444              JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS          [Feb. 19

MEMORIAL.

To the Honorable, the General Assembly

of the State of Maryland.

The undersigned petitioners feel constrained to memorialize
your Honorable Body in a respectful, and at the same time
urgent, petition for the interposition of such legislation as
will meet the grievances herein set forth.

We are moved by no ordinary cause, and trust our prayer
will not return void—convinced as we are that the common
good of the whole State is involved, while to us, and doubt-
less to thousands of others similarly situated, the only alter-
nate left in the absence of legislation, will be removal from
the State with our property as the last means of security.
We cannot think the only lawful and constitutional exponent
of the sovereign will of Maryland will subject us to that neces-
sity, identified as we are in all things pertaining to her glory
and renown, as well as her adversities and trials.

With this confidence we express our wants plainly, and .
trust to your patriotic action in our behalf.

Your intelligent body need not be reminded that Maryland
as a frontier Southern State, holds a position in this Union
of the first importance. The good neighborhood intercourse
of the respective members of that Union, which existed in the
earlier history of our Government, is fast passing away; and
a sytematic plan of unremitting plunder upon our slave pro-
perty by the Abolitionists of the North, admonishes us how
impotent the Federal Government is to restrain them or to
protect that property.

True, we do not complain of the Federal Government as
derelict in the rendition of Fugitive Slaves when captured
and placed under its control; but the difficulty in arriving at
that point by the party claiming—his pecuniary losses, vexa-
tious suits, and exposure to death by mobs opposed to the law
in the Northern States, all go to make the law a nullity.

In this emergency we fall back upon the reserved rights of
the State, and look to home, to our own State, in the exercise
of her sovereign power, for protection.

Ours is a government within a government; and as citizens
of a sovereign State, we can look to no other source for pro-
tection against the adversaries of our laws, properties and
rights, because all things necessary for our municipal govern-
ment and well being are vested in your Honorable Body.

Some of our sister Southern States have been driven by the
encroachments of Abolitionists, to pass laws for protection
and retaliation. We do not ask for retaliation as yet; but