wipe out all funded debt; but it will cer-
tainly and speedily come in the conveniences
of the slaveholders themselves, when their
freed slaves perhaps will stay with them, and
they will be able to hire on favorable terms
the labor of the men who are now their
slaves. As it is now, the slaves will not
stay; because the temptation of freedom lies
beyond; but when free they will stay. They
will have to labor, and it will be alleviated
by the consciousness that the man is working
for himself, and not for another; that he is
working for his wife, and not because be is a
chattel. It will be the labor of a man ani-
mated by the desire of providing for his fam-
ily, and not that of a man forced to work for
his owner.
There will come immigration into Mary-
land. Free white men, of whom we have
heard so much, will come, because they will
then be equal; they will not be trodden
down; they will not be denied freedom of
speech; they will have the right to speak as
they think, responsible to none for the re-
suite; they will not be legislated for by a
class with whom they have no sympathies;
they will not be legislated for by a class the
very principles of whose existence are in an-
tagonism with the freedom which they en-
joyed at home. But they will come hereto a
free and regenerated State, a State which has
been seventy-four years or more learning to
be what it ought to have been three-quarters
of a century ago. We have learned our les-
son late; but we have learned it well. While
others may learn it in the printed book, it
has been reserved to us to learn it in three
years of hard, bloody battle; but we have
learned it well. The reflection of the sun
upon its red characters has printed it deep in
our hearts. It is not with us a thing of
memory; but a thing of life. I tell you that
lessons learned under such circumstances are
not to be forgotten.
With reference to what we have heard so
often, that if there ever occurs another revo-
lution of the wheel of fortune this thing will
be undone, I tell gentlemen now that so long
as God sitteth upon the rim of the universe,
so long, if now we pass an emancipation act
for the people of Maryland, so long will
Maryland be free. There exists no power
below the power of omnipotence ever again
to bring slavery into Maryland, unless you
first deprive her of all her present popula-
tion, and then deprive the General Govern-
ment of all power whatever. Nay, more;
yon must not leave one free State among the
States of the North; because so strong is
that feeling now, that if there were but one,
she would wage a crusade which would gath-
er under her banners the aggregate force of
the civilized world to sweep out slavery.
Shivery comes not back to the land from
which it has once been driven. Once drive
it back, and I assure you, it will never return. |
Gentlemen are troubled about what is to
become of the free negroes. God suffers not
a sparrow to fall upon the ground without
his care, and counts the very hairs of our
heads; and I humbly submit that He may
be trusted with that question.
Let those who have work for free negroes
pay them just wages, and all we have will
not be near enough for the labor we need.
There are agencies established to bring labor
from Scotland and Ireland, because we have
not labor enough. Some gentlemen seem to
think that the whole four millions of the
Southern States are to come into Maryland to
settle. If ever the South is free, if ever the
arms of the United States shall have closed
around her and freed her despite herself, and
shall have done what under the Constitution
she guaranteed to do, given her a republican
form of government, then four millions of
slaves, for the labor that will be demanded
in that territory, will be but as a drop in the
bucket. The whole world will scarcely af-
ford labor enough for that immense terri-
tory. Their arms will be stretched out on
every side to free men everywhere, to till
those fields where there is the prospect be-
fore them of unlimited wealth. They will
stretch forth their bands to the world for aid.
Four millions of beings for all that vast
Southern territory, where you can travel for
miles, in some places for days, and look not
upon the face of a living human being!
When there shall be peace in that land, it
may not be a place where the man who has
owned another may care to live with the one
he has owned. But the 500,000 slaveowners
may migrate, and in one year their places
would be more than filled by others. It is
human nature that a man who has owned
another should be reluctant to employ the
man be once owned. Power once given, it
is hard to take away. We cling lo it, how-
ever bad it may be. Every instinct of our
heart tells us that it is wrong; but from
prejudice, education, habit, and convenience,
we cling to it. I can understand how they
will make the most desperate effort and fight
to the last gasp to prevent its being taken
away. But gentlemen, in conclusion, I will
tell you one thing. The testimony of Mary-
land, the history of Maryland, the govern-
ment of Maryland upon this question prove
that—
"The mills of the gods grind slowly,
But they grind exceeding small ;
Though with patience stands be waiting,
With exactness grinds he all."
Mr. JONES, of Somerset. Before I take
leave for a time of this Convention, I feel it
my imperative duty, (although I am suffer-
ing somewhat from indisposition,) a duty
which I owe to those whom it is my honor to
represent upon this floor, to enter my feeble
protest against the doctrines and the pur- |
