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391] Constitutional Reform Agitation, 13
Maryland demanded of their legislature the right of meet-
ing in a convention, elected by the people, for the purpose
of amending their constitution. The legislature, defending
itself behind the phraseology of the fifty-ninth article of
the constitution, which prescribed for its own amendment
by the identical action of two successive. legislatures, re-
sisted for some twenty years every attempt of the friends of
constitutional reform to secure the calling of a convention.
Maryland, since the framing of the Constitution of 1776,
had become a government of the minority. Within this
period of seventy-five years, the economic and social con-
ditions of the people had undergone a complete change.
The city of Baltimore, at that time scarcely more than a
village, had expanded into a great commercial city, num-
bering a population of more than a hundred thousand, and
possessing one-third of the entire wealth of the State.5
The center of. population had shifted from the Eastern
Shore and the southern counties to the northern and
western sections. With these changes there had been no
corresponding change effected in the constitution. The
smaller counties, though so unequal to the city of Bal-
timore and the larger counties in respect to population,
still had the majority of representatives in the legislature,
and foreseeing what demands would be made, if a conven-
tion was called for the purpose of changing the constitu-
tion by which their ascendency in the legislature was
secured, were opposed to every project of calling such a
body. In 1836, when the popular mind was agitated more,
perhaps, on this question of constitutional reform than in
any other period'of the State's history, the legislature had
instructed a select committee to inquire into the expediency
of making it high treason for citizens to conspire against
the constitution of the State.4
The question of constitutional reform by means of a con-
3U. S. Census, 1850.
4 Niles Register, 5th series, vol. 52, p. 73.
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