takeable language of their earnestness and sincerity
upon this subject, for there too, have they
knocked, and by respectful and manly petititioning,
sought to obtain those beneficial changes,
which you were doubtless assembled to consum-
mate. But this is not the time to tell over the
long list of reforms which they have so ardently
and so anxiously desired; suffice it to say that
they looked into the philosophy of their govern-
ment, and desired to see it brought down in all
its varied departments, to the direct and imme-
diate control of that people, through whom and
by whom it receives all its vitality and power.
They looked into the bosom of their own community,
and sought by the establishment of some
vast educational system—to dot every section
with school houses and teachers, requisite to its
wants, and thus as speedily as possible develop
and elevate the entire intellectual and moral en-
ergy of the whole State.
The economy of other systems was working
beautifully around them, and they entertained
the conviction that the blade of retrenchment
might be applied well and wisely to the cumbrous
and worn out machinery of their own—lopping
off useless and antiquated sinecures, simplifying
it in all its forms, and reducing the present enor-
mous expenditure to a rate far more consistent
with our tax burthened condition. With such
high aims they gave their cheerful approbation
to the call of this Convention, and looked to its
assembling with pleasure—believing that long
cherished hopes were soon to be realized, and
dreaming not that their characters as reformers
were to be tried solely by a standard reared alone
by sectional policy, and by the unbridled lust of
power. Well may they shrink from an alliance
alike humiliating to their pride, and destructive
to their every interest. Well might they ask if
this was indeed reform, its once broad and com-
prehensive sense has been narrowed down to suit
one single local caprice. Chameleon like it has
changed its color, and leopard like its very spots
and now the wildest whim, not to say the most
extravagant folly, wears its garb as familiarly as
though it was exclusively its own. I had thought
the spirit of transcendentalism and impractical
speculation had passed away—or if it still linger-
ed that it existed only in the elevated regions of
metaphysical reasonings and speculative philoso-
phy. We are here to indulge in no mere visionary
or fanciful schemings. Our work is practical
in an eminent degree, and we should seek to
deal with it as statesmen looking calmly over
the whole field, and weighing well every varient
feeling and hostile interest. Government has a
loftier design and a broader scope than many |
here would seem to imagine, it is within itself
when properly formed, a beautiful series of wise
checks—delicate balances, and wholesome re-
straints, and he who can so devise and arrange
the whole vast and complicated system as to se-
cure every right, and yet produce the largest
liberty, is the noblest and best benefactor of his
species, in a republic like ours the will of a
majority should always be truly reflected; but
that will, save in cases of justifiable revolution,
should only be reflected ana exercised in submission
to the sacred restraints and the binding obligations
of a Constitution, under the solemn
guarantees of which the rights of minorities are
fully and throughly protected. Democracy descends
from its high position to the lowest sinks
of mere mobocracy, whenever it asserts the right
of majorities to lawless and reckless control. A
democratic government aims not only to give
equal rights, but to secure equal protection—individual
and sectional—and that instrument by
whatever name you call it, or upon whatever
abstract theory based, which violates this enno-
bling feature, and lays one community or one
section at the feet and mercy of another—a beg-
gar it may be for its very rights—is false alike to
the letter and the spirit of true and genuine de-
mocracy. .Sir, I was reared in a democratic
school, and drank my earliest political lessons
from a democratic, fount, and to those tenets as
thus taught, I yet look as did the mariner of old,
to the beaming polar star that guided him in his
course over the waves of the trackless ocean.
Cherishing such opinions, I cannot vote for the
proposition which emanates from the honorable
gentleman from Washington, nor for any plan of
kindred character. The scheme reads upon the
journal as follows:
" The House of Delegates shall be com-
posed of seventy-three members, to be ap-
portioned among the several counties and
city of Baltimore, according to the ratio here-
in provided, and to their several numbers,
(as shown by the last census of the United
States,) which shall be determined by adding to
the whole number of free persons, including
those bound to service for a term of years,
three-fifths of the slaves, and allowing to each
county one additional delegate for a fraction ex-
ceeding three-fourths of the ratio, but each coun-
ty shall be entitled to at least two delegates.
The ratio shall be one delegate to every six thou-
sand of said population in said counties and city,
until the number of the House of Delegates shall
be sixty-nine, and thereafter the ratio shall be
one to every thirty-two thousand. |
