be remuneration. We are told that we are to be paid in "blood and treasure, the blood shed on the plains of Virginia and elsewhere, where these great battles have been fought, and the carnage that has taken place, adding mockery to insult. It is ruinous, not only to us, as it takes away our property, but ruinous to the slaves themselves. I will not use hard terms, but I will ask what is to become of them? I have a house erected for an old faithful servant. I have women and children, as much requiring constant outlay and expense to sustain them, as it does to sustain myself. How are they to be sustained? Am I not only to be deprived of my property of value, but am I to be further charged with this other property of no value, and must I daily, hourly, incur further expense for them? Is there justice is there honesty in this? Is it fair dealing, which any man, in his private character, would venture to engage in, and subject himself to the imputations of want of integrity which would be heaped upon him if he did engage in it? I am unwilling to enlarge upon this topic, fruitful as it is of remark. I repeat that it is more ruinous to the slave even than to the master. I have known large families, consisting of thirty or forty negroes, to be manumitted at a blow, in a court of justice. In a very few years, I have seen the last remaining member of that concern, the rest being either dead on the dunghill or confined in the penitentiary for crime. They are degraded in point of intellect; they are uninformed as to the means of self-protection, and incapable of making provision for the future. They are turned loose without means even of present even of present subsistence; and for no purpose on earth, and without any honest expectation on the part of those who are to turn them loose, that any other consequence will follow than further degradation, the perpetration of further crime and every sort of vice. The necessary consequence will be the same fate that has awaited the red man upon our border, final extirpation as a nuisance intolerable in any community of which white men are members. I say that no good reason has been given for it. It is a stretch of power, and a flagrant violation of the provisions of the Constitution. It is a measure of injustice and injury to the slaves. The only excuse given is the condition of the country and the suppression of the rebellion. I deny that there is any foundation for an argument upon that subject. If the government of the United States wants them, they are more likely to get them now than if you manumit the few remaining able men in slavery. Their masters now have no motive to do anything else with them than to put them into the army. Only yesterday I was told by a gentleman who came from the Dis trict of Columbia, that there are thousands of negroes there, who are fugitives from the different counties to avoid enlistment, to avoid the draft. The able-bodied men are nearly all gone. What few there are, are no more likely to go, or to be useful should they go. But you manumit not only those who are competent to assist the Government as soldiers, but the feeble, the aged, the incompetent, the women and children, who can be of no service, and they all flock to the Government and demand support from them. That is the experience of those who have already gone off, and why should it not be the experience of those yet to go off? The same motive operates on them, and why should not their conduct be the same? You then increase the expenditures of the GovernmentGod knows they are large enough now. There is no necessity, and you certainly do not benefit them. But you require a much larger outlay of money, a much larger issue of paper, now depreciated, I think, to something like two hundred for one hundred in gold. You cannot certainly benefit the Government by a process which creates a very heavy burden and adds nothing to its military force. In no sense can I conceive how this act can be justified upon the necessity of aiding the Government to crush the rebellion. Yet I have heard no other reason assigned, no other argument urged for the passage of this very iniquitous article proposed to be inserted in the bill of rights. Sir, I say again, that I believe these people will follow the fate of the Indians. Two such different races cannot mingle as equals. Experience has taught that all over the world, and has never failed to teach us here. It has been perfectly understood by the best and wisest men of our country, and I think all future experience will further confirm and fortify it. We came As to all these appeals to popular feeling which have been made in reference to this argument, of the bad character of the insurgent traitors-I do not mean to make any excuse for these men-I can only say, as I said early in the session, that I think this is neither the time nor the place, either for making any appeal in favor of the Government on the one hand, or in denunciation of the rebellious portion of the Union on the other. here to make a law, a constitution, to create a government. I think our great duty is to make the Government, meaning thereby a system which shall protect us by preserving, and not by destroying our property; by securing and not by defeating or violating our personal liberty; by securing to us all the legitimate objects for which governments are instituted. I submit to my friends whether they think they are acting in the course of their appropriate duty when they are passing their time in commendation of General Grant or anybody else, or in any other way, to the neglect of the duty which is demanded of them, to make a government for the State of Maryland, which shall protect our property, and protect us in our persons, and in all the rights which we claim under the Government. I ask whether, on reflection, they think their time is well employed in this exhibition of patriotism, rather than in the legitimate execution of the duties which the people demand at. their hands; whether, and especially I ask it, when sent here to frame a government for the security of our property, they can feel justified in taking it from us. I thank the portion of the Convention which has been so indulgent as to allow me thus much time to express my views. What is the institution of slavery, as it bears upon the question of morals? It occupies the same position as every other institution. It takes its position in every age of the world, according to the circumstances that surround it in that age of the world. Does any man pretend to say that any great ruler or moral teacher ever undertook to establish the principle that the effect of despotic rule over the population subjected to it, is contrary to the moral law? Yet there is not now a single citizen here or elsewhere under our form of government who does not believe that such despotic forms of government are in their nature contrary to human rights, and ought to be as speedily as practicable removed. The institution of slavery takes its stand, character, upon the same basis with other peculiar institutions, despotic in their character, which have been swept away; and finds its moral justification, or want of moral justification, in the character of the age in which it exists and claims a right to perpetuate itself. Mr. STIRLING. During the course of this debate I hesitated some time whether I should submit any remarks whatever to the consid-like any other institution temporal in its eration of the Convention. I have been very anxious that this debate should close within a reasonable period. The continued labors of this Convention, at this season of the year, had become so irksome to all, and so contrary to the expectation of the people, for I think people upon both sides have been disappointed at the long-continued session of this Convention, that I had almost come to the conclusion not to say a word upon this subject. But upon further reflection, and particularly upon the solicitation of some of my friends, I have thought proper, at this stage of the debate, briefly to explain my views; and I hope I shall be able to conclude within the time fixed by the order of the house for taking the vote: : What is the institution of slavery to-day? In this respect, I wish to say frankly that I take upon one branch of the subject, precisely the view the gentleman from Somerset (Mr. Dennis) charged upon us as one of the motives of this movement. I believe the institution of slavery to be the corner-stone of this rebellion. I believe it to be the cause of this war. I believe it to be the cause of all the trouble in this State. And so far as it In discussing this question, without any may relate to my own personal views and disrespect to that sacred book so often quoted opinions upon that subject, it is this particuin this Convention, I intend in these remarks lar thing which has made me first, above all to lay it entirely aside. I shall not under-considerations, an emancipationist. take to prove or to disprove that the Bible I do not mean to say there are not other sanctions or does not sanction slavery. I shall considerations which may be higher; but I not undertake to prove or disprove that depen-mean to say that these are the considerations dently upon the Bible, or independently of the Bible, the institution of slavery is or is not a sin. So far as I am concerned, I have never regarded it as sinful. I do not regard it so now, as an individual fact. All I have to say upon that subject is that it neither proves nor disproves the material facts that are contained in the matters before this Convention. We all know that in different periods of the world, what has been justifiable at one time becomes unjustifiable at another. What is right at one time becomes wrong at another. You may talk as much as you please about the immutable principles of right; but all history, sacred and profane, and the experience of man proves that what is right at some times is not right at others. We have only to refer, not to the sacred scriptures necessarily, but to the period to which the early part of the scriptural record relates, to show that the marriage of the nearest connections, even children of the same father and mother, has been permitted under the sanction of the system of religion that prevailed at that time. which have prevailed upon my mind in regard me in personal connection, both family and social connection, and of both sexes, had abandoned their allegiance to this government, and regarded themselves as foreigners to it, simply because under the principles of this institution they had begun to regard themselves as better than other people, and because that fixed in their minds a bond of union between them and the South, and which no other bond of union could crush out of them. I found it was a bond of sympathy hased upon an institution, something which they supposed allied them to the better classes of this country. I could not mistake that in their minds, if treason to this government were not produced by a state of mind hostile to the very existence of the form of government of which they were citizens, they had come to the conclusion that this government was too popular in its character, that it did not recognize sufficiently the distinction between individuals; and they clung to the institution of slavery, not from any great moral or political principle, but because it was the only thing to which they could cling which gave them some opportunity to reject these great popular principles, and to ally themselves to something they thought was an entering wedge in that system of government. I know this by personal contact with these people. circulated among the circles of society in Europe, have come back here, and have sympathized with the principles and institutions of the rebels to-day, because they prefer the governments of the old world to the government of this American Republic. In that terrible time in Baltimore, when I saw the estrangement of friends, the separation of those with whom I had associated, because they regarded me as a Yankee, not by birth but by association, by principle, because I was hostile to this system, as a traitor to the city of Baltimore, a traitor to the State of Maryland, and a foreigner to them; I saw enough to convince me that practically no man who did not bow in humble submission to this new idea would be permitted to live here in peace, but would be driven from those limits with ignominy and contempt. I saw this, and I remember it now; for though checked by the influence and force of circumstances and events, the same feeling still exists in their hearts as strong as any feeling can exist in the hearts of any people, misguided but enthusiastic in the advocacy of their principles. favorite parties go down, without the slightest attempt to resist by a revolution. It is this institution alone, this broad, isolated fact among the institutions of our country, which has been able to evoke this rebellion. There is nothing else in the history of this country either actual in the past or possible in the future, which could have evoked any such action. I say that the institution of slavery is the cause of this rebellion. Whether gentlemen say that the abolitionists or the pro-slavery men precipitated rebellion, makes no difference. It is reasoning through a circle. If there I do not profess to speak the sentiments of had been no slavery, no such peculiar instigentlemen upon this floor; but digressing for tution, there could not by any possibility a moment, I would say here, that whatever have been any abolitionists. You look in has been the producing cause in their minds, vain among our institutions for any other the sentiments I have heard expressed in this that could have produced these results. PeoConvention are very different from the senti-ple of all parts of the country have seen their ments I have been accustomed to hear from the people to whom I refer in Baltimore. One of the gentlemen from Prince George's said that if the Convention went to Baltimore he would find a majority of the people there to agree with him and those who sympathize with him. I know those people to whom he refers. I know that to a great extent they have abandoned their allegiance to the government, because they have ceased to believe in the practical existence of republican institutions; because they believe that under the present revolution, if successful, some sort of institution will be developed opposed to free institutions, which would lift them as a class. It is this which has made the female portion of the community the active, unceasing ad vocates of this rebellion. It is the appellation of Southern gentlemen and Southern ladies, which has carried them away in one mass, in certain classes in society, into conflict with everything their fathers taught. It is because they have been accustomed to regard the people who do not support themselves by labor as the higher class, and the people who do support themselves as below them in everything, because they look with admiration upon the institutions of the old world; and many of them who have travelled abroad and : In What has it produced elsewhere? States which were divided nearly equally upon the question of secession, it has produced a perfect unanimity of sentiment and action of people diametrically opposed. While the anti-secessionists believed that secession was unjustifiable, yet they were so bound together in their attachment to the institution of slavery, and so wrought upon by that common bond of sympathy, that they went directly in the support of what their own judgment condemned; and they have bled and died in a cause which their own judgment in the beginning told them, and which their voices expressed, was a cause of injustice. No other development in the history of this country has ever produced such a result, or ever could have divided this country upon the battle field. Do you think that the tariff question as it existed in 1832, without the existence of slavery, would have caused even an attempt at secession? On the question of the tariff you could not have had a united North or South. They differed in every portion of the South as in the North upon that question; and if they had seceded the sword would have been flashing upon every door step; for we know from the passions of human nature and the history of the past, that civil war always develops resistance in every household, unless there is some extraordinary fact which counteracts this result. But the institution of slavery rendered the Southern Union man powerless to resist this rebellion. Gentlemen talk about what Maryland might have done, or what any State might have done. If the men of Maryland opposed to secession, could not keep the South back by the reasoning process, it could not have been done. Virginia could not have done it; because they had this broad fact to stand upon to bring this conflict within their own power. All they had to do was to fire the cannon, blow the trumpet, and the common magnetic touch of this common institution brought around their standard not only their friends but their enemies, The politicians of the South knew this. They knew that however opposed Virginia might be to revolution and secession, the very moment they brought it to a conflict of arms, Virginia would be forced to support them. Why? Because they were their countrymen? They were no more their countrymen than the countrymen of the North. Because they belonged to the same State? No. It was because they belonged to the slaveholding States, and this institution was a part of something they prided themselves upon. It was because in their education they had been taught to believe that they, both secessionists and Union men, were superior to the mass of the people of the country. It was this one fact that brought them to this one standard, when no other fact or opinion could have reconciled them to it. Norman aristocracy and the Saxon peasantry, in a large portion of the country; and the former regarded their position as better than to have prosperous towns; they looked upon their aristocratic hospitality as better than the industry, progress, and the development of high moral principles in the Northern society. And they directly asserted that though Northern men should make Maryland a blackened ruin, they would take it a blackened ruin into the Southern Confederacy after they had driven the Northern barbarians out. I do not attribute these sentiments to any member of this Convention. I have no right to do that. But I say that whatever their sentiments may be, these are the sentiments of a large portion of the people who supported and voted for them; and who, if they had not voted for them, would have voted for some other gentlemen representing very different views from those expressed by my colleagues and myself upon this floor. I made up my mind at that time, however much it might gratify me to be able to provide for those around me, interested in the institution, by contributions from my own pocket, or by State compensation-I made up my mind, and I express it now without fear or favor, that it was necessary for the safety of a portion of the people of this State, that the institution of slavery should die. And so far as my own constituents are concerned, they adopt the same view and accept the issue, and I proclaim it as the deliberate opinion and purpose of the constituency whom I represent, that the institution of slavery is dangerous to their liberty, their happiness, their prosperity, their safety, and so far as they can wield the instrument of death, it shall die . What is the alternative to which we are The fact is certain, driven in this State. whether the institution of slavery is dead or not, that it exists in the Constitution of this State now. No other system ever stood so protected by the Constitution. This State to-day is neither a free State nor a slave State, but both at the same time. It is a peculiar position. We must array ourselves upon one side or the other. We must either abolish slavery, or we must go to work and by a reactionary process build slavery up. No State can exist with an institution like this in the condition it is in now. It does not cultivate the land, and it keeps other labor from doing it. It does not maintain itself in the position where it was a few years ago, but it This is a matter which gentlemen upon the other side will not understand probably as thoroughly as we I have never ceased to realize it. The Union men of the State have come fully to realize it. It has long been found that men who did not hold to the State rights theory, when they have come within the boundaries of the State of Virginia, have recognized it. And even in Baltimore, trembling under the despotic control of military despotism, unable to express their true sentiments, as gentlemen say, men delib-keeps out free labor. erately asserted and expressed the views of the ultra Southern rights party of this State. What were those views? That the institution of slavery had developed a chivalry, and a higher class of people in Maryland, a superior caste in this State, and that the men who opposed it were the trading and laboring classes. That we had two classes, like the Is any man so insane as to think that it is possible to bring back to this State the fugitives that have left it? that the grand train of colored people whom the soldiers have swept away with their armies, with their minds penetrated by new ideas of liberty, can be brought back, and the institution of slavery can become what it was ten years ago? To attempt it would require a police | or cultivation of gentlemen owning large in the nature of a standing army. And away with the despicable trash, of maintaining the idea, in violation of all the instincts of human nature, that these people will not work when they can and cannot work when they will. This class has arrayed itself upon the battle-field to the number of 100,000 men. They have many of them left comfortable homes for the purpose of asserting and gaining their liberty. Such an absurdity never entered the brain of man, as the supposition that having shown that determination, having waited with so much patience before taking any action upon their own part, but now, whenever the flag of the United States waves, obeying the signal to them to follow over every obstacle, every degree of pain and suffering, they can be refused the rights of freemen and brought back to their former condition. What is the reason these poor degraded people have left their homes? It is because they desired to flee from slavery. Do you suppose that a negro ever ran away from the place where he was born for any other reason ? Any man who can give any other reason than that they fled from slavery, must apply a process of reasoning to which I am a stranger. Are we then to frame a new Constitution, and let this institution go on in the condition in which we find it to-day ? tracts of land is any higher than that of those owning smaller tracts of land. I do not believe that condition which prevents the growth of towns, prevents the care of roads, which prevents the distribution of all that kind of wealth which divides while it multiplies, is better than the system of free labor in the Northern States.. What is the natural effect of slave labor, as shown by its past history, and what must be its effect now? What has prevented immigration into this State? And what has driven young men out of the State? Is it not simply the reason that in a slaveholding community there is no way in which a young man raised without property can live. A father who in a slaveholding country provides his son with an education, but has no land to bestow upon him, makes it necessary that he should go to some Northern State to obtain his subsistence. The necessary result is that the State of Maryland is sending her population into the Western country or to the North, simply because of this fact. Every one knows that the value of real estate in the slaveholding parts of Maryland, is decreasing not increasing. Property in fine locations, and cultivated estates are depreciating. Instead of there being more houses, they are becoming less. Instead of the farms being divided into homesteads, every census return shows that the number of homesteads in those parts of Maryland is decreasing. They must decrease, because slavery requires it. If a man has to buy his labor, he must not only have a capital to buy his land but also to buy the labor; and the consequent tendency is in a slaveholding community to have the land held in few hands. It is a system which produces towns sometimes, but not cities. It is a system which prevents education; for the few never will give education to the many; when the many have no power to assert their rights. What is the reason that counties so ably represented upon this floor stand in some respects where they stood fifty years ago? What is the reason that St. Mary's to-day is not equal to what it was in 1790? Can any man say that the soil is cursed in any other respect or by anything else? Has anything but the system of slave labor produced these results? Gentlemen say they do not want immigration; that the system of free labor is no more productive than the system of slave labor; and they talk about there being slaves in Europe, and a system of white labor of the poorer classes which is another species of servitude. Do they know that remarks of that kind are as much a reflection upon my constituency as upon the men of New England and New York? Do gentlemen pretend to say that the operatives in manufactories, the workmen in workshops, mechanics, agriculturists, and day laborers, are upon a political, moral, or any other kind of equality with slaves? I represent here a large class of men who own no property except the furniture in their houses, and yet who in manly uprightness, stand before God, as men and citizens, as high as anybody in the limits of the State, who have families around them, whom they support by honest labor, but who are not taxable men. They are men who are There can be no building of villages or compelled to work for their support; and yet towns to any considerable extent, no develthey are as far removed from the condition of opment of tracts, where one man controls and negro slaves as the kings of the earth are re- provides for five hundred people; when he moved from their people in political position. buys everything for them, and distributes it If we get rid of this institution, why should to them. But when those five hundred people we not take the place of other States where feed themselves, and clothe themselves, and free labor exists? I should like to have gen- are forced to buy for themselves, villages tleman point to any reason why this State necessarily grow up to supply them. Under may not maintain the position of Pennsyl- no system where one man provides for nuvania. Why is it that the position of Penn- merous laborers, can there be villages growsylvania is better than the position of Mary-ing up, as when they provide for themselves. land? I do not believe that the hospitality When we see that the institution produces |