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Executive, or any other power in the State, ventures to condemn
the motive of the citizen in the exercise of it.

The privacy of the ballot is guarded by law expressly that each
voter may determine his choice, upon whatever consideration of
private judgment he may choose to cast a vote, and that no man
may question the grounds of such vote, or make it the subject of
odious or offensive comment before the public. The privilege
and the security of this exemption from all challenge, is too obvi-
ous to be discussed amongst a people born to the inheritance of
free government. Every citizen has a right, which our institu-
tions recognize as secured by a. peculiar pledge of protection, to
perfect freedom of judgment upon the political or religious opin-
ions, upon the morals or the creed, no less than upon the charac-
ter and capacity of any one who is submitted to the arbitrament
of his vote or of his selection as a candidate for a place of trust
in the administration of our governments, State or Federal, and
he may determine that vote or selection by the weight which his
own personal convictions may attach to any of these considera-
tions. The spirit of republican freedom, no less than the posi-
tive law, secures him an inviolable immunity from all question of
his motive. The attempt to arraign any citizen, or any number
of citizens, for public judgment, and condemnation for these mo-
tives, is an invasion of personal right, scarcely less flagrant than
the political proscriptions which history exhibits to us as the in-
variable signs and portents of the decay of free States.

The recommendation of Legislative interposition to sup-
press this free exercise of private judgment is so conspicu-
ously in conflict with the sentiment that has been nursed in
the heart of our American communities from their infancy to
the present day, and so repulsive to the elemental precepts
of our republican system, that the committee are most reluc-
tant to believe that the Executive could seriously entertain
the purposes which the message infers, or the most remote
expectation that it could be responded to by a patriotic and
intelligent Legislature in any other language than that of
prompt and indignant dissent. It would have been more sat-
isfactory to the committee if the Governor, when writing the
letter to explain his message, had indicated what part of the
Federal Constitution, or of the Constitution of Maryland for-