Excerpt from Studies in the Civil, Social and Ecclesiastical History of Early Maryland: Lectures Delivered to the Young Men of the Agricultural College of Maryland In a very marked degree Maryland history has suffered at the hands of its friends. Desiring to be just, and often truly enthusiastic, they have viewed its course in the direct light of their own prejudices, and the consequence has been a perverted, incomplete, unphilosophical presentation. For Maryland history is many-sided, having, in its course, involved many questions of very diverse kinds, - ecclesiastical, civil, social, political, military. Starting in a small, unique colony, with peculiar institutions created by a charter, itself the outcome of political notions that were fast losing their hold on the popular mind, it had to fight its way, often in weakness, through those institutions up into larger and truer ideas of human liberty. Fight its way; for there was always a sufficient number of conservative men, who held by what was old, to make the efforts of the liberal majority difficult, and to necessitate years of effort before success could crown their endeavors. And this contest went on in all the departments of life, political, civil, social and ecclesiastical; in the last as eminently as in any other; for ecclesiastical affairs belonged as much to the political life of a people then as civil or social affairs did, and probably excited always far more of prejudice and passion than either of them. To form a just estimate of the history of a people a man must transplant himself into the days which he is describing. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.