413]                          The Convention.                             35

of the plan of state aid to canals and railroads; in this
they were supported by the people of western Maryland
who were interested in finding a market for their agricul-
tural and mineral products.

The failure of the works of internal improvement to pay
interest on the bonds guaranteed and issued by the State,
compelled the government to resort to heavy taxation.
The people of the Eastern Shore bitterly complained of
being heavily taxed for the benefit of the Western Shore
and Baltimore City. Intersected by rivers and creeks, the
Eastern Shore did not require works of internal improve-
ment to develop her resources. The people of the East-
ern Shore regarded the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, and
the Baltimore and Ohio railroad as injurious rather than
beneficial to her agricultural interest. They brought into
competition with her products the products of the great
West.

It was amid these political and economic conflicts of in-
terest within the State, and amid the agitation concerning
slavery in the whole country, that the Maryland consti-
tutional convention assembled in Annapolis on the 4th of
November, 1850.

In the convention were many of the leading men of the
State; men of wide political knowledge and experience.
Among the more prominent members and those who took
a leading part in the debates were ex-Governors Samuel
Sprigg and William Grason. Hon. T. H. Hicks, after-
ward war governor of Maryland, through whose efforts
Maryland was prevented from seceding from the Union,
United States senators Edward Lloyd, of Talbot county,
William D. Merrick, of Charles county, and David Stew-
art of Baltimore City. Others who were prominent in the
convention were Hon. John W. Crisfield, of Somerset
county, a representative in the Thirtieth and the Thirty-
seventh Congress of the United States, and one of the
ablest lawyers of the State. Alexander Randall, of Anne
Arundel county, a representative in the Twenty-seventh