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face the present situation in view of our
present social and economic conditions and
particularly in view of certain Supreme
Court decisions that have been recently
enunciated.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have no inten-
tion of trying to make constitutional law-
yers out of each one of you for two rea-
sons. First, after two agonizing months,
I have not been able to make one out of
myself and, second, it has been amply
demonstrated we have all the constitutional
lawyers we need.
I also wanted to give you just a brief
view of what this Committee has done,
how it considered the problem, the way it
has solved or at least come up with the
recommendations we have for you. Finally
very briefly I will touch upon the actual
recommendations. I recognize, ladies and
gentlemen, that as the minister said, you
do not get any converts after the first
twenty minutes. I will try to keep this as
short as possible.
But in any understanding of a constitu-
tion-making process in Maryland or in any
other state of the Eastern Seaboard, we
must realize, first of all, that we; were
originally English colonies. Therefore, our
history and our outlook goes back to the
English Common Law and to the experi-
ence of the English people in the course of
five or six hundred years of battling with
absolute monarchism, with unruly parlia-
ments, and with supreme church bodies
who governed and ruled people's lives
through government or outside OL govern-
ment.
The first bill of rights that was developed
in this country was the Virginia Bill of
Rights, which was formulated by one
George Mason and enunciated in June of
1770, prior to the Declaration of Independ-
ence. From this stemmed many of the ar-
ticles or concepts wo find in our bill of
rights and in those of other states.
The present Declaration of Rights of our
Constitution can be traced to this very
group of concepts by George Mason. We
must look to our own original Constitution
in 1770, remember that it was written by
a group of people just a month or two
after the Declaration of Independence when
the country was at war. There was very
little communication in a primarily rural
country, where people were aroused by
what had happened to them by soldiers, by
English oppression, by lack of representa-
tion in Parliament and so forth. If we look
at the actual preamble of the Constitution
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of 1770, we can see the atitude and what
the people at that time were concerned
with. It says, "The Parliament of Great
Britain, by a declaratory Act, having as-
sumed a right to make laws to bind the
colonies in all cases whatsoever, and, in
pursuance of such claim, endeavored, by
force of arms, to subjugate the united
colonies to an unconditional submission to
their will and power, and having at length
constrained them to declare themselves in-
dependent states, and to assume govern-
ment under the authority of the people,
therefore, we" and so forth. We were under
a system of excitement and revolution. In
1807 when the fourth Maryland Constitu-
tion was written, the civil war had just
ended, there was a period of violence.
Troops were located in Baltimore to keep
the city in subjection. The writ of habeas
corpus had been suspended. Soldiers pa-
troled election booths, and there were no
free elections. Judges had been imprisoned
months at a time and again the Declaration
of Rights and the Constitution reflected
that situation.
Today we have a different situation but
one that perhaps is equally exciting in
many ways though not quite as spectacular.
We have racial tensions, ghettos, a war on
poverty, social upheavals, hippies, and the
rest of it. Most importnat, there have been
a series of Supreme Court decisions which
have brought to hear on state action many
of the freedoms guaranteed by the federal
Constitution. We cannot ignore this when
we consider the hill of rights we are con-
cerned with here today. We are dealing in
constitutional matters involving the ac-
cused in racial discrimination matters, in-
volving state-church relationships, free-
dom of the press, freedom of religion, et
cetera.
For a very quick moment, let's look at
this United States Constitution. As you
know, it was written in 1787 without a
bill of rights because it was thoupjit that
such a bill of rights was not necessary.
However, such a great opposition arose to
it that it became almost a decisive issue,
and it was agreed informally by the vari-
ous people of importance that there would
be a bill of rights later added to the federal
Constitution. This was done and became,
as you know, the first ten amendments to
the Constitution.
Now, we talk about a Constitution doing
two things. It provides a framework of
government by which the people set up an
orderly manner of government for them-
selves. It also protects certain basic free-
doms, and these are intertwined efforts.
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