vention, whenever the people shall send a
Legislature here that is in favor of such a
proposition. I think that power ought to be
vested in the Legislature, because the due
preservation of civil order requires that the
action of the people should receive the sanc-
tion of the existing Government; otherwise
everything will be in confusion, everything
will be in disorder, and anarchy will prevail.
But when there shall arise in the hearts of a
majority of the people of this State a sense of
the necessity of a change of the Constitution
in any of its provisions, there can be no dan-
ger in allowing their representatives in the
Legislature to pass a law that a vote of the
people may be taken upon the subject under
the sanction of the law. Why, sir, really, in
the broad and unqualified sense, it is in the
power of the people to rise up en masse and
turn their Government out, without any re-
gard to the Constitution, unless the Govern-
ment then in existence should call upon the
Government of the United States to aid and
assist it, as the .Government of Rhode Island
did in the case of the Dorr rehellion. And in
order that there may be nothing whatever in
the way of the fullest exercise of the right of
changing the fundamental law of the land,
according to the form of our American sys-
tem, to wit, by the ballot box, there can be
no danger in leaving it so. I hope the com-
mittee in charge of this question of future
amendments, will provide that the Legisla-
ture may, whenever a majority of those
elected tee both Houses of the General Assem-
bly shall deem it expedient, pass an act to
take the sense of the people at the ballot box,
at the time to be prescribed by them, with
reference to calling a Constitutional Conven-
tion. The people will not be apt to do it,
unless there should be some great public exi-
gency requiring it. We have not had a
Constitutional Convention before for some
fourteen years; and it is not likely, unless
some great exigency should render it impera-
tive, that the people will desire to call another
one soon. From what I have heard from
friends in various parts of this House, of the
complaints made already of this Convention,
the people will perhaps be a great deal of the
mind of a good old preacher I once heard of,
who was called upon to pray, in Charleston,
in the time of the Revolution, for King George.
He prayed for King George, but be prayed
God to take him to Himself, and give the
people of this country no more like him.
Mr. DANIEL. I can see no manner of use
in the amendment proposed by the gentleman
from Prince George's (Mr. Clarke). We have
already declared in one of the articles of this
Declaration of Rights, that the people have
an unalienable right to alter, reform or abolish
their form of government in such manner as
they may deem expedient. And we have a
Committee on Future Amendments of the
Constitution, who have reported a mode in |
which this Constitution shall be amended.
Now you cannot make it any more binding
than that. You have said that they have a
right to change their Constitution in the way
they think proper, and now you propose
to put in an article to show the way they
think proper it should be done. What
is the use of cumbering this bill of rights with
another article on this subject? I have exam-
ined the constitutions of other States, and I
find in nearly every one of them, it is pretty
much the same as we have expressed it in this
first article; that is, that the people have the
right to amend, alter or abolish their form of
government as they may deem most expe-
dient. There it is left; not another word
about it in any other article of the bill
of rights. Then the Constitutions of most
of the States go on and provide, as we
propose to do, how amendments to the Con-
stitution shall be made. That is the way
with the Constitution of the United States,
it simply provides how amendments shall be
made to the Constitution, and there the mat-
ter is left. We have said that the people have
a right to do it in the way they think proper ;
and then they prescribe by adopting the Con-
stitution bow they think it should be done.
That is enough.
Mr. CLARKE. I would call the attention of
tile gentleman from Baltimore city (Mr. Dan-
iel) to the report of the Committee on Future
Amendments. The first section of that re-
port provides:
"Either branch of the General Assembly
may propose amendments to the Constitution;
and if the amendments shall be agreed to by
three-fifths of the members elected to each
House, such proposed amendments shall be
entered on the journal, with the yeas and
nays taken thereon, and shall be published
in two newspapers in each county in the
State where two are published, and in three
newspapers in the city 'of Baltimore, one of
which shall be German, for three months pre-
ceding the next election for Senators and
Representatives, at which time the same shall
be submitted to the electors for their approval
or rejection; and if a majority of the electors
voting at such election shall adopt such
amendments, the same shall become a part of
the Constitution. When more than one
amendment shall he submitted at the same
time, they shall be so submitted as to enable
the electors to vote on each amendment sep-
arately."
That is one mode of amendment. Section
two is this:
" Whenever two-thirds of the members
elected to each branch of the General Assem-
bly shall think it necessary to call a Conven-
tion to revise, amend or change this Constitu-
tion they shall recommend to the electors to
vote for or against a Convention, and if a
majority of all the electors voting at said
election shall have voted for a Convention, |
