Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 3.djvu/434

 CARROLL

380

CARROLL

becauseof the persecutionof Catholics, 1 October, 1688. He obtained considerable grants of land and was made attorney-general under the third Lord Balti- more. The year he arrived in America, Lord Balti- more was deprived of his rights, and Maryland was made a royal province. As Carroll was in favour with the Baltimores, he enjoyed important political positions in the colony before and after the restoration of their rights in 1715. Charles Carroll of Annapolis, the father of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, was born in 1703, and died in 17S3. He was a wealthy land- owner and bitterly opposed the political disabilities under which the Catholics of Maryland suffered. The mother of Charles Carroll of Carrollton was Elizabeth Brooke, the daughter of Clement Brooke and Jane Sewall, and was a near relation of her husband. Charles Carroll's biographer, Rowland, divides his life into three periods of about thirty years each; the first was a period of preparation, the second a period of public service, and the third a period of retire- ment, with schol- arly observation of public events. At ten years of age ( 'harles Car- roll was sent to school to the Jesuits at Bohe- mia, on Har- mon's Manor in Maryland, where one of his fellow- students was his cousin, John Car- roll, afterwards Archbishop of Baltimore. The following year, 174S, they both crossed the ocean to the Jesuit college at St-Omer in French Flanders, where < harles remained six years. After a year at the col- lege of the Jesuits at Reims he entered the College Louis le Grand at Paris. In 1753 Carroll went to Bourges to study civil law. He remained there for a year, and then returned to Paris until 1757. In this year he took apartments in the Temple, London, where he studied law for several years. In later days he spoke in highest praise of the training he received at St-Omer and the College Louis le Grand. To the former he owed his deep conviction of religious truth, and to the latter his critical ability, his literary style, and the basis for the breadth of knowledge which made him an invaluable citizen.

Upon his return to America, in 1765, the estate of Carrollton in Frederick County, Maryland, was given him and later he became known as Charles Carroll of Carrollton, to distinguish him from his father Charles Carroll, of Annapolis. In the difficulties with the mother country. Carroll aggressively defended the position taken by the colonics. In 1770. by a proc- lamation Governor Eden imposed certain fees upon the colonists. As fees were treated as taxes this was vigorously opposed as violating the right of the people to tax themselves. The jurist Daniel Dulaney defended the position of the Government in a series of articles in the "Maryland Gazette" under the signa- ture \ nt ill. in. Carroll took up the debate as a cham- pion of popular rights, maintaining the thesis that fees

were taxes and that taxes should not lie levied upon

the people excepl by the consent of their representa- tives. He wrote four articles and tlie popular senti- ment was decidedly with him. This controversy estab- lished Carroll's reputation as a debater and a scholar.

In 1774 Carroll was elected with six others by the citizens of Anne Arundel County and of Annapolis, with full power to represent them in the provincial convention. Catholics had been disfranchised and declared ineligible to a seat in the Assembly, but by this act the prejudice against them was swept away. Carroll was from this time for a period of twenty-seven years called to important public ser- vice in behalf of the colony and for the general government. In December of this year he was ap- pointed a member of a Provincial Committee of Cor- respondence. He was a member of the Maryland Convention of 1775 which adopted the "Association of the Freemen of Maryland" which became the char- ter of the colony until the adoption of the Maryland Constitution in 1776. The Association was pledged to an armed resistance to Great Britain. He was ap- pointed by the convention one of a committee of nine to "consider the ways and means to put this province in the best state of defense". On 12 September, 1775, the citizens of Anne Arundel County and the city of Annapolis appointed a Committee of Observation for the town and county of which Carroll was a mem- ber. At this meeting he was elected one of the depu- ties to represent the county in the State Convention for one year, and he was selected with six others to license suits in the county for the same period. The Colonial Convention on the 13th of October appointed Charles Carroll chairman of a committee of five "to devise ways and means to promote the manufacture of saltpetre". On the 11th of January, 1776, the Maryland Convention instructed the Maryland dele- gates to the Continental Congress, " to disavow in the most solemn manner, all design in the colonies for in- dependence". This position was strenuously opposed by Carroll, who at tins time advocated independence. In February, 1776, the Continental Congress ap- pointed Carroll one of a committee of three to visit Canada to secure the alliance of the Canadians in the struggle for independence. Franklin and Samuel Chase were the other members of the committee, and Father John, afterwards Archbishop, Carroll accom- panied them. 1 he committee was clothed with al- most absolute power over military affairs in that country, and their failure to accomplish their object was not due either to their want of zeal or lack of ability. On the 28th of June, 1776, the Maryland Convention withdrew the instructions given on pre- vious occasions to its delegates to Congress, and au- thorized them "to vote in declaring the United States free and independent states". Principally responsi- ble for this change of attitude by Maryland was Charles Carroll, who was afterwards rewarded in be- ing elected a delegate to the Continental Congress on the 4th of July. He took his seat on the ISth of July and signed the Declaration of Independence on the 2nd of August, wdien the copy engrossed on parch- ment was presented for signature. Of all the signers he risked most. He was the wealthiest man in the colonies at the beginning of the Revolution, his wealth being estimated at $2,000,000. On the 19th of July Carroll was appointed on the Board of War, a very important appointment, as this board had charge of all the executive duties of the military department, subject to the direction of Congress. In the fall of 1777 the Board of War was enlarged and some of Washington's enemies were made members. Out of this new membership the Conway Cabal developed, the objects of which were defeated by Carroll, Morris, and Duer. Charles Carrol] was appointed one of two delegates

from Annapolis to tin- Colonial Convention which was to adopt a constitution for Maryland. It met 1 1 August. Carroll was selected as one of the seven to draw up a constitution. He was responsible for the distinctive part of the constitution, the method of choosing senators. The senate was to be composed