11

that the message is intended as a recommendation of measures
adapted to that end. Upon this supposition we presume that the
Executive expects the Legislature to enact some law to forbid
the citizens of Maryland, who have expressed their concurrence
with the principles set forth in the proceedings of the National
Council in Philadelphia, from assembling in their own places of
meeting with closed doors, and from organizing their associations
in accordance with any system of regulations that might create
alarm on the part of those who may apprehend the casualty of
falling into a minority before the force of public opinion em-
bodied in support of the political views announced in the princi-
ples referred to. Indeed the Governor goes beyond the point of
exception. He not only objects to the private consultation, but
assails the principles themselves, as proper subjects to be sup-
pressed by legislation. He more than once calls the attention of
the Legislature to these principles, with a view to denounce
them as unlawful, and false to the constitutional obligations of
the citizens of the State. So grave a denunciation made by the
Chief Magistrate in an official message, against a large body of
the citizens of Maryland, and addressed to a Legislature which
is composed, in greater part, of those against whom his censure
is directed, presents an extraordinary case to the consideration
of the Committee.

In looking for the specifications upon which the charge is
grounded, the Committee find from the message and letter of the
Governor that his alarm is chiefly produced by two articles in-
corporated in the declaration of the National Council in Philadel-
phia, which he has characterized as announcing "principles not
only unknown to the Federal Constitution and those of the seve-
ral States, but plainly prohibited both by the letter and spirit of
each and all of them."

The readers of the message and the supplemental letter will
recognize in the following extracts from the declaration of the
National Council to which the Governor has referred us, the ar-
ticles which have supplied so much to excite his fears.

The National Council in defining the distinctive grounds of
their party organization, took occasion, amongst many other
points of public administration, to say, in Article 6, that it would
insist upon "The essential modification of the naturalization