In December, 1790, Bishop Carroll, having been consecrated in England, arrived and entered upon his see of Baltimore.
Difficulties, through which there were not many precedents to guide him, thickened about the path of the new prelate.

It was well both for the church and for the republic that he was a man not only versed in the theology and polity of his church, but imbued with American principles and feelings.

The first conflict that vexed the church under his administration, and which for fifty years continued to vex his associates and successors, was a collision between the American sentiment for local and individual liberty and self-government, and the absolutist spiritual government of Rome.

The Catholics of New York, including those of the Spanish and French legations, had built a church in Barclay Street, then on the northern outskirt of the city; and they had the very natural and just feeling that they had a right to do what they would with their own and with the building erected at their charges.

They proceeded accordingly to put in charge of it priests of their own selection.