of civil war during the time Of President
Jackson, and first caused at the South sec-
tional alienation and unfriendly feeling to-
wards the Union. 5. That by her ceaseless
agitation of the slave question, with her per-
sistent efforts to interference with a subject
over which she had no constitutional right of
control, coupled with her blasphemous denun-
ciations of the Constitution and the Union,
she has been mainly instrumental in inflicting
upon the nation the terrible disaster under
which we are now suffering. 6. That after
wantonly provoking the South into hating
and despising her, she is now seeking to wield
the whole power of the nation to punish that
hate and contempt by Southern extermina-
tion, or by preventing a restoration of the
Union, tinder the pretext of fanatical zeal in
behalf of human freedom, whilst all indul-
gence of such frantic zeal, hate and vengeance
is in direct violation of her duties under the
Constitution. 7. That conscious of her in-
ability legally to inflict upon the South, in
any other way, the ruin of immediate un-
compensated emancipation, she now seeks its
accomplishment by an amendment of the Con-
stitution ,
"To accomplish this purpose New England
has to uproot the great fundamental compro-
mise which is the very basis of the whole
Federal structure; that exemption of State
institutions from Federal control, whose in-
violable sanctity was the very object of that
equal vote in the Senate, which the Constitu-
tion irrepealably guaranteed to her small
States."
I wish that to go on the record as convey-
ing my view of what has brought about the
present unhappy condition of things, and
what I consider to be the relative position of
the North and South in this subject. New
England, the chief .beneficiary of the Union, is
the aggressor; New England has it in her
power to take the magnanimous position of
peace maker,
In conclusion, I would say that this im-
mense debt which has been created by the
Federal Government, and which has fallen
upon the people of these United States like an
avalanche—this crushing weight of debt is to
be borne by the laboring man, the. mechanics
and agriculturists alone of this country. The
men of capital and means who can command
large sums of money, will not feel one par-
ticle of the burdens of this war. Have not
the United States Government already issued
bonds not taxable? And does not every
capitalist in the country put his money into
those bonds? And collecting his interest
regularly, he goes scot free of this taxation.
But the farmer, the man who tills the soil,
who has his capital looked up in land: the
laboring man has to bear this burden, be-
cause they have no capital to put in these
bonds. They are the tax payers. So I say it
is to the interest of the people of this State, |
it is to the interest of the people of this conn-
try not to accumulate these debts, not to pile
up this mountain of debt that is to fall upon
the laboring classes, upon the agriculturists
of the country; and not to take away the
means of cultivating the lands upon which
those taxes are to fall. I have neither heard
nor have I seen any suggestion either in this
hall or elsewhere, neither in the pulpit, before
the people, nor from the pen, as to what sub-
stitute there is to be provided for this species
of labor.
That is a grave question that gentlemen
have to deal with. The land is the founda-
tion upon which all these taxes must rest. It
is out of this land, after all, that the Federal
Government is to besupported and enabled to
carry on this war. It is out of this land that
it is to be enabled to protect its integrity at
home and abroad. If you. accumulate tax
upon tax, if you constantly tax your wits to
conjure up the ways and means of accumu-
lating these taxes upon the poor man and the
landholder, you will finally goad them on to
desperation, and there is no telling what will
be the consequences. In my humble judg-
ment it will be far greater, far more fearful
in its results than anything which has yet
transpired within the history of this country.
The Government has laid down a policy to
make the rich richer, and the poor poorer. It
is a policy calculated to break down the labor-
ing man—build up the rich man. Is not that
aristocracy, to elevate the rich man and clothe
him with purple and gold, and feed him
sumptuously every day, and enable him to
give his ten or twenty dollars for a bottle
of wine, as easily as the poor man could
give ten cents for a loaf of bread? And
this glorious policy of the Government is to
be fostered and encouraged by the people of
the State of Maryland.
Now, I think if gentlemen insist upon in-
corporating this article into the organic law
of the State, and then go before the people of
the State with that Constitution, no matter
how perfect it may be in other respects, un-
less they go with a company of soldiers be-
hind them, ready to back them up in any
position they may assume at the polls or else-
where, we shall be able to defeat it by over-
whelming numbers. And except for the prin-
ciple that I should violate, I do not know but
I might be induced to vote for it as a matter
of policy, in order to insure the defeat of the
Constitution which may be framed here. The
people of Maryland are not yet so lost to
every sense of justice, to every sense of hu-
manity; they are not so entirely insane upon
all principles of right and wrong, as to sup-
pose that a body of men, some forty, or fifty,
or perhaps sixty in number, representing
about one-fourth of the people of the State,
can come here in Convention, and assume to
themselves the power to change the whole or-
ganic structure of the State for the last hun- |
