Courts of the respective counties, including
the jurisdiction in chancery, and also in all
matters relating to testamentary affairs, with
all the powers and jurisdiction of the Orphans'
Courts, who shall hold their offices during
life unless removed for cause, with a salary
of three thousand dollars per annum each.
3d. That the State shall be divided into
five districts, and one Judge of the Court of
Appeals, shall be elected by the qualified
voters in each of said districts.
4th That the State shall be also divided into
ten Judicial Districts, of two counties each, and
two Judges shall be in like manner elected for
each of said districts, one of whom shall reside
in each of tine counties composing the district.
5th. That there shall be two terms yearly
in each of said counties for the dispatch of
judicial business, in which the judge of the
Court of Appeals for the district in which the
Court shall sit, shall preside so that each
Court shall be held by three Judges except in
cases of illness or other necessary absence.
6th, That the Orphans' Court shall be
abolished.
7th. That a separate judicial system for the
city of Baltimore, shall be established.
ADJOURNMENT OVER.
Mr. VALLIANT submilted the following or-
der:
Ordered., That when this Convention ad-
journ to-day, it adjourn to meet on Wednesday
next, at 12 o'clock, and that the members be
allowed pay for only three of the days inter-
vening between to-day and the day herein indi-
cated for the re-assembling of the Convention.
Mr. BOND asked for a division on the ques-
tion.
The question was stated upon the second
part of the order.
Mr. JONES of Cecil demanded the yeas and
nays, and they were ordered.
Mr. STOCKBRIDGE. I had understood that
it was very probable that either to-day or to-
morrow reports from some committees would
be made and laid before us. If these reports
had been made, and been passed into
the printer's hands to be ready for us upon
our reassembling, I should not strenuously
object to the adoption of this order; but if
such reports are not made to-day, I hope we
shall not adjourn over, but will meet and
give the committees the opportunity of pre-
senting them to-morrow. If we adjourn at
this time, no reports having been made, then
when we shall re-assemble next Wednesday the
reports will probably come in, and they will
have to lie over to be printed before they can
be acted upon, and we shall have lost the
intervening time. I hope therefore, unless
some person speaking on behalf of some com-
mittee shall be able to say that their report
will be made before our adjournment, that
the order will not be adopted; and I would
oppose adjourning to-morrow until some re-
port has been made. |
Mr. DANIEL. I hope neither branch of this
amendment will be adopted; for I think that
both .are wholly unnecessary. I agree with
my colleague, that though there may not be
seemingly important business before the House
to be transacted at this time, yet in order to
keep the committees at work it is necessary to
keep up our meetings; for as soon as we ad-
journ over, the committees all scatter, and we
lose the work which might be done in com-
mittee even were the House not sitting. I
think that whether the committees report or
not we ought to sit to-morrow, for some of
the committees meet to-morrow morning, and
then I shall have. no objection to adjourning
until Monday or Tuesday.
As to the other branch of the order I think
it is a small business cutting members pay
off. They get little enough now. When there
is a necessity for adjourning over a day or
two, it is proper to adjourn, if there is no
necessity for adjourning we ought not to ad-
journ. But members get hut $5 per day, and
they have to pay half that for board, and if
there is a necessity for adjourning I think the
pay should not be cart off. It is not done
elsewhere, even where much larger sums are
paid for attendance, and where I do not be-
lieve they work any harder than some of us ex-
pect to do by and by, if we have not already.
I think it is proper to continue until to-mor-
row, and then the question may properly
ilrise whether we shall adjourn over until
Monday or Tuesday.
Mr. VALLIANT. The arguments offered by
the gentleman from Baltimore would certainly
induce me to vote against the order which'
I have myself presented, if I had not every
assurance that this Convention would, not-
withstanding the force of those arguments,
adjourn to-morrow; and if the Convention is
to adjourn, I apprehend it will be better to
adjourn to-day for the convenience of mem-
bers of the Convention, if we adjourn to-
morrow, from the best information I can ob-
tain, not more than one-third or one-fourth of
the Convention will be accommodated by the
adjournment, whereas if we adjourn to-day
all the members of the Convention will be ac-
commodated.
I am very much inclined to think that it is
not right for members to receive pay for work
which they do not perform. I confess that in
legislative bodies there is a precedent for it
bait there in no principle, with which I am at
all familiar, of moral ethics to justify it. The
Convention which assembled in 1850 adjourned
at one time for three weeks, and the mem-
bers of that body received in the neighbor-
hood of $20,000 from the State Treasury for
time which they occupied in attending to
their own matters. The gentleman who last
addressed the Convention pronounced this
curtailment of the pay of the members a small
business. It may be a small business, but it
is a small business which the moral law will |
