449]                          The Constitution.                            71

or would not create an " interregnum" of four to six
months in the administration of justice was a debatable
question. The omission of a definite provision for the
continuation of the courts until their successors could be
established, shows the inability of the majority of the
framers of the constitution to do the task assigned them.

A contributor to the Baltimore American from Cumber-
land, Md., states that he observed a group of citizens on
the street discussing the constitution. " One said that it
had cost the State $183,000, which, according to the best
calculation he could make, was a little more than $1.50
per word, which, considering the quality of the goods,
made it about the hardest bargain of modern times."¹¹

Other motives than the merit of the constitution in-
fluenced many to vote for its adoption. Its rejection
would have again placed the fundamental law of the State
in the power of the General Assembly. Governor Lowe in
his inaugural address, January 6, 1851, referring to the
convention then in session said, " Even should no practi-
cal reforms result from the labors of the present conven-
tion, still I regard the value of the principle, now estab-
lished, so great in view of the possible future, as to hold
the expense, inconveniences, and even total failure of this
first attempt, however deplorable, to be entirely of subor-
dinate importance. While, therefore, the people yearn for
the enjoyment of those salutary reforms, which right, jus-
tice, and good policy call for; and although they should
possibly be doomed to meet with a total or partial disap-
pointment of their reasonable hopes, they cannot forget to
console themselves with the knowledge that the great
battle, in fact was fought and won, when the legislature
after a steady resistance of twenty years, finally pro
mulged, and Maryland by an almost unanimous vote
ratified the doctrine, that the people are not enchained by
the fifty-ninth article of the constitution.¹² This is the en-
tering wedge to the future. This is the key to the treas-

¹¹ Baltimore American, June 2, 1851.             ¹² See ch. i, p. 10.