The First Declaration
Malone, Thomas J.
z76 THE COMMONWEAL July IO, I9z 9 the presence of proud kings and ministers. Some of the pic- tures Sulpicius gives show Martin as Lord Bishop of the Church. The haughty Valentinlan the elder...
...His queen adored the bishop, and her humble veneration brought her great reward...
...Certainly it is annoying, to those of us who have acquired the modern pragmatic-materialist view-point, to observe the antics of these die-hards...
...The Continental Congress adjourned in October, after having adopted a declaration of colonial rights in which were reasserted the "common rights of Englishmen," and having demanded repeal of thirteen obnoxious acts of Parliament...
...JEROME BLAKE MONTE CASSINO Brooklyn, N. Y. T o the Edttor:--Count Giordani in The Commonweal for June I2, I929, in a contribution entitled Monte Cassino, tells us : "Saint Maur...
...It was frightfully inefficient...
...Brice, Thos...
...Of miracle and marvel we may indeed read at length in this beautifully clear Latin of Sulpicius, in the French of Paul Monceaux, in the English of Alexander Robert and of Mary Caroline Watt...
...It seems they hold the fancy that we ought to have a government of the people, for the people and by the people...
...The Church in her Office for Saint Martin's Day makes no mention of this or that wondrous deed...
...Then in March the next spring--two days after Patrick Henry's "liberty or death" speech--Harford County men, meeting at Bush, distinguished themselves and their county and their descendants for all time by adopting this resolution: "We, the Committee of Harford County, having most seriously and maturely considered the resolves and association of the Continental Congress and the resolves of the Provincial Convention, do most heartily approve of the same, and as we esteem ourselves in a more particular manner intrusted by our constituents to see them carried into execution, we do most solemnly pledge ourselves to each other, and to our country, and engage ourselves by every tie held sacred among mankind, to perform the same at the risque of our lives and fortunes...
...Thomas Jefferson doubtless knew of it before long...
...A misquoting of the Declaration of Independence of July 4, I776...
...al-though his plea was of no avail...
...It matters not...
...Let us be resigned when they refer to us as Dessication Dervishes of the Unholy Alliance (Evan- gelical rite...
...Bradford Norris, James Harris, Edward Prall, Greenberry Dorsey, John Archer, W. Smithe, W. Webb, John Taylor...
...The usurping Emperor Maximus craves indeed Martin's presence in his court...
...Lemmon, Thos...
...Terrifying tales are told of personal encounters in the secrecy of Martin's cell, of the detecting of diabolic cunning at work among the brethren and the peasants of the countryside...
...Patience, my dear sir...
...Again, large numbers of them appear to be rank sentimental- ists who still shudder in maudlin horror at recurring accounts of debauchery and murder of their fellows in the name of law enforcement...
...It may even be that some of them still cling to the antiquated notion that mankind has some inalienable natural rights in spite of the notion's intrinsic absurdity having been shown by Senator Wesley L. Jones, the Honorable William G. McAdoo, Mabel Willebrandt, Bishop Cannon, and other eager souls of the New Enlightenment...
...Smithson, John Donohuy, John Patrick, Daniel Scott, Benj...
...As holy Teresa saw the fiend perched upon her Office book, so Martin descried an evil spirit of monstrous size sitting upon the shoulder of Avltian, the tyrant governor of Tours...
...They were the culmination of ten years of blundering by George III's govern- ment in its effort to expel the home rule idea from the minds of the colonists...
...Herein lies a miracle ever true, more rarely realized...
...We may doubt that Martin raised the dead body...
...Then we of the New Dawn shall be free to run our course to its logical end...
...Johnson, Alex...
...yet for long time no petitions can persuade the bishop to dine in the imperial house, and only by lowly deprecation is his con- sent at last obtained...
...z76 THE COMMONWEAL July IO, I9z 9 the presence of proud kings and ministers...
...From his monas- tery on the Caelian he [Saint Gregory] sent Augustine who, with forty companions, set foot on English soll in 596, 'and from this time Saint Benedict seems to have taken possession of England as his own...
...For we read of the emperor offering the jeweled loving-cup first in due reverence to his guest, and of Martin, in preference of holy order before worldly privilege, horrifying the assembled court as he quietly hands it next to his chaplain-priest...
...Had he not rejoiced in the anchoress who refused to admit a bishop and his blessing to the window of her cell ? But he relented once far enough to allow the matron queen to serve with her own happy hands a meal to himself and Maximus...
...On his way between his Virginia home and the northern centres, Philadelphia and New York, he, like Washington and other Virginia leaders, regularly passed through Harford Town, or Bush, the seat of Harford county...
...The Congress, approving the stand of Massachusetts against the Intolerable Acts, resolved that "all America ought to support the inhabitants of Massachusetts in their opposition...
...In her wisdom she points to the root of the whole matter, the mystery of this man of strange and surpassing power among his fellow-men: "Oculis ac manibus in coelum semper intentus, invictus ab oratione spiritum non relaxabat, Alleluia...
...For it springs from a vessel filled with quickening fire, the fire that comes down from heaven and is daily renewed upon the altar of sacrifice...
...By will of Frederick, the sixth Lord Baltimore, a relative, Henry Harford, had been made proprietary of the province...
...Then, too, they may not see eye to eye with us in our whole-hearted acceptance of super-government by the Anti-saloon League, the Methodist Board of Temperance and Pub- lic Morals, and like hierarchies...
...that from the lips of no man have I heard tell of so great knowledge, clothed in speech so goodly and so pure...
...In I774 the British Parliament passed the "Intolerable Acts," directed against the American colonies, among them the act closing the port of Boston until that town should have paid for certain tea dumped into the harbor...
...Harford County had been formed only the year before, set off from Baltimore County because of dissatisfaction over the removal ef the county seat from Joppa to what is now Balti-more city...
...Rigdon, Edward Ward, Abm...
...Did he not teach that a woman's crowning glory and triumph is to abide unseen...
...Patterson, Win...
...Whenever Americans celebrate Independence Day whether in John Adams's phrasing--"by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty...
...Or are we...
...Many will scan a pleasant tale and smile at the simple fervor which wove the halo of legend around the bishop's head...
...introduced monasticism into France...
...Denis A.O McCarthy, in a letter in your issue of May 29, voices an ennui engendered by the recalcitrant citizenry who stub- bornly refuse to take seriously the Eighteenth Amendment...
...How many a one shall tend in secret from day to day that guardian hearth that never fails to minister to the near and to the far, that the whole and strong may be made glad by its warmth, that the sick and palsied may unwittingly feel its power and regain their strength...
...The attack on Boston impelled the meeting July IO, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 277 of the first Continental Congress, during the following September...
...Disciples vie with one another as they recall their superior's mighty deeds: of idols and temples that fell prone, of demons that forsook their human homes, of the dead that arose at his word...
...They were : "Aquila Hall, Jos...
...for this, Thrones and Dominations and Powers received him with triumphant joy as in this month, fifteen centuries ago, he fell asleep...
...THE FIRST DECLARATION By THOMAS J. MALONE r _ . . do most solemnly pledge ourselves to each her, and to our country, and engage ourselves by every tie held sacred among mankind, to perform the same at the risque of our lives and fortunes...
...Not so hard, perhaps, to keep burning a little flame for one's own well-being and nurture in grace...
...Its members signed an agreement, termed "The Association," against importing or consuming British goods or exporting goods to Great Britain...
...Perhaps the intransigent ones, too, are bored to suffocation with our little sophistries and pretenses about "the demon Rum," "the evil of liquor," "the fairness of the manner in which the Eighteenth Amendment was adopted" and the slogan: "Pro- hibition means Prosperity...
...By no means...
...Perhaps the Harford declaration was in Jefferson's thought when he penned the closing words of that passage that has thrilled schoolboys and girls in America for a century and a half, that lingers pleasantly in many an adult mind when the rest of Jefferson's masterpiece is vague or forgotten : "And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor...
...And thereupon a grievous scandal...
...Yet none could surpass the father in inward lowliness of heart...
...Whitaker, Charles Anderson, William Fisher, Jr., Rich& Dallam, John Durham, James McComas, William Bradford, Sen., Win...
...Carvel Hall, Geo...
...Little wonder that the devil should levy all his arts for the confounding of this formidable soldier of the Cross...
...with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other"----or in any other way, they render tribute, however unknowingly, to the initiative and daring of a handful of doughty Marylanders...
...Hence the name given the new county...
...Holland, Saml...
...It is quaint that we still number among our citizens in the Era of Business First throwbacks who maunder about prin-ciples and ideals, and foolishly compare their futile resistance to us with that of the patriots who fought to throw off another kind of intolerable yoke...
...we may not doubt that through his spirit white-hot with the electric force of prayer souls long dead knew life and hope once more, and demons fled from their anguished prey...
...And ever he tended not only the bodies of his children, but also their minds: "I call Jesus and our common hope to witness," writes Sulpicius...
...Morgan, Frans...
...Yet among Martin's virtues how little a thing for praise would it be, were it not passing strange that in a man unskilled in letters not even this grace should fail...
...As bishop he meekly accepts the challenge of reviling pagans, kisses the leper with healing sympathy, strips the very clothing from his back that he may succor the hopeless and the despised...
...COMMUNICATIONS T "EMBOTTLED INTELLECTUALS" Wilson, Pa...
...For this, Martin "refused not to dwell on earth, nor feared to die...
...Here we allow three guesses as to what that end will be...
...It was this same Maximus of whom Martin sought grace for Priscillian and his disciples, condemned for heresy...
...and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved...
...but fire bursts out in the seat of his throne, and brings him with a rush to his unwilling feet...
...The haughty Valentinlan the elder refuses to rise to greet this intruder who comes to seek a boon for some low thrall...
...But of course that poor formula was discarded lon~ ago...
...The signers of this declaration were no common men...
...It is not difficult to imagine behind the story's framing the conflicts in which the saint cast out the enemy from presence of himself and his spiritual sons...
...for his narrative is among the best which his century gave the world...
...We can always call them "embottled intellec- tuals," and thumb our noses at them, too, for aren't we secure in the saddle...
...Morgan, Robt...
...In his cathedral church he would sit on no throne, but a little stool ; no beggar, no outcast was too foul or too greatly scorned for his charity and aid...
...Like them, he often stopped to exchange news and talk politics with its citizens...
...It was thus that from Maryland, the first country to grant religious liberty to all Christian sects, the first formal declara- tion of independence went forth, forerunner of that mightier pronouncement--"that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states...
...for, as it was said, "she ministered as Martha, and as Mary she hearkened to his words...
...Caldwell, Aquila Paca, James Lytle, Aquila Hall, Jr., Robt...
...This declaration was adopted March 22, I775, by a com-mittee which had been elected by the IO,OOO white peoople of Harford County, Maryland, and was signed by its full mem-bership of thirty-four...
...It is an exact quotation from an earlier declaration of independence, the first to be made by a representative group in America, antedating that of the Con- tinental Congress by more than fifteen months and by at least four weeks that attributed to the people of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina...
...But let us be charitable...
...For did not Martin eschew the conversation of all womankind, true to the ascetic spirit of his age...
...However, we can afford to be tolerant----of their stupidity only, of course--for, granted that our well-oiled enforcement machinery continues to work with its present efficiency, it is a question of a short time only until all these obstinates will be killed off...
...that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown...
...the Editor :--Your correspondent, Mr...
...and blew him away with the breath of his mouth, as others have done before and since his day...
...Saint Placid . . . was sent to Messlna...
...Sulpicius might well know whereof he spoke...
...More than one may be required...
...The previous June, a convention of representatives of the various counties in Maryland had voted that the acts of Parliament were "cruel and oppressive invasions of the people's rights," that all the colonies should espouse the cause of Boston as their own and should stop importing from or exporting to Great Britain so long as the acts were in force...
Vol. 10 • July 1929 • No. 10
