as well as honest people, and are able to im-
pose upon almost anybody with regard to
their condition; and a large class of them
have a considerable amount of misdirected
ability; and they are useful political tools,
because they are able to control those whom
men of not so desperate fortunes cannot control.
So far as the pardoning power goes,
it no more proves as a fact that the man to
whom it is extended ought to exercise the
right of suffrage than the fact of having
served his time out in the penitentiary. If
this amendment prevails, I shall move to
strike out the pardoning power of the execu-
tive, in order to require the man to prove
before his restoration, his absolute reform,
to the satisfaction of the tribunal here pro-
vided.
Mr. CUSHING. The practical objection I
have to the amendment of my colleague is
that the man who has been in the peniten-
tiary in his own section of the State, if be
wants to be pardoned under this provision,
must go before the general assembly, and
must make it known to the whole State, as it
must go into the proceedings of that body.
As it is now, a man convicted of crime and
sent to the penitentiary has only to move into
another State and to live there a year, and
he is as good in that State as any other man.
If you deprive him of a vote in your own
State because he has been convicted, and
force him to make it known beyond the peo-
ple of his own locality, by appealing to the
legislature, the result will be that his dis-
grace will get into the newspapers, and the
whole argument will be made public, and
the people everywhere will point at him and
say: "that is the man they talked about in
the general assembly, that was convicted of
thieving and has been pardoned." Yet he
can go into another State and live there a
year and vote.
Mr. STIRLING. Let him do that,
Mr. CUSHING. But why is he not just as
good a citizen of Maryland, and why cannot
he vote just as well in Maryland as in any
other State? How much worse a citizen of
Maryland would he be, after a year, than of
Pennsylvania? Why is there not a provision
in your constitution that no man convicted
of crime and sent to the penitentiary in any
other State in the Union shall vote here?
Mr. STIRLING, It does mean that. It
means that a man convicted anywhere shall
not vote here.
Mr. CUSHING. Does it mean pardoned by
the executive of any State? Does it mean
that be shall not be entitled to vote in any
State of the Union? Is it the gentleman's
argument that in the constitution of Mary-
land there is a prohibition extending over
the whole Union ?
Mr. STIRLING. No, sir; but the man who
has been convicted anywhere is not "entitled
to vote at any election in this State." If he |
has been convicted in a foreign country, he
is excluded in the same way.
Mr. CUSHING. A man is required to be
registered before be Can vote, and he cannot
vote if he has been convicted of a peniten-
tiary offence. How are you to know whether
he has been convicted elsewhere or not? The
whole presumption is that this State is meant
and this State alone.
The PRESIDENT. You can remedy that by
saying " convicted in this State or else-
where."
Mr. SCOTT. There are some States where
men have been convicted and sent to the
penitentiary for having "Uncle Tom's
Cabin" in their houses. Shall we say that
such men shall be prohibited from voting in
the State of Maryland?
It strikes me that the operation of the
amendment will be to let. loose upon the com-
munity the most dangerous class of convicts,
while the least dangerous and better class
will be forever disfranchised. Men hairing
money and influence can reach the legisla-
ture, and if they have not stolen a horse or
killed anybody for the last three months they
will make out a reform and be allowed to
vote. But the poor fellow living in the coun-
try with no friends, no money, and no influ-
ence, who has committed but one offence,
must be for all time disfranchised. There is
no equality in it. There is no justice in it.
The amendment was rejected.
Mr. STIRLING submitted the following
amendment to the section.:
Strike out from the word "unless," in the
second line, to the word " shall," in the third
line, and insert the words "be shall be re-stored
to the rights erf franchise by the gen
eral assembly by a vote of two-thirds of the
members elected to each house."
Mr. SANDS. That leaves the poor fellow in
a much worse case than the previous amend-
ment; because that left it in the power of the
governor to restore him by pardoning him ;
whereas by this be can only be restored by
the legislature, and it must go upon their
journal for his descendants to look at and see
that their father or their grandfather was
convicted of theft. I do not know upon
what grounds this amendment can possibly
be supported, for it has nothing like the
merit of that which the house have just voted
down.
Mr. BERRY, of Prince George's. I hope
this amendment will not prevail, to strike out
what has been very wisely retained in our
constitution ever since the organization of
the State government. How often do we
find that men are convicted upon circumstan-
tial evidence; and such cases arise, where
the circumstantial evidence is supposed to be
of the strongest sort, connected together link
by link; and yet the party so convicted and
sent to the penitentiary was not guilty of the
offence. Would it not be wrong to keep a |
