the high functions of the State has descended
to the narrowest limits of personal tyranny;
when the Federal Government has arrogated
to itself every conceivable despotic and mon-
archical power, to Bay that we in Maryland
are so very strong, that our sovereignty is
practically so extensive, that it is necessary
for us to acknowledge to the Governmental
Washington that it is supreme, is almost a
ludicrous work of supererrogation. Why,
sir, they have always asserted that supreme
power. That has been the tendency of all
federative systems; it is so in the cantons of
Switzerland, it is so in the Hanseatic League.
In all confederacies, it is the federative au-
thority always which has to be checked and
guarded against, because it is always the
authority which encroaches upon the others.
There is no need for us in the State to guard
the powers that belong to the Federal Gov-
ernment. The theory in this country has
ever been, from the time of its foundation
down to this miserable, wretched and horrid
war that has plunged us all in this common
chasm of ruin and depravity, the true theory
has always been that all we had to do in the
States was to maintain the powers of the
States, and guard against the encroachments
of the federal power.
And, sir, this clause is open to another ob-
jection cognate with the one I have men-
tioned. It is that this is the enactment for
the first time in history of a proposition of
this sort in a bill of rights; it is that for the
first time in the history of Maryland, for the
first time in the history of any of the States,
we are called upon to put on record, in this
time of civil war. at this time when all pow-
ers, whether constitutional or not, are as-
sumed by the Federal Government—properly
assumed, a great many honest men think, in
the existing state of war—we are called upon
to put upon record in our Constitution what
is a novelty not only in reference to our own
history, but in reference to the bistory of
every other State in this Union, because no
other State has ever done it. We are here
called upon, at this time and under these
circumstances, to take pains and declare in
our bill of rights that we owe paramount al-
legiance to the Government at Washington.
Now what is the natural commentary upon
this—the natural inference from it I It as-
sumes that there is a hostility in the people
or the government of this State, or in the
controlling power here, be it military or oth-
erwise, against the Government of the United
States, The people of Massachusetts have
not found it necessary to do this thing
They expressly declare, and in remarkably
strong terms, that Massachusetts is a free;
sovereign, and independent community, and
I glory in it that she has done so. Yet we
here are to find it necessary to make this;
declaration as if to put ourselves right on the
record, as if to remove some existing imposi-
22 |
tion. To me it has the air as if we consid-
ered ourselves naughty boys who had done
something contrary to the rights and dignity
of the Government of the United States, and
it is necessary for Maryland, as the only boy
in the school for when it has been found ne-
cessary, to get up and publicly apologize for
something done or something that had been
contemplated. Why cannot we stand as the
people of other States stand? Why cannot
Maryland stand in the position which she has
always occupied, and which is occupied by
every State in this Union to-day? Where is
the necessity for the change?
And it is open lo the objection that it is
partizan law-making; it is partizan Constitution
making. Now everybody knows that
this theory of State rights, and the opposite
to it—that which approaches more nearly to
the idea of the Federal Government being in
some measure consolidated, of this country
being a nation and all that kind of talk—
those are two partizan and political theories
which, starting with the very adoption of the
Constitution have been prosecuted with re-
morseless vigor up to the very time of the
outbreak of this war. Now I do not think
that those theories are proper subjects of dis-
cussion at this time, because that issue—for
that is the real issue in this country, and no
other—that issue has been submitted to the
arbitrament of battle, and is now in course
of decision. We. all know that the people
who held the consolidation theory were one
party in this country; and the people who
held the States' rights theory were the other.
And now it is proposed for the first time in
history to incorporate into the organic law
of a sovereign political community what is
in fact nothing in the world but on« of the
dogmas of a party platform. Yon here wish
to put into the Convention of Maryland, the
declaration that we who have held the States'
rights theory are wrong, while you who hold
the contrary are right because you thus make
it the fundamental law. Now to me person-
ally it makes no difference in the world: I
would as leif that the government should be
consolidated and tried on that basis, as on
the basis of State rights. But I say—do not:
force the construction, if you want a con-.
solidated instead of a States' rights govern-.
ment, let us try it; try it on, as the slang
raging is; if it does not suit we can go back,
to the other.
But I am opposed to the policy of putting
into our Constitution here what is practically
but a partizan declaration, whether it accords
I with the doctrines of the party, or against
the doctrines of the party with whom I act.
That thing has been tried heretofore in Mary-
land—and I think gentlemen will find, upon
a deeper consideration of this question, that
party politics in our State are too fluctuating
for the safe trying of any such experiment.
I remember very well the common slander |
