134 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. [May 11,

That the said Sheriff, immediately upon the issuing of said
Proclamation, gave notice of an election for ten Delegates to
represent said city in this House, and all the necessary require-
ments of law for the holding of said election was duly com-
plied with with, so far as the same could have been done in
the short time allowed for holding said election, before the
meeting of said Legislature; and an election was held in said
city on Wednesday, the 24th day of April, 1861, and that
Henry M. Warfield, John C. Brune, Ross Winans, Charles
P. Pitts, William G, Harrison, J. Hanson Thomas, S. Tea-
kle Wallis, Lawrence Sangston, H M. Morfit and T. Parkin
Scott, received the majority, and indeed all the votes cast at
said election, and have been returned as Delegates elected
from said city to the said House of Delegates.

The only objection that has been made before your commit-
tee or before this House to the legality of said election is, that
ten days notice was not given of said election as required by
the 29th Section of the IIIrd Article of the Constitution,
which provides that the Speaker of this House shall issue his
warrant for special elections, "in case of death, disqualifica-
tion, resignation, refusal to act, expulsion or removal from
the county or city."

Your committee respectfully suggest that this case does
not come within the letter of that section and is not embraced
by any of the cases mentioned.

The parties whose places were to be filled by the election,
are not dead or disqualified. They have not resigned or re-
fused to act. They have not been expelled nor have they re-
moved from the city, and these are all the cases provided for
by the Constitution. And however much your committee
would be disposed under ordinary circumstances, to be gov-
emed by the spirit of that section as be indicative of what
would be a reasonable and proper motive of an election, they
cannot consent to a course that would defeat the substantial
objects of the Constitution by any freedom of interpretation,

The object of the provision was to give notice of the elec-
tion and secure to the electors a fair opportunity to exercise
the right of choosing their representatives. If actual notice
was given to the voters of Baltimore city and they had a fair
opportunity to exercise their free choice, then the object of
the law has been complied with, and as no single individual
from the said city has objected in any form, and no complaint
of want of knowledge or unfairness has reached us from any
quarter, we may fairly presume that sufficient actual notice
was given to the voters, and that the election was fair, and
that the parties so returned were duly elected.

If mere formal and technical objections could affect the