The nominations of the Committee were accepted by the meeting with enthusiastic unanimity.

REMARKS OF ARCHIBALD STIRLING, ESQ. Gentlemen,-Before proceeding to the business of the evening, I beg leave to thank you for the honor you have done me, in calling me to preside.

While I regret that some one, possessed of more experience in such matters, has not been selected, I accept your call with pride and pleasure.

I consider the object of this meeting, to preserve and perpetuate the Union, as one that ought to be dearer to every patriotic breast, than property or life; and should the proceedings of this meeting aid in stilling the storm that beats around us, and in arresting the progress of secession, I shall ever regard my humble participation as the happiest event of my life.

Gentlemen, I mean not to. detain you by any attempt to make a speech. That, as you all know, is not my vocation.

A Committee was appointed at your preliminary meeting at the Law Buildings to prepare the measures of business for this meeting. That Committee has prepared resolutions to be submitted for your consideration, and have invited Gentlemen to address you on these resolutions.

SPEECH OF WM. H. COLLINS, ESQ.

Mr. Chairman,-I have been instructed by the Committee in charge of the resolutions to be presented to this meeting, to say a few words before offering them for consideration. Will I be pardoned if I do so?

Mr. Chairman, we are in perilous times. Our country is in danger; not from any foreign power, (for that we would know full well how to meet,) but from discontent and distrust amongst ourselves. It is the conviction of this danger, together with a deep-rooted love for our common country, which has brought you, as also this vast audience, here tonight. I say for our common country.

Mr. Chairman and Citizens of Baltimore, may I ask, What is our country?

Is it the State of Maryland, with her noble Bay and beautiful Rivers piercing and blessing her two Shores? Is it her plains and uplands, her mountains and valleys, her thriving cities, and towns, and villages? Is it her healthful climate and productive soil, her free institutions, her people of a brave and vigorous stock? Is it our own beautiful city, with its industry, its thrift and its skill, its love of order, its comfortable homes, its throngs of loving wives and beautiful daughters, of manly husbands, and fathers and sons? Are these our country? No, sir. Maryland is a pure and bright star in our constellation. There may she ever remain! True, faithful, loyal and brave, we love her as our own bright, particular star. She is our home, and we will watch over her welfare and honor with filial affection. This is natural; it is right, it is loyal.

But, Mr. Chairman and People of Baltimore, Maryland is not our country. She is but a part of it, though a dear and treasured part. She has an area of but ten thousand square miles, whilst our country contains three millions. She has less than a million of people, whilst our country numbers thirty millions.

People of Baltimore, our country, our true country, extends from the great lakes of the North to the Gulf of Mexico and the Rio Grande in the sunny regions of the South; and from the resounding shores of the Atlantic, over lowlands and mountains, and valleys, and rivers and plains, to the Pacific, where we look out upon China and Japan.

This, this is our country, the noblest, the grandest heritage which God has ever granted to one people. Capable of containing, and soon to be inhabited by a hundred millions of brave sons, this our country, if she prove true to our glorious Union, is destined to be the happiest, the greatest and the freest nation that by its great deeds has ever fired the poet's song, or lent eloquence to the flowing page of history. In arms, in arts, in wealth, in patriotism, in liberty, in science and in moral power, she will be the foremost nation of the world. This, Mr. Chairman and FellowCitizens, is the grand and glorious country to which we this night offer the devotion, the undying love of our

hearts. This our country is yet in its youth. The beard has scarcely started on its cheek; and yet it has a history of which we may well be proud.

For more than thirty centuries the great Hebrew-warrior, leader, legislator, scholar, poet, statesman and prophetstood without a rival, admittedly the grandest man of all the world. This our own young land, in her struggle for liberty, saw the majestic form of one of her own sons rise up into the view of the world, admittedly the greatest man of thirty centuries; approaching nearer to, if not fully equalling in grandeur, the colossal proportions of the great Hebrew. With both, the love of their people was the grand and controlling passion. Washington, in his hours of despondence and devotion, (and there were many such,) had that same deep-rooted love of his people which burst forth from the lips of the great Hebrew in his impassioned prayer for his countrymen: "Yet now, if Thou wilt, forgive their sin; and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of thy book."

Through centuries of grandeur as well as of disaster; scattered in every land, and in many oppressed, the Hebrew has ever bent in reverent homage over the history of his great chief. For centuries, and for scores of centuries to come, I humbly hope our countrymen will catch with attentive ears, and treasure up in pious hearts, the parting lessons of our great American.

It is to these parting lessons, which, if not written with the prophet's fire, are the grandest production of the greatest and wisest man of modern times, that you will be mainly indebted for the resolutions which I hold in my hand, and to which I trust you will give a hearty approval.

RESOLUTIONS.

Resolved, That the unity of government which constitutes us one people is justly dear to us, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of our real independence, the support of our tranquility at home, our peace abroad, of our safety, of our prosperity, of that very liberty which we so highly prize.

Resolved, That notwithstanding much pains has been taken to weaken in our minds the conviction of the immense value of our national Union to onr collective and individual happiness, we still cherish a cordial, habitual and immoveable attachment to it; that we will accustom ourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of our political safety and prosperity; that we will watch for its preservation with jealous anxiety; that we will discountenance whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and that we will indignantly frown upon every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which link together the various parts.

Resolved, That to the efficacy and permanence of our Union, a government for the whole is indispensable; and that no alliances, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute.

Resolved, That the Government of the Union, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation; completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to our confidence and our support, and that respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty.

Resolved, That the preceding resolutions-taken from the Farewell Address of the Father of his Country-contain a declaration of principles and duties by which we mean to abide, for weal or for woe; whilst, at the same time, we claim that every privilege and right guaranteed to us and to our sister States by the Constitution can, and shall be, maintained under and according to its provisions; and that we will never desecrate the fame of Washington by the destruction of the Constitution and the Union, which are the true monuments of his glory.

Resolved, That various Northern States have passed laws usually called "Personal Liberty laws," which we believe

to be in violation of the Constitution of the United States, of the acts of Congress passed pursuant thereto, and of the sacred obligations which those States owe to our common country; and that we appeal to the Constitutional duty, the patriotism, the honor, the justice, and the brotherhood of the people of those States respectively, to repeal those laws, and by every way and means in their power, to put down the aggressions of their people on the peculiar institutions of the Southern States, as the only way to remove the well-founded discontents and complaints of their brethren of the Southern States, and which, if not removed, may prove fatal to our Union, as well as to all those vital interests which ought to bind us together as one people.

Resolved, That the present condition of our country demands of all who love her a spirit of fairness, of candor, of conciliation, of concession, and of self-sacrifice; and that we hail with thankful and hopeful hearts the patriotic efforts now being made in Congress for the settlement, as we trust forever, of the dangerous questions at issue, on some Constitutional, just and equitable principle; and that such of our statesmen and States, whether of the North or of the South, as may contribute most to this holy end, will challenge the highest place in the affections of our country; and that those who may refuse to lend their aid to this holy purpose may justly expect, as they will be sure to receive, the condemnation and reprobation of the present age, as well as of future ages.

SPEECH OF A. W. BRADFORD, ESQ.

Mr. Chairman and Fellow-Citizens,-In rising to second, as I now do, the Resolutions just offered by my friend who has set down, I do so in response to the invitation with which I have been honored by the Committee, to address you on the absorbing topics of the day. In doing so, I feel the deep sense of the unspeakable importance of the subject, and the still deeper sense of my utter inability to do it justice. The consciousness of that inability forces itself upon me at this moment still more impressively as I survey the vast crowd here collected, and feel how absolutely impossi