Excerpt from Oration Delivered at the Commemoration of the Landing of the Pilgrims of Maryland: Celebrated May 16, 1842, at Mt; St. Mary's, MD We hail with delight every auspicious omen of a better era, when persecution for conscience' sake will cease. And what else is betokened by the movement, in which we now participate? What spirit has brought you here to-day? What spirit impelled the nume rous throng, who so lately repaired as pilgrims to the place, where once stood. The ancient city of St. Mary's, to do homage to the memory of the most enlightened and benevolent colonists, that ever landed on the virgin shores of America and to venerate the very ground, on which they Imprinted the first traces of civilization What sign of the times do you read in the august spectacle of the primate of the Catholic Church in the United States, offering up the divine sacrifice and rearing the symbol of redemption on the spot, on which that same sacrifice was offered, and that same sym bol reared two hundred and eight years ago, by the men, who first in this new world broke the chains of conscience and substituted for them the golden ties of universal charity? What augury is that of the gifted orator proclaiming in tones, which find a thou sand echoes ln as many hearts, the triumph of religious liberty on the very place of its birth and over the cradle of its infancy. Le triumph of religious liberty - for this great principle now covers almost the entire union with its aegis. Once down-trodden even in Maryland, the land of its birth, it has Antaeus-like arisen with renewed vigour and has ultimately driven the dark spirit of religi ous Intolerance from the Statute-book and the high places of the. 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.