terminating" upon the true faith of a Christian" should be administered to "all persons that already have or shall hereafter be admitted to have or enjoy any office or place of trust within this province."* This exclusion was perfected in the following year by the addition of the oaths of allegiance and abhorrency and the test, to the last two of which no conscientious Jew could subscribe.† No essential modification was made of this requirement until sixty years later, when it was embodied in the fundamental law of the State.

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Whatever recognition the Jew could thus obtain, it is also necessary to remember, was accorded entirely upon sufferance. Profession of faith still remained punishable in the eye of the law with death. In 1723 the intolerance of the Toleration Act of 1649 was revived by an act-repealing apparently similar measure of 1715-" to punish blasphemers, swearers, drunkards." It, however, did much more than this in the opening enactment, that "if any person shall hereafter within this province. deny our Saviour Jesus Christ to be the Son of God, or shall deny the Holy Trinity," he should for the first offense be fined and have his tongue bored; for the second, fined and have his head burned; for the third, be put to death. This act likewise remained unrepealed until after the adoption of the State Constitution.

From the restoration of the Lord Proprietor, in 1715, until the outbreak of the Revolution I find rare mention of Jewish names. The Jewish settlements at Schaefersville and Lancaster seem to have contributed little to the stream of German immigration which flowed steadily from southeastern Pennsylvania into Frederick county, Maryland. Similarly the Jewish communities of Philadelphia and New York do not appear to have yielded to the commercial inducements offered by the more southerly colony. The absence of such contact suggests either a deliberate avoidance of

* Bacon, Laws of Maryland, 1715, Chap. XXX. The pages in Bacon are unnumbered.

† Ibid., 1716, Chap. V.

Bacon, Laws of Maryland, 1723, Chap. XV.

the province or an avowal of Jewish faith with some reserve during residence therein. The evidence is, however, entirely negative, and until a larger historical spirit will have placed the splendid records of the Parishes, the Prerogative Courts, the Land Office and the Provincial and County Courts of Maryland in some more accessible form, the conclusions reached are at best tentative.

Church establishment terminated with the fall of proprietary rule and emergence into statehood. With it fell, too, the force of the legislation which for a century and a half had declared profession of Jewish faith a capital offense. The practical identification in men's minds of citizenship and church membership, and the subscription to doctrinal oaths as a preliminary requisite to political office, could not, however, be swept away as easily.

In September, 1776, a Declaration of Rights and a formal Constitution was presented to the Provisional Convention by a committee of five members appointed a month before. For three weeks the report was discussed by the Convention in committee of the whole. Of the debate, unfortunately, no record is preserved. Few changes were added in the open house, and in November, 1776, the documents became the fundamental law of the State.* The thirty-fifth article of the Declaration of Rights provided: "That no other test or qualification ought to be required on admission to any office of trust or profit than such oath of support and fidelity to this State, and such oath of office as shall be directed by this Convention or the Legislature of this State, and a declaration of belief in the Christian religion."+ The test of the oath of fidelity was given in the fifty-fifth article of the Constitution, and the requirement that the person so appointed "shall also subscribe a declaration of his belief in the Christian religion was repeated.‡

* See Green, Laws of Maryland and the Proceedings of the Convention, 1774-1776 (Annapolis, 1787), pp. 308-310.

† Poore, Charters and Constitutions, I., 820.

Ibid., I., 828.

Henceforth the Jew in Maryland was secure in his religious profession and vested with certain political privileges. But the largest civic recognition was still withheld, and not until half a century later, after a persistent struggle extending over more than half this interval, was the fullest equality in the eye of the law accorded him. This chapter of the story, however, must be left to form the subject of an independent study.

FAMILY HISTORY OF THE REVEREND

DAVID MENDEZ MACHADO.

BY N. TAYLOR PHILLIPS, LL. B., New York.

David Mendez Machado reached America at a time when the entire white population of the original States of this Union was less by half than that now contained in the city of New York, and the beginnings of at least one American city are identified with the advent of himself and family. He was a very young man, probably in the neighborhood of twenty-one years of age, when, in company with members of the Nunez family, to which he appears to have been related prior to his marriage, he left Lisbon, Portugal, in the year 1732, under somewhat remarkable circumstances. Dr. Samuel Nunez, whose daughter he subsequently married, was an eminent physician in Lisbon during the Inquisition. They, although of the Jewish persuasion, with members of the Machado family and others, had long been professing Christianity, but by pursuing their religious devotions privately, were enabled to remain secretly true to the faith of their ancestors. The Doctor was one of the court physicians, but even this did not save him from the wrath of the Grand Inquisitor when it was ascertained that his Christianity was but a pretense; he, with the members of his family, was cast into prison, and remained there until the medical services of the Doctor being called into requisition, they were liberated by the Ecclesiastical Council upon the advice of the Grand Inquisitor, on condition, however, that two officials of the Inquisition should reside in the family as spies upon their religious practices. About this time an elder brother of David Mendez Machado was discovered covertly following some Jewish tenets, and was given the choice of either publicly renouncing Judaism in the Cathedral at

Lisbon on Christmas morning, or of being burned at the stake. His courage failed him and he consented to be led into the Cathedral, but once before the effigies, the character of determination peculiar to his people returned to him with such overwhelming force that he concluded to die rather than thus openly sacrifice his principles. Turning to the figure of the Virgin Mary, he addressed to it an amusing reflection upon the birth of Christ. This witticism cost him his life, as he was immediately led out and burnt.

The following account of the departure from Lisbon of the Nunez family together with Machado and others is quoted from an interesting writer*: "The Doctor had a large and elegant mansion on the banks of the Tagus, and being a man of large fortune he was in the habit of entertaining the principal families of Lisbon. On a pleasant summer day he invited a party to dinner, and among the guests was a captain of an English brigantine anchored at some distance in the river. While the company were amusing themselves on the lawn, the captain invited the family and part of the company to accompany him on board the brigantine and partake of a lunch prepared for the occasion. All the family, together with the spies of the Inquisition and a portion of the guests, repaired on board the vessel, and while they were below in the cabin enjoying the hospitality of the captain, the anchor was weighed, the sails unfurled, and the wind being fair, the brigantine shot out of the Tagus, and was soon at sea, and carried the whole party to England. It had been previously arranged between the Doctor and the captain, who had agreed for a thousand moidores in gold to convey the family to England, and who were under the painful necessity of adopting this plan of escape to avoid detection. The ladies. had secreted all their diamonds and jewels, which were quilted in their dresses, and the Doctor having previously changed all his securities into gold, it was distributed among the gentlemen of the family and carried around them in

*"Statistics of Georgia," by George White.