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
