of Lord Baltimore, they founded the colony of Maryland. Despite persecution from Protestants whom they had freely admitted into their community, they prospered, increased, and became the germ of the Church of the United States, now so large and flourishing.

In the colonial archives of the Ministry of the Navy we have found a curious manuscript memoir upon Acadia, by Lamothe Cadillac, in which it is stated that in 1686 there were Catholic inhabitants in New York, and especially in Maryland, where they had seven or eight priests. Another paper preserved in the same archives mentions a Catholic priest residing in New York; and William Penn, who had established absolute toleration in the colony adjoining that of Maryland, speaks of an old Catholic priest who exercised the ministry in Pennsylvania.

The Catholics at this time are said to have composed a thirtieth part of the whole population of Maryland. This estimate seems to us too low. At all events, the increase of our unfortunate brethren in the faith was retarded by persecution and difficulties of all kinds which surrounded them. In the Puritan colonies of the North, they were absolutely proscribed. In the Southern colonies, of Virginia, Georgia, and Carolina, their condition was but little better; in New York they enjoyed a precarious toleration in the teeth of penal laws. In Maryland and Pennsylvania alone they were granted freedom of worship, and a legal status; though even in those colonies they were exposed to a thousand wrongs and vexations. Maryland persecuted them from time to time and banished their priests; and William Penn, in his tolerant conduct toward them, was bitterly opposed by his own people.

Nevertheless, despite difficulties and violence, the Anglo-American Catholics increased by little and little, wherever they got a foothold; the descendants of the old settlers multiplied; new ones came from England and Ireland; and a German immigration set in, especially in Pennsylvania, where several congregations of German Catholics were formed at a very early period. In the archives of this province we have found several valuable indications of the state of the Church in 1760. There were then two priests, one a Frenchman or an Englishman, named Robert Harding, the other a German of the name of Schneider. It seems probable that they were both Jesuits. [Footnote 1] In a letter to Governor Loudon, in 1757, Father Harding estimates the number of Catholics in Philadelphia and its immediate neighborhood at two thousand—English, Irish, and German; but in the absence of Father Schneider he could not be positive as to these figures. A letter from Gouverneur Morris in 1756 {3} speaks of the Catholics of Maryland and Pennsylvania as being very numerous and enjoying freedom of worship, and adds, that in Philadelphia there is a Jesuit who is a very able and talented man. The Abbé Robin, a chaplain in Rochambeau's army in 1781, informs us in his narrative that there were several Catholic churches at Fredericksburg, Va., and even a Catholic congregation at Charleston, S.C.

[Footnote 1: In De Courcy and Shea's "Catholic Church in the United States" pp. 211, 212, an account will be found of both these missionaries. The first mentioned was an Englishman. Both were— Jesuits. ED. C. W.]

The toleration accorded to the Jesuits in the United States was precarious, but it amounted in time to a pretty complete freedom; and as they were not disturbed when the order was suppressed in Europe, some of their brethren from abroad took refuge with them; so that in 1784, we find, according to Mr. C. Moreau, in his excellent work on the French emigrant priests in America, [Footnote 2] nineteen priests in Maryland, and five in Pennsylvania. To these we must add the priests of Detroit, Mich., Vincennes, Ind., and Kaskaskia and Cahokia, Ill., all four originally French-Canadian settlements which were ceded to England along with Canada, and after the American Revolution became parts of the United States. Counting, moreover, the missionaries scattered among the Indian tribes, we may safely say that the American Republic contained at the period of which we are speaking not fewer than thirty or forty ecclesiastics. The number of the faithful may be set down as 16,000 in Maryland, 7,000 or 8,000 in Pennsylvania, 3,000 at Detroit and Vincennes, and about 2,500 in southern Illinois; in all the other states together they hardly amounted to 1,500. In a total population therefore of 3,000,000 they numbered about 30,000, and of these 5,500 were of French origin. Such was the condition of the Church in the United States when it was regularly established in 1789 by the erection of an episcopal see at Baltimore, and the appointment, as bishop, of Mr. Carroll, an American priest, born of one of the oldest Catholic families of Maryland. The dispersion of the clergy of France, in 1790, soon afterward supplied America with numerous evangelical laborers, who gave a new impulse to the development which was just becoming apparent in the infant Church.

[Footnote 2: One vol. 12mo. Paris: Douniol.]

A few years before the French Revolution, Mr. Emery, superior of Saint Sulpice, guided by what we must term an extraordinary inspiration, came to the assistance of the American Church, and with the help of his brother Sulpitians and at the cost of the society, founded a theological seminary at Baltimore. His plans were already well matured when Bishop Carroll, soon after his appointment, entering heartily into the project, promised him a house and all the assistance he could give. Four Sulpitians accordingly set out from Paris in 1790, taking with them five Seminarians. They were supplied with 30,000 francs to defray the cost of their establishment, and to this modest sum the crisis which soon overtook the parent establishment allowed them to add but little; but this mite, bestowed by the Church of France in the last days of her wealth, was destined to become, like the widow's mite, the price of innumerable blessings.

Between 1791 and 1799 the storm of revolution drove twenty-three French priests to the United States. As the first apostles, when they set out from Rome, portioned out Germany and Gaul among themselves, so they divided this country, and most of them organized new communities of Christians, or by their zeal awakened communities that slept. Six of them, Flaget, Cheverus, Dubourg, Maréchal, Dubois, and David, became bishops.

The base of operations from which these peaceful but victorious invaders went forth was Baltimore, the episcopal see around which were gathered the old American clergy and the greater part of the Catholic population. It was here that the Sulpitians {4} had their seminary, and this establishment became a centre of attraction for a great many of these exiled priests who belonged to the Society of Saint Sulpice. Some (as MM. Ciquard, Matignon, and Cheverus) bent their steps from Baltimore toward the laborious missions among the intolerant and often fanatical Puritans of the North, where the Catholics—a mere handful—were found scattered far and wide; isolated in the midst of a Protestant population; deprived of priests and religious services, and in danger of totally forgetting the faith in which they had been baptized. Nothing discouraged these apostolic men. Aided by divine grace, they awakened the indifferent, converted heretics, gathered about them the few Catholics who immigrated from Europe, attracted all men by their affable and conciliating manners, their intelligence and education, and the disinterestedness of their lives. Soon on this apparently sterile soil Catholic parishes grew up and flourished in the midst of people who had never before seen a priest. Thus were founded the churches of Massachusetts, Maine, and Connecticut—so quickly that, in 1810 (that is to say, only eighteen years after the beginning of the missions), it was deemed advisable to erect for them another bishopric. Congregations had sprung up on every side as if by enchantment, and the venerable