hundred and fifty miles of a Free State, and with a double tier of Slave States surrounding us on the North, we could then understand and appreciate, and under such circumstances would be ready to render the sympathy that would be justly due from Maryland to South Carolina; and for the same reason do we claim that whatever agency sympathy is to exercise in controlling the actions of our respective States, should exert its influence chiefly upon them, and teach them that consideration that is due to us, who have ever been doing a sentinel's duty, and encountering a sentinel's danger under the very ramparts of the Northern aggressor?

Can her losses be compared to ours? I will venture to say that no single one of the Cotton States, since the first day of their existence, ever lost so many slaves as Maryland has done in a single year. Are their sons so much more enterprising than ours, that they feel more seriously than we do the want of a place for their surplus population in the vast Territories of the far West? Again, I venture to say, that where one of the sons of the South ever left its rich Savannah, to seek a home outside of the borders of his native State, a hundred of the hardy sons of Maryland have abandoned their old fields to seek their fortunes in those far off regions.

In every one, therefore, of the subjects of complaint, now so convulsing the extreme South, the burden of the injury has fallen upon our own good State. Is she so much less sensitive to all just considerations affecting either her right of property, her personal honor, or her State pride, that she has only to be awakened to the sense of these rights when South Carolina has pointed them out, and can find no remedy for their redress but the reckless one she herself has prescribed? We are officially apprised that the Governors of South Carolina and Mississippi have each recommended the adoption of restrictive and prohibitory laws, by which they shall interdict the introduction of slaves from any of the Border States refusing to join in this Southern Confederacy; and this, if recommended, with the express purpose of so hampering us

between Northern aggression on the one side, and closing all outlets for escape on the other, that we shall be forced to submit either to that loss, or unite in the South Carolina Confederacy. That is the legislation proceeding from a Slave State, to operate upon the citizens of a sister Slave State, to force them to hoist the disunion banner.

Will Maryland, under the existence of such a menace, follow any such leadership? And especially a leadership that lands us upon some unknown shore, with the waves of revolution breaking all around us. No, my friends, I claim not to be more patriotic or self-sacrificing than the most of you; but so far as my personal interests are concerned, they have perhaps suffered as largely as any of yuo. Within the last twelve or thirteen years, twelve full bodied slaves, belonging either to myself or my immediate family, worth about $15,000, and comprising four-fifths of all that we owned in the world, found their way to the Free States, and though much pains and expense have been undergone in the attempt to get them back, not one of them was ever recovered. Yet, sooner than be compelled to follow in the wake of South Carolina, and submit to her leadership and her menacings, and put Maryland in the condition of a Border State of a Southern Confederacy, subject to all the horrors of a border warfare, and all the civil, social and political calamities of a divided Union, if these fugitive slaves were standing here to-night, with their value twice as great as it is, I would send them back to their abolition allies, and think I had purchased at a cheap price my right to remain a citizen of these United States.

One more word, my friends, upon this Utopian scheme of a Southern Confederacy. The details of this plan seems so far to be put forth with much caution. There is good reason to believe that the seceder has found means to succeed in persuading some who take but a superficial view of the subject of the feasibility of some such plan in awakening a vague hope of the advantages which we are to derive from it. Indefinite and unexplained notions of a certain metropolitan importance, which Baltimore is to acquire under

their new dynasty, are sounded in the ears of her citizens; but a moment's consideration must exhibit its fallacy. I would like to know what is the aggregate amount of all the trade Baltimore enjoys from all the Gulf States known as the Cotton States of this Union. I have not the means of accurately determining, but I am satisfied it is a comparative trifle. We all know that sundry efforts were made from time to time, within the last few years, to establish a single steamer between this port and Charleston, which proved abortive.

I will venture to say that three-fourths, if not ninetenths, of all the goods purchased on account of the Cotton States in ports north of Virginia, find their way to New York, notwithstanding their complaint of New York, and Northern aggression being such an oppression to them that they cannot find refuge within this Union. Who shall estimate the loss of your trade connected with the vast empire of the West. For more than a quarter of a century you have been submitting patiently, through toil and taxation, to complete your great works of internal improvement, and now, when they are all consummated, and when the great lakes of the North, and the mighty valleys of the West, with their fruitful warehouses of trade, have been brought into direct and immediate connection with your doors, do you mean, by the formation of this separate Confederacy, to declare that the West, as well as the North, shall be a distinct community from you—that the terminus of every rail road you possess shall be hereafter in a foreign State, and the whole current of your great Western trade be carried along the Philadelphia and New York lines to what will then be their only home market.

The true subjects of complaint are the one connected with our territorial status, and the other growing out of the Northern obstruction of the Fugitive Slave law. These subjects were engrossing the attention of Congress, and the speaker believed that some amicable adjustment would be made; but you do not find a single extremist from the South that has consented to be satisfied with any measure of compromise so far suggested. It will ultimately no

doubt prevail. The distinguished and venerable old man of Kentucky, the Nestor of the Senate, with his brave heart encouraged by the eleven thousand signatures with which you here recently fortified him, will no doubt persevere in his course until a great good is accomplished. We can sometimes understand and appreciate the conduct of a brave man, when borne down by a stress of numbers that he cannot meet, is compelled to relinquish what is committed to his custody. A gallant commander in a beleagured fortress surrounded by an exasperated populace, may retreat to some more commanding point; but before he does so, he spikes his guns and takes his ammunition along with him. But here it is proposed to surrender our whole right in the Territories, without striking a blow to the very parties of whose usurpations we complain on the ground, that unless we do, they may at some future day come and usurp it.

The Speaker next reviewed the effect of this separate Southern Confederacy upon the Slave property of Maryland. When all Constitutional barriers were broken down, when there were no tribunals, and all questions of boundary were trampled under foot, what assurance could weaker communities have from the oppression of their Northern foreign neighbor? Once cut loose from the moorings of the Constitution, and no man can foresee whither we shall drift. I cannot believe that a community who have always rallied to the defence of the Union, no matter under what disguise its assailants cloak themselves, will fail to come to its rescue now. When in December, 1832, the hero of New Orleans-the gallant defender of this Union-issued his proclamation declaring his purpose to execute the laws and maintain the Union, and calling upon Union-loving men and law-abiding men to aid him in his purpose, where was the man found that did not profess himself ready and willing to stand by him to the last? And when, in the ardor of his patriotic wrath, he swore that this Union should be preserved, where was the heart that did not beat high at the thought that he had such a country to preserve, and such a captain to preserve it?

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The stand which that old hero took at that time completely disarmed all his former political opponents, and when he afterwards was gathered to his fathers, full of honors, he was lamented by the whole nation, but never so much as at present. Where is the man at this time prepared to reverse the judgment which public opinion then pronounced upon the patriotism of that act? Where is the political follower of his among the thousands of Maryland, who are in the habit of rendering to him an annual tribute by stereotyping upon their ballots his well known features, that will again venture to look upon that face, when he remembers that he has aided in spreading a heresy which he so effectually denounced, and in severing a Union which he would have sacrificed his life to save?

One of the false issues, artfully arranged by the seceders, consists in so presenting this question as to give it the appearance of a question between the North and South. Such is not the case. If the people of this country possessed the Constitutional power to divide it, and in pursuance of such power were mutually to agree to such a division, separating it into a Northern and Southern Confederacy, then, indeed, we would be fairly called on to determine between them, and would not, probably, long hesitate in our choice; but such is far from the case. The question, truly presented, is: When a State, in the assumed exercise of a right which we can never admit-the right of secession for any fancied cause-undertakes to march out of the Union, shall we follow her, or remain in it? It is not a question between North and South, but a question between the United States and the South Carolina Confederacy. Shall we continue under the old flag of the one, or swear a new allegiance to the Palmetto banner of the other?

It is idle to say that a United States no longer remains to us, because one, two, or a half a dozen that were recently united with us, have determined to take their leave. A ship is still a ship, though a few of her studding sails have yielded to the passing hurricane and been blown away. And whilst the hull and masts and spars and sails still continue amply sufficient to keep her gallantly afloat, we