SAMUEL CHASE.

THE signers of the Declaration of Independence on behalf of the state of Maryland were four; SAMUEL CHASE, WILLIAM PACA, THOMAS STONE, and CHARLES CARROLL of CARROLLTON.

Among the patriots of the revolution, none were more actively engaged during its most trying scenes, and few more distinguished in after life, than SAMUEL CHASE.

He was born on the seventeenth of April 1741, in Somerset county, Maryland, and was the child of the Reverend Thomas Chase, a very learned clergyman of the protestant episcopal church, who emigrated from England, and married Matilda Walker, the daughter of a respectable farmer.

The Rev. Mr. Chase having lost his wife, and succeeding at nearly the same time to the pastoral charge of St. Paul's parish, in Baltimore, removed with his son to that town in the year 1743.

Baltimore was, at that period, merely a village, and afforded little opportunity for the education of boys; indeed, nine years afterwards, a schoolmaster seems to have been still a desideratum, for a gazette of that date contains an advertisement, offering good encouragement from the inhabitants,

to any one of "sober character," competent to "teach English, writing and arithmetic."

The Rev. Mr. Chase was, however, perfectly well qualified to instruct his son. He had enjoyed the best advantages which England afforded, and was a scholar of remarkable attainments, as well as an enthusiast in classical learning; a proof of which was given in his laborious translation of the poem of Silius Italicus, enriched with copious and learned notes, a work bearing the marks of great talent as well as perseverance, which yet remains in the hands of his descendants awaiting sufficient encouragement for its publication.

Under the tuition of a parent so accomplished and so devoted to learning, the young Samuel acquired a degree of erudition uncommon among his compeers; and at the age of eighteen, with the established character of a good scholar, was sent to Annapolis to commence the study of the law.

Pursuing his studies, under the superintendence of Mr. John Hammond, and Mr. John Hall, with the earnestness that marked all his conduct through life, he was admitted to practise in the mayor's court at the early age of twenty, and two years afterwards was licensed for the chancery and some of the county courts.

He chose Annapolis for his permanent residence, and very soon became known as an able, eloquent and fearless lawyer; with the reputation superadded, at least among the more staid and loyal inhabitants, of being too little inclined to respect the dignity of the provincial officers.

In after years he gave abundant proof of extraordinary talent; but his early success in his professional career, was perhaps a more equivocal test; since the opportunity for distinction was then such as the present aspirants to forensic fame may not hope to see. The number of practitioners at

Annapolis was so small, that if the courts had any occupation, the lawyers could not fail, all to have clients. "I qualified," says Mr. Chase in a letter written long after, “in 1761 in the mayor's court; the bar then consisted of three practitioners, Messrs. William Paca, John Brice, junior, and myself; all of us students of the law under gentlemen of Annapolis, who qualified merely for improvement, without the remotest view of profit."

He very soon married Miss Ann Baldwin, of Annapolis, a lady described, by those who recollect her, as remarkably amiable and intelligent, and who became the mother of two sons and two daughters, all of whom survived their parents.

Advancing continually in his profession, the few years that intervened between his coming to the bar and the commencement of the political troubles, were not signalized by any incident, except his marriage, that has been preserved by memory or tradition.

In this interval he became a member of the colonial legislature, and distinguished himself there not only by the vigour of his mind, but by the bold independence of his course, and his uncourtly bearing towards the royal governor and the court party.

The most memorable instance of the spirit which already animated him, is perhaps to be found in a vote by which he joined in the enactment of a new regulation on the subject of the compulsory support of the clergy; and by the provisions of which his own father, still rector of St. Paul's, suffered a diminution of one half his income. He was an heir of his father's property; but neither that consideration nor the fear of offending the old gentleman, could restrain him from VOL. IV.-I

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voting against the court party, and in favour of what he thought the rights of the people.

The stamp act, that first step in the career of ministerial folly, was heard of with less emotion, generally, in the southern than in the northern colonies; but every where the intelligence raised a flame of indignation and a spirit of resistance.

In Maryland, a meeting or convention of the "sons of liberty" assembled suddenly at Annapolis, and forcibly opening the public offices, seized and destroyed the stamps; and a band of youthful patriots, designated of course, in the courtly language of the day, as a mob, publicly burnt the effigy of the stamp distributor.

In both these exploits, which were the first examples of political mobs in Maryland, Mr. Chase bore an active and a leading part; and in consequence was designated by the mayor and aldermen of Annapolis, in a publication that formed part of a paper war, carried on between them and the grand jury, as a "busy, restless incendiary, a ringleader of mobs, a foul mouthed and inflaming son of discord and faction, a common disturber of the public tranquillity, and a promoter of the lawless excesses of the multitude."

Far from feeling these abusive epithets, proceeding from such a source, as a cause of shame to himself, he was gratified by being the object of such hatred, as he was thus endeared the more to that party with which he desired to identify himself. He, therefore, exultingly avowed his conspicuous agency in the proceedings of the mob, which, he declared, consisted of men altogether more respectable than the mayor and aldermen ; but he earnestly denied a part of their accusation, which charged him with having at a former time spoken in justification of the stamp act.

He assailed the city authorities without mercy.

"Was it

a mob," his published letter asks, "who destroyed in effigy our stamp distributor? was it a mob who assembled here from the different counties of the province and indignantly opened the public offices? Whatever vanity may whisper in your ear, or that pride and arrogance may suggest, which are natural to despicable tools of power, emerged from obscurity and basking in proprietary sunshine, you must confess them to be your superiors, men of reputation and merit who are mentioned with respect, while you are named with contempt, pointed out, and hissed at as 'fruges consumere nati."" See the Appendix.

"I admit, gentlemen," he said, in another part of this publication, "that I was one of those who committed to the flames, in effigy, the stamp distributor of this province, and who openly disputed the parliamentary right to tax the colonies, while you skulked in your houses, some of you asserting the parliamentary right, and esteeming the stamp act a beneficial law. Others of you meanly grumbled in your corners, not daring to speak out your sentiments."

This was bold, perhaps saucy, language, for a young man of five and twenty, to apply to the constituted authorities of the town in which he resided; but the same uncompromising temper, apparent in this splenetic effusion, continued to be characteristic of Mr. Chase, to the latest period of his life.

The immediate cause of this hostility between him and the corporation, was to be found in his having acted as scribe for the grand jury, when they wanted a complaint against those municipal officers drawn up in proper form and forcible language. The stamp act having been repealed and contentment generally restored, allusions to the violences that had occurred before its abrogation, were introduced by his enemies