| Volume 107, Page 1991 View pdf image (33K) |
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REPORT. The committee on Registration, to whom was referred the memorial of the Anti-Registration Convention, beg leave respectfully to report: That your committee, on consideration of the said memo- rial, find it to be one of insolent self-assertion, whereby it claims to represent the majority of the citizens of' Maryland, and arrogates to the said majority the possession, of all the talent, wealth, moral worth, and social elevation in the State. It starts out with the assertion that the present Constitu- tion was framed at a time unsuited for calm deliberation upon fundamental rights. "Established," it says, "during a civil war, it was made under the influence of passions which clouded men's reason and judgment." This is an argument against the Constitution itself, strange in the month of one who spoke and voted for the Constitu- tion little more than a year ago; for if the Constitution was made at a time unfit for securing fundamental rights, and when men's reason was clouded by passion, it ought not to hare been made. This is the inference which the memorial- ists would draw from the fact they state. We deny both the fact, and the, inference. Every great settlement of funda- mental right has been made in times of revolution. The English settlement of 1655 was the result, of a revolution. The Declaration of Independence, more fundamental in char- acter than any document the world has ever seen, was made in the midst of civil war. The Bill of Rights of this State, to which the memorialists appeal, and which has lasted almost unaltered to this day, was made in 1776, in the very midst of the Revolution. Details of legislation and the per- fection of municipal codes may be .largely the sequence of long years of peace, but great fundamental principles have always been the offspring of great public crises. The assertion that the Convention who made, and the loyal |
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Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly, 1866
| Volume 107, Page 1991 View pdf image (33K) |
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