Saint Mary's beacon. [volume] (Leonard Town, Md.) 1867-1983, 1891-05-14

use the oyster grounds OF the Chesa-
peake Bay clothe all their utterances
with the garb of suspicion?
With steady persistency since
1856 these same gentlemen have
been urging their scheme for the
establishment of proprietary rights
in the public domain. In 1890
they introduced a bill in the Mary
land Legislature to give them not
only possession of fourteen and
one half miles by an average width
of four miles of the Bay bottom,
but the right also to police the wa
ters. 1t was a monstrous propo-
sition, instantly rejected by the
Legislature. Have We not had, in
the modern history of oar State
and Country. enough examples Of
the iniquity of surrendering police
powers into the hands of private
corporations:
We see no new faces in this COM
bine;we hear of no new converts to
their plan; there has been no public
demand for the acceptance of their
panacea; there has been no COM
plant, no call for interference with
the present State ownership and
control; no outcry, except that
raised by these same promoters,
whose numbers can be counted
without the use of three figures,
and whose object is their personal
aggrandizement.
This is the same battle which
has been fought all through the
history of our race. IL is the bat
tie of the many against the domina-
ton of the few. 1t is no new theo-
ry that confronts us in this claim
We make for a common of piscary.
Three hundred years before Colum-
bus sailed across the riven waters Of
the ocean to geek land where vet
a republic should be born. under
the shadowing branches of the trees
on the island of Runnymede, in
the Thames, the barons of England
wrested this right from the mailed
-Halu OF JUnn EacKIand- and on-
rolled it in the great charter of the
liberties of the people. Aye. be-
fore that, long before that, in the
very dawn of the morning of their
history. when Druids lit their al
tar fires in the worship of the roll
ing stars, when yellow Saxons re-
PEELED the invading Danes. as a
custom of the common people, this
right was claimed and fought for
and yielded; and, coming down the
ages, when this race, which has laid
the world in tribute, which has
discovered, captured and colonized
in its development; which has graft
ed its institutions on the ragged
edge Of barbarism-when. say.
this race established itself in the
lands of the Algonquin tribes, by
the broad waters of the Chesapeake
Bay, the right to the common Of
fishery III these waters was, by the
words Of the kingly charter of
Charles, reserved to Cecelius Cal
vert, the lord proprietor. And,
yet again, when, in the fullness Of
time, out Of the travail of the ages,
out of the sorrow and pain Of kingIy
domination and oppression, this
republic was born, and the Fathers
thereof in wisdom laid the fOunda-
tiOns Of its government, and wrote
its organic law, this sovereign right
of cOWmOn Of fishery merged in
the people of this commonwealth.
1t isS right, my fellow-citizens,
which differs from the right to
parcel out the ground and possess
it in private ownership. 1t differs
in this, that the earth does not
spontaneously yield the crops Of
corn and wheat. Left without
cultivation, the land grows up in
harvest OF tares. 1t needs the
careful hand Of man to produce the
crops of vegetables and grain. But
in the fisheries, the bounty Of the
Creator, by natural law, provides a
supply which, like the wild animals
of the forest and the birds Of the
air, constitute the natural food
Of the human race; peculiar TO no
class, common to all, his property
alone who by skill or courage re-
duces them to possession.
TO institute laws, therefore,
which shall limit this right Of
capture to privileged few, il to
establish system of game laws
which have been the curse of older