798 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Mar. 13,

stances, your Committee believe they voted for Widdicombe,
viz : Mack Johnson, convicted April 26th, 1870, and George
Locker, convicted April 28th, 1868, and Nace Beall, con-
victed November 15th, 1859.

It was insisted, upon the part of Widdicombe, that two of
these parties having been convicted prior to the adoption of
the constitutional amendments, giving the negro the right to
vote, they are not disqualified under the second section of Ar-
ticle 1, of the Constitution. The constitutional amendment
provides that no one shall be prevented from exercising the
elective franchise by reason of any distinction of race, color or
previous condition of servitude.

If at the. time of the adoption of the constitutional amend-
ment, it was declared by the Constitution of the State of
Maryland, "that no person above the age of twenty-one, con-
victed of larceny or other infamous crime, unless pardoned
by the Governor, shall never thereafter be entitled to vote at
any election of this State." The constitutional amendment
would not confer the right to vote, because the party was
laboring under a disqualification, which prevented the con-
stitutional amendment from operating in his behalf.

The disqualification is not a punishment for crime, which
never attached, because at the time of conviction the right to
vote did not exist, but is a disqualification which follows by
reason of conviction, and which ever thereafter prevents the
elective franchise from being enjoyed.

To give it any other construction would place a large class
of negro convicts in a better position than white convicts.

The disqualification is founded upon reasons of public
policy, and the same reasons of public policy should exclude
all negro convicts not pardoned, which exclude all white con-
victs not pardoned.

Under the sixth reason for contesting the election, that
non-residents of the State and county were permitted to vote
at said election, a large amount of testimony was taken.
The contestant claimed that sixteen non-esidents voted for
Widdicombe, and Widdicombe claimed that fifteen non-resi-
dents voted for Brooke. While the testimony showed that
those voting for Widdicombe had in most cases left the
county and gone to Washington to live for some years, still,
in nearly all cases, it was shown that the parties claimed to
be only absent temporarily, and that they had never aban-
doned their intention to return, or their claim to residence
in the county.

Those voting for Brooke and claimed to be non-residents,
were shown by the testimony to be persons who lived in the
State, but were pursuing their means of livilihood in the
City of Baltimore, or on the line of the Baltimore and Poto-