purpose to have made the Committee room
the scene of debate upon a proposition of this
kind, which, whether right or wrong, is of
no fundamental a character, is so entirely
proved or disproved by the whole history of
the country, that it was perfectly unneces
sary to invile discussion upon it in the Com
mittee.
It is evident that in the discussion of this
proposition, the gentlemen upon each side
have in some respects differed from each other
in their arguments; and it has been espe
cially the case that gentlemen who have ad
dressed the House, belonging to the minority
have with scarcely an exception proposed
different views and interpretations, and dif-
ferent explanations with regard to the con
stitutional question. While there is between
the different sides of this House as broad and
clear and distinct a line of demarcation as
could possibly be drawn upon the whole sub
ject, this variety of views renders somewhat
difficult the discussion I have to perform, be
cause there has been no uniform system of
interpretation adopted by the gentlemen who
have addressed the House.
The second gentleman from Prince George's
who addressed the Convention, (Mr. Belt,)
in his very able, compact and philosophical
argument, took the broad ground that there
was no sovereignty at all in the Government
of the United States. He took the ground
that the States were not only sovereign in a
general sense, but that they retained all their
powers of sovereignty as intact as at the time
at which the Declaration of Independence was
made, or at any time antecedent to that de-
claration. Both himself and the first gentle-
man from Prince George's, (Mr. Clarke,) de-
nied that the people of the United States, or
the States of the United States, or in what-
ever phraseology you choose to frame the ex-
pression, were a nation in any proper sense
of the term. The gentleman from Anne
Arundel, (Mr. Miller,) and the gentleman
from Kent, (Mr. Chambers,) have approached
more nearly to the views that I entertain than
any other members upon that side of the
House. They have expressly acknowledged
that there is sovereignty in the General
Government. They have expressly acknow-
ledged that the citizen owes allegiance to the
General Government. And they have denied
what I consider the argument of the gentle-
man from Prince George's to assert, that there
is any legal power in the State to withdraw
itself directly or indirectly from under the
obligations of the General Government.
So far as the argument goes that this Gov-
ernment is no nation in any sense whatever,
I shall give it a very slight consideration.
It so happens that there are some ideas which
are so instinctive that even in the minds
of those who deny them in terms they find
utterance, ideas so impressed upon the whole
individual consciousness that they cannot |
avoid expression. While gentlemen upon
this floor have denied that the United States
were a nation, the expression "nation," and
the term "country," has flown forth from
the mouth of every gentleman who has addressed
this Convention. I am willing to
leave that question to the profound instincts
of the people. I am willing to leave it to the
individual consciousness of the members of
this body; and I shall do so after a very
slight reference to the arguments and authorities
upon the subject.
It may somewhat enlighten us as to the
meaning of the article, if we look fora moment
to the meaning of the expression " na-
tion." What is a nation? It is a body of
people associated together under some com-
mon government, recognized among the other
common governments of the civilized world.
Does any man pretend that the State of Mary-
land is a nation? No, sir; I suppose no
member of this body makes any such preten-
sion; and for the reason that it is not an or-
ganized community known in the condition
of independence of any other power, to the
people of the civilized world. The United
States is a nation, a nation of States, but still
a nation, because in its united form it stands
before the people of the world as one of the
great family of peoples. That fact I suppose
cannot very well be denied.
What is allegiance, and where is allegiance
due? It is due in some sense to the govern-
ment of every State in this Union. It is due
to every organized government of any sub-
ordinate character which exercises certain
degrees of power. In the proper sense, which
the gentleman from Kent (Mr. Chambers)
has attached to the term, the sense alone in
which it can be interpreted under a demo-
cratic form of government, the allegiance of
the citizen is due, as recognized by the laws
of the whole world, to that power or sover-
eignty which represents the existence of that
people before the other people of the world.
It is that sovereignty which claims his alle-
giance by birth.
Now, I propose to submit the proposition
to this Convention that there is no State of
this Union which has ever claimed, until
very recently at least, or if it has ever claimed,
hid any pretensions to support the claim,
that it had any right to the allegiance of a
citizen as a question of birth. Every gov-
ernment in the world has claimed that every
person born upon its soil belongs to it; and
so constructively every person born upon
the soil of any nation, owed perpetual alle-
giance to the government under which he was
born. But under the Constitution of this State
and the Constitution of the United States, and
every authority that has ever been founded
upon either of them, it has been recognized as
a fact, that the moment a man leaves the State
of this Union in which he was born, his
right of citizenship drops from him; the mo- |
