Mr. STIRLING. The people of the State will
prevent it.
Mr. MILLER. Do not the people of the
State send the legislature here? If the repre-
sentatives of the people of the State cannot
agree upon this subject shows that the peo-
ple cannot agree upon it. And if one legis-
lature may alter or change what this super-
intendent for the time being shall report as
the law of the State, a succeeding legislature
may repeal it in toto, and then I want to
know what has become of your system of
common school education? ' If you cannot
induce a legislature to pass this law to make
a uniform system, how are you ever to get a
system that will be uniform, while the legis-
lature have any control whatever over it?
If you can perfect a system in this constitu-
tion, and go into all these details, as you have
the power to do, and then submit it to the
people, when it is once ratified by the majority
of the people of the State voting in mass,
it becomes irrepealable forever, so long as
the constitution lasts. But if you allow the
legislature any control over it, if you allow
them to modify it as they please, or repeal it,
if the representatives of the people are so dis-
posed, you cannot get rid of the danger from
the legislature having control over it. For
these reasons I have moved that this part of
the section be stricken out.
Mr. EDELEN. The gentleman from Balti-
more city (Mr. Stirling) has attempted by a
mere change of phraseology to strip this lat-
ter part of the fifth section of its objectiona-
ble feature, while the substance of the thing
remains in its fullness and entirety. My first
objection to it, and my reason for favoring
the amendment of the gentleman from
Anne Arundel, is that the whole of this lat-
ter clause of the fifth section proceeds upon
the ground of a general distrust of the legis-
lature of the State, We thereby say in so
many words that we are not willing to com-
mit this subject to the legislature of the State,
fresh from the people, and supposed at all
times to represent and reflect their views on
the question of public school instruction or
whatever other subject cornea within the
scope of their legitimate action. What
will be the effect of this? If the legisla-
ture from any cause whatever fail to do that
which they are required to do in the first
branch of this section, under this latter clause
the report of the superintendent, of public
school education, whatever it may be, how-
ever objectionable, however expensive, how-
ever tailing in all its essentials to meet the
wants and purposes in view, would ipso facto,
by the very fact of the omission on the part
of the legislature to perform the duty reposed
in them in the first part of this section, become
the law of this State, There is no escape
from that conclusion. Although the gentle-
man hats phrased it in a little different lan-
guage than that reported by the committee |
I say it is the same thing, and the amend-
ment providing that it may be changed by
subsequent legislatures does not relieve it at
all from its objectionable features, which
strikes the most casual observer.
I am now arguing this question simply
upon the ground of the inexpediency, impoli-
cy and impropriety, of taking the right of
legislation from that department of the gov-
ernment where we have lodged the power by
a previous part of the constitution, and giving
it to some man designated and called a super-
intendent of public school education. A
grave constitutional argument might be ad-
duced, but I am not going into an argument
upon that. It seems to me that it must be
palpable to everybody that it is not competent
for us here to take away this peculiarly ap-
propriate legislative duty from the legislative
department of the State and give it to a tri-
bunal composed of one man.
I say again, for one, although the gentle-
man from Baltimore city says and others have
said on this floor—my friend who sits over
the way has given us this morning his legislative
experience on the subject to the effect
that he bad been since 1856 endeavoring to
procure a system of public school education
in the State and had failed—still I am not
willing, although I stand here upon this floor
an advocate of public school education, and
will go as far upon this subject as he who
goes farthest, yet like my friend from Howard,
I look to that department of the State over
which you, Mr. President, preside, and I am
not willing to open wide the doors of the
treasury for any system of public school edu-
cation or anything else.
Notwithstanding these objections, I am will-
ing to commit this whole question to the leg-
islature and give them the power contained in
the first part of this section without that part
of it which the 'gentleman from Anne Arun-
del proposes to strike out. I will not repeat
the many objections I have to the details of
this system. They do not rest upon the
ground upon which the gentleman from Bal-
timore city (Mr. Abbott) has thought proper
to place them. Let me tell him here that his
remarks this morning took me as much by
surprise as regret. I was not conscious that
I had said one word upon this floor calculated
to provoke from him the language that fell
from his lips. I had not endeavored to intro-
duce into this hall a single new idea upon this
subject. I merely took up the proposition as
it came from his colleague (Mr. Daniel,) and
the gentleman from Howard (Mr. Sands,) and
all that I said was in advocacy of the views
which they had previously advocated upon
this floor. "This was the head and front of
my offending."
Mr. ABBOTT. I did not allude to the gen-
tleman particularly
Mr. EDELEN, The gentleman said be had
been in the legislature of Maryland a long |
