ary was, by this construction, not the parallel passing three miles north of the mouth of the Piscataqua, but that passing three miles north of its source, or 43° 43′ north latitude, which strikes the Atlantic coast at Casco Bay. During the following year Massachusetts employed skillful mathematicians to make out this new boundary. In 1658 the new line had been generally recognized in the inhabited districts; but in 1664 the King, by letter, ordered the restoration of the province to the heirs of Gorges. In defiance of this order, Massachusetts, in 1666, resumed the government of the province, and in 1668 sent four commissioners, with a troop of horse, to enforce her authority. In 1677 the two lords chief justices of King's Bench and of common pleas, to whom this question had been referred, decided adversely to the claim of Massachusetts, the initial point of her northern boundary being fixed three miles north of the mouth of the Merrimack. The agents of Massachusetts purchased the claims of the heirs of Gorges, anticipating the overtures of the King himself for the same purpose. The claim of Massachusetts, being then generally recognized, was, by the charter of William and Mary, in 1691, definitely legalized. Maine retained this status as a district of Massachusetts up to the time of her admission, in 1820, as a State of the American Union.

That portion of Laconia west of the Piscataqua, not having been purchased by Massachusetts, was not thereafter a portion of that prov ince. In 1679 the King ordered a commission for organizing this territory into a separate government, under the name of New Hamp shire. In 1740 a tedious controversy in regard to its south boundary was settled by the lords in council, whose decision, approved by the King, fixed it along a line following the meanderings of the Merrimack at three miles distance on the north side, from its mouth to the falls of the Pawtucket, "and thence due west to meet the other royal governments." The charter of 1691 made Massachusetts coterminous on the south with the colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island. The colonies were erected within the limits of a grant from the Council of Plymouth, in 1630, to its president the Earl of Warwick, and by him, in 1631, transferred to two English lords, Say and Seal and Brooke. Its limits were described with an ambiguity and obscurity of expression remarkable even in those days of rude description and want of geographical knowledge, and laid the foundation for serious conflicts of title in after years. They included all that part of New England west of the Narraganset River, extending "the space of forty leagues upon a straight line near the sea shore, toward the south and west, as the coast lieth toward Virginia, accounting three English miles to the league; and also all and singular the lands and hereditaments whatsoever lying and being within the lands aforesaid, north and south in latitude, and in breadth and length, and longitude of, and within all the breadth aforesaid, throughout the main lands there from the Western Ocean to the South Sea."

This territory was settled by several independent communities or colonies, which, by the charter of Charles II, in 1662, were consolidated into a single colony by the name of "The Governor and Company of the English Colony in Connecticut in America." The colony of New Haven, included in this charter, refused to submit to the arrangement till 1665. The territory of this consolidated colony was designated as extending from Narraganset Bay to the Pacific, and from the line of Massachusetts plantations southward to the sea coast, including the adjacent islands. The present boundary was finally settled by agree ment in 1713. From this broad area Connecticut was destined to sub

mit to several extensive deductions. In 1643 the Earl of Warwick, who had been appointed by the Parliament lord high admiral of England, with a council of five peers and twelve commoners, granted to "The Incorporation of Providence Plantations in the Narraganset Bay in New England" a tract covering the eastern portion of the Connecticut claim, bounded north and east by Massachusetts and Plymouth Colonies, and west by the Narraganset Indians, the whole tract extending about twenty-five English miles into the Pequot River and country." This grant, by inadvertence, was entirely ignored in the Connecticut charter of 1662, which included all this country; but in 1663 a new charter was granted to Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, the Connecticut charter being recalled until the boundary between them should be settled. During the same year the line of the Pawcatuck was agreed upon as the boundary between Rhode Island and Connecticut. This charter, with those of the other New England colonies, was abrogated in January 1687, by Governor General Sir Edmund Andross; but in May 1689 the people of Rhode Island, accepting the English revolution of 1688, resumed their rights under the charter, which continued in force as the organic law of the colony and afterward of the State of Rhode Island till superseded by a regular State constitution in 1842. The territorial claim of Connecticut in its westward extension was again trenched upon by the charters of New York and Pennsylvania. The claims of the former date back to the charter of 12th March, 1664, granted by Charles II to his brother, the Duke of York, afterward James II, which, after the final subversion of the Dutch government of New Netherlands, was renewed. The limits of this grant are sketched in geographical ignorance and disregard of prior rights which meet us at periods of our colonial history. With a large territory now included in the State of Maine, it covered Long Island and all the lands between the Connecticut River and the eastern shore of Delaware Bay. The Dutch occupancy of fifty years was treated as an intrusion upon the rights of the Crown, offering no bar to this reckless and prodigal endowment. These lands were granted to the duke in free and common socage, with a yearly rent. The rights of eminent domain, subject to the sovereignty of the King, went with the land grant. A royal commission, in November 1664, determined the boundary betwen New York and Connecticut along the line of the Mamaroneck, but in 1731 the present boundary was fixed by agreement of the two colonies. Thus New York absorbed the westward extension of the Connecticut territory north of the forty-first parallel and east of the Delaware River.

By agreement with Massachusetts in 1787, under the confederation, the present boundary line was acknowledged and the conflicting claims of the two colonies to the westward compromised by admitting the territorial sovereignty of New York and assigning to Massachusetts the title to the soil north of the forty-second parallel and west of the meridian passing eighty-two miles west of the northeast corner of Pennsyl vania. North of Massachusetts, New York still claimed the territory as far east as the Connecticut River, under the grant to the Duke of York. New Hampshire asserted a right as far westward as the line of Massachusetts, and gave extensive grants of land west of the Connecticut. This produced a collision between the authorities of New Hampshire and New York, which was finally terminated by the royal order of July 1764, designating the Connecticut River as the common boundary of the two colonies. The inhabitants of the disputed territory, till then known as "the New Hampshire grants," did not object to the political jurisdiction of New York, but the effort to oust holders of land

under grants from the authorities of New Hampshire provoked resist ance which was never suppressed. Finally, in 1790, New York relinquished her claims, and Vermont was admitted to the Union on the 4th of March, 1791, with her present boundaries.

That portion of the territory claimed by Connecticut between the forty-first and forty-second parallels and west of the Delaware River was intercepted by the charter which Charles II in 1681 granted to William Penn, constituting him proprietary and governor of the province of Pennsylvania. The outline of this grant was magnificent and far more definite than the previous efforts at defining colonial boundaries. It included "all that tract or part of land in America, with the islands therein contained, as the same is bounded on the east by the Delaware River, from twelve miles distance northward of New Castle Town unto the three-and-fortieth degree of northern latitude, if said river do extend so far northward; but if the said river shall not extend so far northward, then by the said river so far as it doth extend, and from the head of the said river to the eastern bounds are to be determined by a meridian line to be drawn from the head of said river unto the said forty-third degree. The said land to extend westward five degrees in longitude, to be computed from the said eastern boundary, and the said lines to be bounded on the north by the beginning of the three-and-fortieth degree of northern latitude, and on the south by a circle drawn at twelve miles' distance from New Castle northward and westward unto the beginning of the fortieth degree of northern latitude, and then by a straight line westward to the limits of longitude above mentioned."

It should be observed that the geographers of that day considered degrees of latitude as zones taking designation from their northern parallels; hence the north boundary of Pennsylvania, designated as the beginning of the forty-third degree, is really the forty-second parallel. The south boundary, being the beginning of the fortieth degree, was really the thirty-ninth parallel, a construction for which Penn earnestly contended in his disputes with Lord Baltimore in relation to the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland. Proud, in his "History of Pennsylvania," states the length of the colony at five degrees of longitude, or two hundred and sixty-five miles, on the fortyfirst parallel.

The Duke of York, soon after receiving his charter for the province of New York, granted to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret the territory contained within the present limits of New Jersey, the grant embracing powers of government as well as title to the soil. To Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore, King Charles I, in 1632, granted a charter constituting him lord proprietary of the province of Maryland, with territorial jurisdiction, including the country between the fortieth degree of latitude on the north and the Potomac on the south, with an eastward projection of the southern boundary across the peninsula flanking the Chesapeake Bay to the Atlantic.

In the disputes on boundary with Penn, Baltimore contended for the modern meaning of the word latitude, which would carry his grant to the fortieth parallel. The controversy was settled by the location, in 1767, by Mason and Dixon, two eminent English surveyors, of the celebrated line which bears their names.

In 1682, by two deeds of feoffment, the Duke of York, afterward James II, made over to William Penn his proprietary interest in the territory then denominated the three lower counties on the Delaware. After fruitless efforts to incorporate them with Pennsylvania, they were

BIOGRAPHIES CONTEMPORAINES.

LE R. P. LACORDAIRE.

(Suite1.)

L'imagination libérale de l'abbé Lacordaire était conquise; il allait être, avec plusieurs catholiques d'élite, l'un des plus brillants satellites de l'astre redoutable qui l'entraînait après lui dans son orbite. Il y avait peut-être alors quelque danger et quelque honneur à rester en France : il resta.

Nous nous sommes étendu volontiers sur M. Lacordaire, jeune, obscur et à peu près inconnu. Nous ne nous sommes pas lassé de le peindre dans la naïveté de ses impressions, de ses sentiments, de ses propres paroles; car, à notre sens, l'homme mûr est contenu tout entier dans sa jeunesse, comme le fruit dans sa fleur.

Désormais, l'abbé Lacordaire a un rôle sur la scène de la religion et de la politique; nous passerons plus rapidement sur les faits connus, sur les doctrines jugées, sur les œuvres et les choses imprimées, nous contentant d'apprécier le plus brièvement possible ce qui aboutit plus directement à l'auteur des Conférences.

La révolution de Juillet, pour avoir renversé le trône de France, tenait l'Europe et le monde en suspens.

M. de Lamennais, qui avait autrefois défendu la monarchie absolue avec la même ardeur excessive qu'il apporta depuis à la cause démocratique, crut le moment venu d'annoncer hautement aux peuples le règne de la liberté religieuse et de la liberté politique, et de hâter le triomphe de ces deux idées l'une par l'autre.

Il avait remarqué depuis longtemps que l'histoire de la royauté française des derniers siècles montrait la religion chrétienne s'alliant à la cause royale par des embrassements étroits et serviles. Les es

1 Voir le Correspondant, t. XVII, p. 812.

prits superficiels et sceptiques tenaient donc en France le Catholicisme pour complice nécessaire de la monarchie dans ses conflits heureux ou malheureux avec les institutions nouvelles. Ainsi la cause de Dieu, la cause éternelle, se trouvait misérablement liée à une querelle humaine, à une forme sociale qui passe.

Il sembla urgent à M. de Lamennais de répudier une si funeste solidarité. Il jugea que la révolution politique de 1830, en brisant une couronne antique, avait aussi dû briser les vieux rapports du pouvoir religieux et du pouvoir civil, et affranchir l'Eglise des dures étreintes de la suprématie laïque. Il voulut l'Eglise aussi libre que l'Etat. Il prit en main la cause des peuples catholiques contre les rois, les ministres, les magistrats, les hérétiques et les incrédules.

Mais d'immenses et brûlantes questions allaient être soulevées par cette polémique. Ce n'était pas la première fois que M. de Lamennais abordait, avec l'agressive éloquence et la dialectique passionnée du tribun religieux, la profonde et presque inextricable théorie des rapports de l'Eglise et de l'Etat. Il fallait secouer à la fois, pour les rompre, tous les liens qui attachaient le clergé français au gouvernement; il fallait remettre, avant tout, en litige la doctrine des concordats, la nomination des évêques, le budget du clergé.

Et en quel moment encore tant d'agitations doctrinales allaient-elles être provoquées? Au moment où l'Irlande catholique s'agitait puissamment, où la religieuse Belgique s'affranchissait, où le Rhin tremblait, où l'Italie remuait, où la Romagne était en feu, où l'héroïque Pologne se réveillait pour mourir, où la paix et la guerre du monde entier étaient, pour ainsi dire, livrées à un hasard!

Il est plus facile, après dix-sept années, de mesurer froidement et équitablement la position critique de 1830, et de rendre justice à la prudente prévoyance des uns, sans accuser la témérité courageuse des autres.

On comprend aujourd'hui que les hommes de gouvernement, que les vieux évêques et les vieux prêtres, blanchis et meurtris par les révolutions, ayant plus de connaissance et plus de défiance des hommes, ne se précipitassent point volontairement dans les hasards d'une tempête universelle.

Mais on comprend aussi ce que méritent de sympathie, et, s'il en était besoin, d'élogieuse indulgence, les hommes ardents ou jeunes, généreux ou forts, qui se mettaient les premiers en avant au jour de