Mr. CUSHING. Other gentlemen will desire
to go into the same discussion.
Mr. STIRLING, I move that the gentleman
be allowed to proceed.
The motion was agreed to.
Mr. MARBURY resumed: I was about to
say that at one time the gentleman who now
seems to be the standard bearer of the demo-
cratic State's rights party of this country
might seem to have been somewhat identified
with this doctrine of arbitrary power, arbi-
trary arrests, &c. But if that was the case,
he was then a subordinate officer. He was
not exercising his own sense of justice. He
was doing as the soldier of Massachusetts
told me he was doing, obeying orders; and
1 do not blame men for obeying orders. But
that gentleman now standing on the broad
basis of his own rights, taking a wide sur-.
vey of the whole field, seeing bow the State's
rights doctrines loom up as the true constitu-
tional life-giving principles of the country to-
day, is not a man shackled by foreign power,
but lie stands by the principles of constitu-
tional liberty, and it is our duty, in my hum-
ble opinion, to give him our hearty and cheer-
ful support.
Mr. ABBOTT. Is not lie an officer in the
army yet '?
Mr. DAVIS, of Charles. I call the gentle-
man from Baltimore to order.
Mr. MARBURY. Whether an officer of the
army or not, that we dan make him President
of the United States is a fixed fact, if we give
him our hearty support, just as certain as any-
thing under heaven. I will give an illustra-
tion of it. I heard of a vote taken down in the
•navy yard—1 do not know how many gentle-
men were there, sick and wounded—and only
about seventy of all that were there were not
McClellan men, and those seventy said they
were for McClellan but were afraid to say so.
Now that is my experience of the army. 1
have seen a great many soldiers about Wash-
ington, and almost all of them are for Mc-
Clellan. With his Napoleon spirit, his love
of liberty, when he obtains the power to act
freely, to act for himself, the first thing that
he will strive to remedy will be the enormity
of the acts of the present administration, in
its unconstitutional interference with the
rights of the citizens of this country.
Mr. BRISCOE. I desire to say a few words
upon the subject before the convention. And
first I desire to say incidentally in reply to
the gentlemen from the city of Baltimore
(Mr. Stockbridge, ) who seemed to have a holy
horror of the effects of one of the Chicago
resolutions, .that the men who passed that
resolution are constitution-loving men, and
law-abiding citizens; and some of them from
the State of which the gentleman himself is
anative (Massachusetts.) When they said
they would avail themselves of all their pow-
ers, and means to protect the ballot-box, they
meant they would avail themselves of all |
constitutional modes of protecting the ballot-
box.
Mr. STOCKBRIDGE. They did not say so.
Mr. BRISCOE. I wish to God I could say
as much tor the gentleman from the city of
Baltimore. I wish to God that I could to-
day say as much for the members of this con-
vention, that they were prepared to stand by
the constitution of their State, and willing
to allow every man within its limits to vote,
as that constitution says he has a right to
vote, without any restriction. The demo-
cratic party sanction no such test oaths as are
intimated in this section. They regard them,
anal have regarded them in all time past, in
the language of a distinguished man, as "the
first weapons that young oppression learns to
handle; weapons the more odious that they
are barbed and poisoned, requiring neither
strength nor courage to wield them." I tell
the gentleman from Baltimore, and I tell the
majority of this house, that I would have
more respect, and I believe the majority of
the people of Maryland would have more re-
spect for a constitution written by the pen of
a military commander at Washington, or or-
dered by Secretary Stanton at the head of
the war department, to be the organic law of
Maryland, than for a constitution which shall
demand of them this odious unconstitutional
oath, this odious test (halt you here apply to
the citizens of the State.
1 say that it is grossly unconstitutional.
' took that position in the Senate of Maryland
when I opposed the incorporation of the
oath in the bill which called you together.
The constitutional of the State unquestionably
tells you in the plainest language, who is to
be a voter at all elections to be held under it.
One of the highest legal authorities of your
land, Chief Justice Story, from whose com-
mentaries I read, section 624, said :
" It would seem but fair, reasoning upon
the plainest principles of interpretation, that
when the constitution established certain
qualifications as necessary for office, it meant
to exclude all others as prerequisites. From
the very nature of such a provision, the
affirmation of these qualifications would
seem to imply a negative of all others. * *
* * * A power to add new qualifica-
tions is certainly equivalent to a power to
vary them. It adds to the aggregate what
changes the nature of the former requires."
You have as much a right to say that any
man who has been a drunkard for the last six
months, shall not be entitled to the right of
suffrage at the coining election, as to say that
he shall not vote without taking this test
oath.
Again, in section 627, Judge Story says:
"The people of the State by adopting the
constitution have declared what their will is
as to the qualifications for office. And here
the maxim if ever must apply, "Expressio
unius est exclusio alterius." |
