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rights democrat. The chairman of the committee says
we must put an antidote to the poison, and yet it is pro-
posed to insert a clause of the federal constitution which
has been tortured into a construction which every man
of this Convention would repudiate and spit upon. Why,
if the antidote must be given, should it be given in such •
doses as will kill the patient slowly?
Mr. Stoddert deeply regretted that an allusion had been
made in this body to party politics. —This Convention rep-
resented the sovereignty of Maryland, which knew not
party. There was not a man in the State of Maryland
who had not a deep and essential interest in the con-
stitution of the United States as understood by its fram-
ers. Maryland had never parted with her sovereignty.
She and the other States had delegated certain powers to
be administered by the federal government.
The war was fought upon the dogma which was main-
tained by the modern interpreters of this clause, this
State was invaded under it, and the civil rights bill passed
under it, and the tendency of it was to end in a consoli-
dated despotism. He stood here for his State to oppose
all despotisms, whether federal or any other.
Mr. Marbury said the words which fell from the lips
of the gentleman from Charles, (Mr. Stoddert, ) "The
sovereignty of Maryland knows no party, " were words
which he hoped the action of this Convention would im-
mortalize. They should be put in letters of gold on the
State House. They were assembled here under the most
peculiar circumstances. For years past he has been so
crushed, so cramped, so bowed down that his feelings
now, when he breathed the free air and stretched his
arms in liberty, he could not express. He was one of the
delegates from his county to the Convention of 1864, and
he and those he thought with him, were crowded into a
small corner without voice and without influence, and it
was only by the exercise of the sharpest legerdemain that
they could ever express their views, but none of their sug-
gestions were acted on; the leader of the dominant party
from Baltimore had conceded the justice of some of them,
but said he could not vote for them, as there might be
something hidden which was not then apparent.
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