856 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Mar. 13,

Memorial of Joseph P. Merryman, and other citizens of
Baltimore, remonstrating against any change in the charter
of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Company;
Which were severally read and referred to the Committee
on Internal Improvements.

Mr. Neilson submitted the following memorial:
Which was ordered to be printed on the Journal.
To the Honorable,

The General Assembly of Maryland :

The offerers of this memorial, speaking for themselves and
on behalf of the many citizens of the State who are asking of
your honorable body a repeal of that ill-advised and oppres-
sive piece of legislation known as the Sunday law, feeling
that they and the cause which they represent have been treated
with great injustice by opponents of the repeal, by being held
up in a false light before the Legislature and the community
in recent publications and speeches, especially by the Light
Street Committee and their spokesman, who last week lec-
tured the Legislature on the subject, respectfully ask leave
to submit the following plain statement in defence of their
position :

We declare, in the first place, that we do not yield to our
opponents, or to any men living, in a reverence for the laws
of God and the obligations of the highest and purest moral-
ity; and that we do not desire for our State any firmer foun-
dation than what is supplied by "the immutable laws of
God." We agree with the reverend gentleman who ad-
dressed the Legislature on Wednesday that "it is not the soil
alone that is dear to the human heart, but the principles that
control and govern the people—liberty, law, order, morals,
the charms of friendship and all the amenities of life." We
also agree that righteousness alone can secure these sacred
principles as the possession and inheritance of a nation. Our
conceptions of liberty, law, &c., are not, however, such as
would uphold us in the attempt to fasten our private, reli-
gious opinions and ritualistic observances upon the necks of
our fellow-citizens who differ with us in these matters; nor is
the "righteousness" we believe in that of the Scribes and
Pharisees. On this account we ask to be relieved of the
yoke of the Puritan discipline, which we respectfully submit
to your honorable body, is a perfectly distinct thing from
"the immutable laws of God." with which the disingenuous
artifice of our opponents has sought to confound it. We
entreat the Legislators of Maryland to look calmly and can-
didly at the matter that they may not be deceived through
this attempt at an unfair influencing of their judgments.

We hold that murder, adultry and theft are offences quite
independently of the Law of Moses. They were offences before