It would be impossible for it to lie done, without
the knowledge of the aspirants for office. And
if it could, by possibility, be done with-
out such knowledge, it would necessarily bring
the person so elected, into suspicion and disre-
pute. But, besides this, each and every man in
the community will know, that though he may
not for the time be a candidate, yet the time may
come, when he may desire to hold an office,
by election or otherwise. The oath of qualification
will forever stare him in the face.
He will ever remember that any violation of
the law, in any form, or by any means, either in
buying or colonizing voters, will operate aperpe-
tual bar to his success. To cover it, he will have
to perjure himself, with all its consequences of
exposure, and with all its pains and penalties, in-
flicted by God and man. He would enter upon
his office with a violated and wounded conscience
and with the harrassing terror of expected ex-
posure.
Every argument which had been advanced in
favor of restriction, had been answered already?
He referred to the fact of the obtaining of the
right to vote at Baltimore, by sleeping there one
night, and was about to remark on it, when
Mr, MERRICK interposed a remark. While a
man moving from one ward to another, may re-
quire the right to vote in six hours, you and I
could not obtain it without a residence of six
months.
Mr. PRESSTMAN. Should it so happen that a
different arrangement of the districts was to be
made, the same evil would occur. What differ-
ence did it mike in the right to vote, whether a
man lived on one side the street or the other?
Besides, the gentlemen, if he lost his vote, would
do so voluntarily, by leaving his county, where
he had & right to vote.
Mr. SPENCER. The gentleman from Balti-
more, had given the true construction of the
law. The residence in the ward or dis-
trict, must be real and not fictitious. Sleep-
ing would not afford evidence of the fact.
It depended on a bona fide intention. His
exposition was received with a smile. He
put it to the gentleman from Kent, whose smile
he had noticed, to say whether, if as a judge, a
case came before him, the evidence of which
showed that the party had sworn, that he went
bona fide to reside in a ward, or district, when
the evidence proved, that he only slept a night
and left it, the next day, he would not inflict
punishment on him ?
Mr. CHAMBERS. If a jury convicted him, I
would send him to the Penitentiary.
Mr. SPENCER. And would not any intelligent
jury convict ?
Mr. CHAMBERS, They ought to do so.
Mr. SPENCER. The gentleman from Kent had
answered. If a man swears lie went with a
bona fide intention to reside, and then went away
the next day, he would be guilty of perjury.
And how shall we be benefited by substituting
live nights for one night, if he would perjure
himself in one case, he would in another.
He went on to state that the right of suffrage |
was restricted in the early period of the Govern-
ment. And if it should be the desire of the peo-
ple to restrict it now, they have a right. But is
it expedient ? He held it to be inexpedient, and
impolitic. He held that every man should have
a right to vote. This was the position on which
he stood. He would never consent to trench on
the right of suffrage. He would vote against
all restrictions, except those which are already
in the Constitution. He, as he had heretofore
said, had seen great injustice practised under the
restrictions as they now existed. An election
rarely occurred, at which legal voters were not
rejected, by the judges of elections, urged
by men who stood at their backs, and who
knew better. Who knew, at the time, they
were doing an act of injustice. Voters were
often rejected, for partizan purposes, as well on
the ground of residence as age, whose right to
vote was beyond question. Other restrictions
will inflict greater evils.
Mr. DAVIS said that after the able and elo-
quent speeches which had been made, he only
rose to state a fact. It is well known that the
great question of Reform had its origin in
Frederick county; that not being able to obtain
a convention to revise the Constitution, that
county set about the work in her own limits
through the legislation of the State. In doing
so, she set an example worthy of the imitation
of this Convention. In 1838, she petitioned the
Legislature for a charge in the mode of electing
the members of the Levy Court, from the Gov-
ernor to an election by the people. The county
was divided into three Levy Court districts, and,
as a qualification for voters to vote for members
of the Levy Court, it was provided by chapter
361, section III, "that the voters in each Levy
Court district in said county, who shall be quali-
fied to vote for delegates to the General Assem-
bly, and shall have resided six months in said
Levy Court district in which they shall offer to
vote, shall be entitled to vote for as many per-
sons in said district as Justices of the Levy Court
in said county as hereinbefore assigned to such
district."
By reference to the journal of the House of
Delegates of that session, he found that his hon-
orable friend, Mr. BISER, then before him, and
Mr, SCHLEY, now a member of this Convention
from Washington county, were then Delegates
for Frederick county to the General Assembly.
Mr. SCHLEY reported the hill above referred to;
and although he had been unable to trace the
vote upon that bill, he found that Mr. BISER
had introduced another bill to abolish the Com-
missioners of Tax and refer their duties to this
same Levy Court, with the restriction of the six
months residence as provided for in the said bill.
The people in Frederick appeared to be so much
in love with this system, that upon an enlarge-
ment of the number of Levy Court districts in
1844, from three to five, it was provided by
chapter one hundred and ninety-two, section
five, "that every voter in each of the Levy Court
districts as described in the the third section of
the act, who shall be qualified to vote for Dele-
gates to the General Assembly, and who shall have |
