only sooner lose their power to do harm, that their efforts will be bounded by their magnanimity, while their silly design to alarm the community by fears of a creed, will be heartily laughed at by the sensible men of their own belief, and entirely forgiven and forgotten by the objects of their generous and enlightened hatred.

crowded with worshippers. No Catholic in Maryland was more extensively known among his brethren; and though none was more frequently appealed to for aid in the building of churches, the support of missions and the many other works of benevolence which make pecuniary aid indispensable, his hand was ever ready to dispense the wealth with which God had blessed his industrious and virtuous life.

As a patriarch among the Catholics of Maryland, and so long connected with the history of Catholicity in this state, a notice of Mr. Jenkins seems an appropriate subject for these pages, while the exemplary discharge of his duties as a fervent Catholic and a good citizen, presents him as a model for imitation, worthy of the study of those who would seek to "live soberly, justly and godly, in this world," and prove that the Catholic religion is not less suited to the stirring scenes of active life, than to the retirement of the cloister.

William Jenkins was born in 1766, at "Long Green," in Baltimore county, upon an estate which his uncle, Courtenay Jenkins, had obtained by patent from the lord proprietary of Maryland, about the year 1740. His ancestors having emigrated from Great Britain to escape the persecutions against Catholics, had established themselves as early as 1660, at the head of St. Mary's river. His grandfather intermarried with the daughter of Captain Thomas Courtenay.

The Protestant ascendancy in Maryland, which, in 1692, made the Church of England the established Church of the colony, by law; in 1704 passed "An act to prevent the growth of Popery within the province," by which all bishops or priests of the Catholic Church, were inhibited, under severe penalties, from saying mass, or exercising their spiritual functions, and Catholics were prohibited from engaging in the instruction of youth. In the language of the impartial and eloquent McMahon," thus, in a colony which was established by Catholics, and grew up to power and happiness under the government of a Catholic, the Catholic inhabitant was the only victim of religious intolerance."'*

* History of Maryland, p. 246.

Michael, the father of Mr. Jenkins, with his two brothers, Courtenay and Ignatius, annoyed and impoverished by the restric tions imposed upon them on account of their religion, removed to Baltimore county,then regarded as a remote, as it was a sparsely inhabited part of the province; hoping in an obscure location, to practise their faith with less molestation, and to escape in some measure the exactions and penalties imposed upon "Popish recusants.” At a later date, his other paternal uncles, except Austin, who became a priest, and died in his native country, migrated to the western states. The father married the niece of Mr. Ignatius Wheeler, a wealthy Catholic gentleman of Harford county, descended from the first settlers of Maryland.

The ancestors of William Jenkins had flourished under the paternal government of the Calverts, and suffered persecution under the Protestant ascendancy, but neither prosperity, the hope of reward, nor pains and penalties, ever caused them to swerve from that which they cherished above all things, the faith for which they had forsaken their parent land.

From early childhood the subject of this memoir was distinguished for gentleness and piety, united to great firmness and energy. Though but a child at the commencement of our revolutionary struggle, he glowed with enthusiasm for his country's success. He has often related to his children, as illustrating the spirit of those times of peril and glory, that his country schoolmaster, who had scarcely a boy over ten years of age, would, after the school exercises were over, form his little scholars in military array, and arming them with sticks and corn stalks, teach them the “art of war," to prepare them for future service. About the close of the war of independence, having attained his thirteenth year, and perceiving that the means of his father would be insufficient for his numerous offspring, he determined to visit Baltimore, and there become the artificer of his own fortune. He entered as an apprentice to the tanning business, under William Hay ward, a member of the Society of Friends, of whom he always spoke with respect; the

latter used to boast of his boy Billy, as the best of apprentices, and as a man, his best friend. Very soon after completing his apprenticeship, he commenced business on his own account.

With a cash capital of two hundred dollars, borrowed from his father, and with the more efficient aid of industry and temperance, he established himself in his trade, on Water street, at the place where he continued to transact business for fifty-five years. His probity and strict attention soon secured him the good will of all with whom he had dealings, and prospering in his first attempt he was soon able to extend his business with the success that usually attends prudence and application. But his prospects were suddenly darkened by a calamity that would have discouraged men of less fortitude.

Nearly all his capital being invested in the stock of a tan yard which he had rented, an accidental fire totally destroyed his property. Not being insured-for there was no insurance company in Baltimore, in those days-his loss was very severe. But that energy which gave so much manliness to his character, displayed itself in this severe disappointment of his youthful hopes.

Relying upon Divine Providence, to whose visitation he bowed with Christian submission, he began the world again; and by the aid of his naturally clear understanding and sound judgment, with the advantages acquired by his late experience in business, and the physical powers of a hardy and robust constitution, he soon found himself in possession of as much as he had lost. Devoting himself with great assiduity to business, he became one of the most useful citizens, and contributed to build up the trade and promote the prosperity of Baltimore: whose success in commerce, and rapid growth in the quarter of a century that succeeded the revolution were astonishing. Of his own branch of business, which became one of the most useful to that city, he may be regarded as the founder, and in which he lived to be more extensively engaged for many years than any other person in the state. A high character for integrity, and his just and liberal con

duct, gave him the highest credit, which he used with prudence and intelligence. He took pride in advancing the interests of the leather trade in Baltimore, and when he had introduced any new process or machinery, took pleasure in making known their advantages to others, inviting them with true liberality to avail themselves of his improvements. He took pleasure in assisting young men in whom he discovered industry and talents for business, not a few of whom can date their success in after life to his judicious counsel and efficient aid. As a kind master he had no superior. During the prevalence of yellow fever in 1793, or 1800, he had several apprentices, one of whom contracting the fatal disease was nursed by his kind master with a parent's care, and although the fever was at that time believed to be contagious, Mr. Jenkins slept in the same room, and sometimes in the same bed, and never left him until he was carried off by the fatal disease. It is in acts like these, to which the God of charity never fails to give his blessing, that we can recognize the true Christian.

He showed the sincerity and strength of his faith, by his exact observance of all that the Church enjoins, and he found in the faithful performance of his religious duties, the best protection against the dissipation and the allurements to vice with which his youth was surrounded. In a conversation with the writer, two or three years before his death, he stated that although often solicited by his companions to mingle with bad company, he had preserved his virtue unsullied amidst the temptations of youth.

He performed with exemplary public spirit the duties of a good citizen. At the commencement of the last war, although exempted by age from military duty, he became a member of a volunteer troop of cavalry, under Captain Thompson, and performed an active part in the defence of Baltimore in 1814. During that exciting time, when the patriotism of Baltimore shone with conspicuous lustre, there were trials more severe than those of battle: when heads of families were separated for several days from their homes, while the timid wife and mother, and helpless children were