savagism, and the effect of emancipation
upon the farming, mechanical and laboring
classes." Published in New York, by Van
Evrie, Horton & Co. This is No. 2 of the
anti-abolition tracts.
Mr. STOCKBRIDGE. The author's name is
not given?
Mr. JONES, of Somerset. No, sir; it is a
compilation from the Prison Discipline So-
ciety's reports
By Mr. STIRLING. What is the date of the
publication ?
Mr. JONES, of Somerset. 1863. But the
facts that are alluded to in it did not trans-
pire in 1863. And if you will look into the
Prison Discipline Reports of 1826 and 1827,
you will find the facts as here stalled. These
facts were notorious ait the time, and our
own experience was the same. Our own
penitentiary at that time was beginning to be
overrun; we had not room enough; we had
to enlarge the buildings to take in this class
of population. Three-fourths of the time of
our courts and juries was taken up in trying
those people The people of the State began
to be alarmed; they said they were tired of
being taxed to support this degraded class
who would not work, but would steal, who
would go ragged, and idle their time away in
squalid beggary, and necessarily become de-
graded, drunken, worthless criminals. And
there is not a lawyer within the sound of my
voice, who has been engaged in practice in
the slave counties, who does not know this
to be true. I believe there are some dozen of
this class in the jail of my county upon
charges of capital crime. In the last few
years this has been growing worse. There
have been several cases of capital punishment
in our county upon negroes of this class, for
the most heinous offences known to the law.
Therefore it was that this experience in
our own State, corroborating the experience
of the Northern States, as to the effects of
emancipation upon this class, brought about
the policy I have referred to. And in 1850,
when the Convention met in this hall to
frame a new Constitution, so pressing were
these facts upon that Convention that they
adopted an article in the Constitution that
the legislature should have no power to in-
terfere with the relation of master and slave.
Maryland bad been for twenty years endeavoring
to ameliorate the condition of this un-
fortunate class of free negroes. Simultane-
ously with the cessation of the system of
manumission, she opened communication
with Liberia; she organized a board of
colonization and appropriated $10,000 a
year, levied upon the property of her citizens
with a view of ameliorating the condition of
this unfortunate class, and inducing them
to go to Liberia. For upwards of twenty
years, if my memory serves me rightly, this
tax was paid. Now and then a cargo was
collected from all parts of the State, and from |
other States when we could not get them
here; but very few of them were sent over.
You could not get them to go; they would
not go where they were to be freemen, have
the right to vote, to sit upon juries, and take
part ill the affairs of government. There
were educated men among them, but how
few of them could be induced to go let the
reports of the colonization board to the le-
gislature from year to year answer. Finally,
the legislature had to give up in despair and
repeal the tax. These people would not go.
They have strong local attachments, and
would rather lie down and perish of starva-
tion and nakedness where they are, than go
and enjoy the honors and offices that might
he given to them in Liberia. They have a
horror of it; no condition of slavery has
horrors to them equal to the idea of being
carried to Liberia. This, sir, is their unfor-
tunate condition.
Something has been said about its being
contrary to law to teach the slave to read the
I Bible, the revealed word of God. I do not
remember any law in this State upon the
subject; but I remember this very well, that
before this demon abolition started in the
North, and sought to inundate the slave
States with its incendiary publications, there
was much attention paid to the instruction
of slaves in reading and writing by their
owners. I know many ladies who devoted
much of their time to teaching their servants,
and whose household servants, or the most of
them, could read their Bibles, and had Bibles
to read, and could write. What put an end
to this ameliorating and christianizing in-
fluence? The Northern abolitionists who
sought through this medium lo invite to in-
surrection and bloodshed and murder, this
very population that these Christian women
were thus endeavoring to instruct and lead,
under the humanizing system of servitude
that has ever existed in the State of Maryland
during my knowledge, to a proper under-
standing of Christianity and religion.
I again appeal to those, whether slave-
holders or not, who have been within her
BORDER=0s, to say if there was a laboring popu-
lation on earth better fed, clothed and cared
for, and worked so lightly, as the slaves of
Maryland. Take the statements of the agent
of the Agricultural Society of Massachusetts,
sent to Europe to examine into the condition
of the laboring classes there, and see the con-
trast between what he describes as the con-
dition of the laboring people in England and
Scotland, and the condition of the slaves of
Maryland. He states that he found there
men and their wives, living in miserable huts
who had been employed upon the same estates
in hard labor for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty,
and even sixty years, and when he asked
them if they had laid up anything for a rainy
day, for their old age, they seemed perfectly
surprised at the idea. They had been barely |
