of her delegates. The great emporium of our
State, with her commercial connexions penetra-
ting every bay, and river, and creek, and visiting
every town, village and cross-roads with her political
connections, embracing every prominent,
influential politician, in every election district,
with her social and personal relations—extend-
ing to families and fire-sides in every section of
the State—with these and above all with these,
her wealth and intelligence and power concentrated,
as it is, and organised, she has an influence
that pervades every artery of the State, moves,
controls and regulates every muscle, nerve and
pulsation of the whole body politic She has
delegates in the persons of members from all
parts of the State—every where. How has she
succeeded in getting her internal improvement
measures—her great rail roads ? By the numeri-
cal force of her delegates? No, sir, but by the
votes of delegates from counties, a very small
number of whose citizens ever travel on them,
How did she induce the State to incur an oner-
ous debt, to promote these improvements? Not
by the large number of delegates in the Legisla-
ture, but by the aid of other delegates from coun-
ties whose citizens had almost no other interest
in, or connection with, these matters, than to pay
their quota of the annual tax imposed to discharge
this debt. And in the same way she always had
and always would exert, an immense control in
the government. He did not allude to the suc-
cess of these measures in a spirit of complaint.
They were, perhaps, all right, some of them cer-
tainly were, but he mentioned them as an illus-
tration of his doctrine that an increase of mem-
bers from the city was not due as a measure of
justice, nor proper as a matter of expediency.
Mr BROWN said:
He had not purposed to make any remarks,
but as the gentleman from Kent, (Mr. Cham-
bers.) had thought proper to allude to some ob-
servations that had fallen from him, he would
say a few words in reply.
It was a bad sign when you saw a great man,
like the gentleman from Kent begin to complain
of abstract principles. When he, (Mr. B.,) came
into this hall, a few minutes since, the gentle-
man was talking of representation according to
population, as being an abstract principle.
Now, he never knew a man in his life who
could meet an argument of that kind, and un-
fortunately the gentleman failed in his abstrac-
tion. He had no kind of doubt in the world,
that the gentleman knew the character of the
people among whom he lived, but he thought
that he, (Mr. Chambers,) had not said any thing
which went to uphold the right of the people to
self government. Such doctrine as he had ad-
vanced would do well in England, where it was
known that the people of the United States gov-
ern themselves, although they did not believe in
the principle of self-government,
The gentleman said another thing—that he
could not have any faith in men's statements, that
if a man was possessed of political power, he
would easily part with it.
Now, he, [Mr. Brown,] agreed with him in
that observation, for he thought the gentleman
5 |
had clearly established that fact by his own
course in this Convention, We gave the gentle-
man's county, as he said before, a Senator, and
and each county and the city of Baltimore are lo
have a Senator. And, yet, the gentleman from
Kent, he supposed, imagined their political
rights to be in great danger, on account of the
political axiom being about to be applied to the
House of Delegates, that you must do the "great-
est good to the greatest number."
Now, according to his, (Mr. B's.,) proposi-
tion, it was "doing the greatest good to the,
greatest number." The people said, "give us
representation according to population," and
yet the gentleman deemed this an abstraction.
Now, he wanted to correct a mistake into
which the gentleman had fallen.
It was true that he, (Mr. B.,) was here in
1836, and it was also true that he took a very
humble part in getting a change made in the
Constitution of the State. But it was not true—
he meant it in no offensive sense—that we would
make it a permanent settlement of the matter.
He had said in committee and out of committee,
that he, (Mr. B.,) did not want to see a revolu-
tion in Maryland. He wanted the gentleman
from Kent to understand this, because he, (Mr.
B ,) might not be in the land of the living when,
perhaps, the gentleman might have an opportu-
nity of doing his memory justice on that score.
He would vote for the proposition of the gentle-
man from Washington for the sake of peace.
Mr. CHAMBERS Does the gentleman vote lor
it, does he mean to say, in Convention, merely to
get rid of it.
Mr. BROWN replied, that he did not do that.
He would say to the gentleman from Kent, who
said that he, (Mr, B,) was the oldest man, that
he did not know that, but thought the gentleman
was his senior. The little experience he had
had, satisfied him of one thing—that he had no
confidence in any government where personal
rights were not represented, and when the people
were trampled upon they could not be held
in check. And he believed Thomas Jefferson
on this point; and the attempt making by the
gentleman from Kent with gentlemen from other
counties to control Baltimore city must prove
abortive. It was out of the question. It could
not be expected that government of that charac-
ter would be submitted to at the present day.
The gentleman had used another argument, and
spoken out very plainly—he declared that if one
party in this Convention got a majority of fifty
delegates they would represent that fifty.
Mr. CHAMBERS explained.
Mr. BROWN replied that the delegates in at-
tendance on this Reform Convention represent-
ed the party as much as the whole people. The
gentlemen, on the other side, had made proposi-
tions to compromise, which were degrading. As
He, (Mr, B.,) had said on a previous occasion,
the people of the small counties had lost all re-
spect for this Convention. Here, then, we came
forward for the sake of peace and harmony, with
the proposition of the gentleman from Washing-
ton county in the hope of effecting a compromise.
He had voted last winter, and it was the toughest |
