The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1901-03-28

Mr.. SPEAKER AND MEMBERS OF
THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES:-Whe
the pampered Praetorian Guards
knocked down at auction to the high
est bidder the once mighty Roman
Empire letters had taken the place of
love of country, education had ex-
changed liberty for luxury, freedom
for tyranny and Roman citizenship
for license, plumber and debauchery.
The unlettered founders of the
greatest republic in history were in
their graves, and their silken-robed,
wine guzzling and effeminate success
ors, lolling in the laps of harlots and
nistresses, amused their idle hours
writing sonnets to immortality and
polished verses to vice.
Senators whose wisdom and soldiers
whose courage had made the then
known world respect the humblest
individual who could legally exclaim
81 am Roman citizen" were sue
ceeded by licentious and lettered
Patricians, whose villas were frescoed
with the obscene productions of de-
PRAYED genius. Sculpture and paint
ing, architecture and personal adorn-
ment were designed devoted to and
had no other inspiration than the
bestial qualification of the senses.
The highest effort of art and the
most lauded inspiration of the muses.
were the productions of the obscene
in fresco or in verse. Sunk in the ex-
quisite debauchery of educated i'm
morality, emasculated of that better
part of manhood. which teaches with
out schools of letters, the creatures
whom God has created in His own
likeness and endowed with an intelli-
gence superior to all other living ami
mals-the lessons of virtue, temper
ance, moderation, industry and cour-
age; the degenerated and lettered
Roman fell to rise no more before the
sword of the cOnquering and unde-
bauched barbarian of the Rhine.
But, Mr.. Speaker, in the more pus-
slant days of the Roman Republic,
when its warriors were unconquera-
BILE and its Legislators famous for
craftsmanship and the rugged elo-
quence of intelligent and far-seeing
politicians, an African black shook
their fabric of greatness from its cen
ter to its circumference, with such
fear of his arms that in the Senate
lOCCl SlCdbCSb JIlDullC hey CT
concluded one of his matchless ora
tfons on any subject without eXclaim-
ing "DeleDd0 est CdTthdge n'-Carth-
age must be destroyed. And why
must Carthage be destroyed - asked
the opposition of that day, and the
answer came from the ancient democ-
racy, Because it is the city of Han
nibal, the black man who crossed the
Alps and defeated, by his superior
strategy in the art of war, the great
est of our generals"
So Carthage was destroyed for this
reason and because it was a rival to
Rome through the genius of Hanni-
bal. In destroying Carthage and
Hannibal Rome succeeded for time
in being sole mistress of the world, but
Hannibal and Carthage by this de-
struction were made as immortal as
their conquerors. If, then, history
teaches us any one thing more i'm
pressively than another it is the fulfil
ity OF seeking temporary advantage or
ACKNOWLEDGMENT by the unwise exer-
else OF the power we are possessed to
destroy that which would rebound
more greatly to our honor, happiness
and perpetuity to preserve.
The Roman excuse for the destruc-
ton of Carthage that it was rival
and preferred alliances other than
Roman was just as illogical and alb
surd as are the master motives which
inspire this bill. How puerile, impo-
little and unstatesmanlike is this Dem
ocratic party of Maryland, which in
the dawn of the twentieth century
takes for its model the narrow minded
Puritan of New England and repudi-
ates the chivalrous cavalier and fiber
al far-seeing founders who made the
throughout the world more than a
century before Virginia gave birth to
Washington.
The federation Act of 1917, Mr..
Speaker, was the first rift in the
clouds of persecution, which envel-
oped the whole civilized world. 1t
was UNNECESSARILY greater in effect
than the so-called Magna-Charter
wrung from the fears of King John
by the Barons of Runeymede because,
while the latter only provided for the
body of the mobiles, the Maryland Act
enfranchised the soul of the people.
While the Puritan of New England
was making senlllty crime worthy
of death at the stake, exceeding even
Indian barbarity towards the old and
the helpless, Maryland, with the sun
light of God making luminous the
minds of her sons and her founders,
proclaimed civil and religious liberty
within the confines of her domain and
invited the prosecuted and the OPP
pressed to the shelter of her bosom.
J The glorious heritage, the fathers
of the Revolution, made the common
property of all in the Declaration of
Independence, drafted by Jefferson,
the Virginian, and signed by Carroll,
of Carrollton, the richest Rebel and
the first citizen of Maryland. In that
immortal document there is no relig-
ious test, there is no property test,
there if no education test, but in the
most unqualified manner in which
language is capable of expressing
thought or intention, civil and relig-
ious liberty is guaranteed to all.
Without these two pillars. civil and
religious liberty, there is no citizen
ship; no legal equality, inherited by