Now, sir, with regard to this larger and un-
fortunate division which has been introduced
here this morning, arraying shore against shore,
we have been told in the outset of this Conven-
tion, that the inhabitants of the Eastern Shore
would protect themselves against dangers which
they supposed might accrue from the superior
political influence and power of the Western
Shore. But, like many old antiquated preju-
dices and doctrines which ought to have passed
away by this time, there is now no shore ar-
rayed against any other shore. That has be-
come extinct. It must have been so in the or-
dinary course of things. Why, sir, at the time
of which the gentleman speaks, the intercourse
between these two shores was so remote, so un-
certain, as to amount to an actual barrier be-
tween the people who inhabit them. Occa-
sionally a little packet boat would go across the
bay; and still more seldom, one inhabitant would
pass over to visit the other shore. When I had
the pleasure of visiting the Eastern Shore in my
early days, the only mode of access was to mount
on horseback, let a servant bring a trunk or
portmanteau behind, in the old-fashioned way,
and come to the city of Annapolis, and here
pass over in a packet boat to the Eastern
Shore. Thus I passed over and visited the
lower part of the Eastern Shore and Somer-
set county, of which the gentleman has spoken.
But how is it now? The wide Atlantic has
surrendered up distance to the inventive ge-
nius of man, which has placed us in a near
propinquity to the shores of Europe. That
same powerful genius has almost annihilated
the barrier between the Western and the East-
ern Shores, and with that annihilation ought to
have perished all that ancient jealousy. The
power of steam has placed the two shores in a
greater degree of contiguity to the main centre
of communication—I mean the city of Baltimore
—than the very counties on the Western
Shore have to each other. The Eastern against
the Western Shore? How can it be? Do the
people of Washington and Frederick counties
have any sympathy with the people of Charles
and St. Mary's counties, except in the way of
a general friendship and good-feeling? Do they
ever exchange commodities or communications
with each other? Not at all. How, then, can it
be supposed that they possess a common feeling
as the Western Shore, which would induce
them to oppress their brethren of the Eastern
Shore?
Upon that Eastern Shore—and I mention it
only as an instance of the state of general feel-
ing, and not as having any importance in itself
—I have placed my only son, where he is now
pursuing his education. Other gentlemen have
done the same thing in the neighborhood in
which I live. We go over to the Eastern Shore
with as much freedom and frequency of com-
munication as to any part of the Western Shore
whatever. We have the same pride in the ancient
history of the Eastern Shore as they have them-
selves. We look to their distinguished men of
past days, and look upon it at the present day,
with as much satisfaction as they do. The State |
of Maryland is not like the two wings without
the body of the bird. The two wings are mere
auxiliaries, with which the State of Maryland,
as a whole, speeds her flight to her high desti-
nies. I hope that those gentlemen who have thus
appealed to the prejudices of the Eastern Shore,
will allow me to say that we can admire their
unbounded hospitality, their almost unlimited
access to every thing which can contribute to
the physical enjoyment and the intellectual
endowment of man; and we can cherish the
memory of their distinguished persons with as
much zeal as they do themselves. There is no
sentiment any where upon the Western Shore
which would induce any inhabitant of it to strip
them of their rights.
It may be true that the Eastern Shore, if gen-
tlemen will insist upon running that dividing
line, may have lost some of her political pre-
ponderance, But Aces that justify the charge
that the Western Shore has stripped her of her
rights? it is realizing the old fable of [he two
knights viewing from opposite positions the
shield which was golden upon one side and sil-
ver upon the other. We look upon the same
fact that has occurred here, but from different
positions; and consequently our interpretations
are wholly diverse. With regard to stripping
the Eastern Shore of its rights, let me say that
injustice may be done by time as well as by
any thing else. If the constitution suited us
years and generations ago, in the progress of
things that constitution may become as unjust
and as illiberal as if it had originally been made
unjust and illiberal. When the Chinese woman
continues to wear the shoe that covered her
foot in infancy, is it the less a torture that her
foot has grown while there was no expansibility
in the material surrounding it? So has it been
with us. The State has grown. Different sec-
tions of it have enlarged, while the constitution
is inflexible. The western counties have grown.
The city of Baltimore has grown. The Eastern
Shore, unfortunately, has remained compara-
tively in the same condition in which it was.
is there to be no flexibility in our government
to adapt itself to the growth and changes of
mankind?
We find in other countries, in the expansion
of liberal opinions, and even in the monarchical
government of England, that popular opinion
forces its way through, like one of those strata
of earlier days, that by internal pressure has
forced its way through the granite rock, and
appeared upon the earth's surface. The Parliament
of England was compelled, in their re-
form bill, to yield to the changed circumstances
of the times. A representation originally equal
had become unequal. Old boroughs had lost
all reasonable claims to representation, and
new cities like Manchester and Glasgow had
grown up. Hence it was that even in that
country, where there was no opportunity to ap-
peal to the people for their decision, as there
has been here, but where the Parliament pos-
sessed the sole power, even then the over-
whelming force of popular opinion, sustained
by justice, was so great that the Parliament |
