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62 CITIZENSHIP AND SUFFRAGiE IN MARYLAND.
One world suppose the learned Court could have found no answer to this
question except no, and the definition of residence they had already given,
almost forced them so to decide; but in some way they managed to return an
affirmative answer and so allowed the names to remain on the books.'
They held that residence is a question depending upon fact and inten-
tion, and if so, it may be applicable to a particular spot,. or to a whole
county. A. person who wanders from country to country with no intention of
remaining fixedly anywhere, acquires no new residence. On the other hand,
one who confines his wandering to a particular country or .locality, but
declines to fix himself upon some particular spot, can very properly be said
to be a resident of that country or locality. Home, domicile or residence
may,
therefore, include " a spot or wide area." The Constitution has " no
require-
ment that the proposed voter shall have some particular spot, which he calls
his home, provided he makes his home (in the sense of having no other home)
anywhere,.or in however maziy places, for the required times, within the
limits of the State and the voting district. Probably it was borne in mind
that numbers of citizens, through misfortune or otherwise, were without
dwelling places; but there is no evidence to be found in any part of the
Constitution that these were to be denied the privilege, of the elective
'-franchise. ~ On the contrary, it seems to have been the purpose to confer
the
right of suffrage upon every male citizen who has attained the age of
twenty-one years, only requiring, for wise reasons, that every such person
shall have resided in the State one year, and in the voting district six
months."
The Court held that entries made by registers of voters, concerning
qualifications of a voter, are findings of an officer charged with the duty
of
ascertaining their correctness, and should not be disturbed until their
falsity
is established by evidence, which is not the case here.
Of this remarkable decision, we can only say as a distinguished lawyer
said of a decision which seemed wrong to him: " It is the law now, it was
not before your lordship made it so." The Court seems to have thoroughly
confused residence and citizenship. The assumption that suffrage is an
jnherent right and not a privilege, is surely incorrect. With such an inter-
pretation of the laŤ-, it must clearly be a. very difficult task to strike
from
the books, names fraudulently registered. The decision is the more note-
worthy as it abandons entirely the line of argument the Court had followed
for many years, and which it had stated in two able decisions, one of
which had been rendered only five rears before. Still more remarkable is it
that not a judge dissented from this distortion of law-.
(1) The Court laid stress on the fact that the residence of these men,
somewhere in the ward, was not disputed. It
seems to me this is a false view. On proving that a man's residence was not
at the house whence he registered, surely,
the prosecution had done all that was necessary to shift the burden of
proof on the other side, which must now prove
that, though not residing at that house, the man did have, in fact, a
floating residence in the ward, if the name is to
remin on the list.
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