Evening capital. (Annapolis, Md.) 1884-1910, 1905-04-07
PARTY FEALTY AND The CON
STITuTIONAL AMENDMENT

The recent decision Of the Court OF
Appeals renders it necessary for the
Governor to proclaim the Constltu-
tionaI Amendment and it will be sub
mitted TO the people at the fall cleo
ton for ratification or rejection. Its
passage through the Legislature was
under the lash of the merciless party
whip. and as the same influences Will
probably control the coming Demo
cratic State Convention. it is safe to
predict that its adoption will be made
a plank in the party platform. This
was fully demonstrated at the recent
meeting of the Democratic Editors
Association.
What obligation will this impose
npon the Democratic voters Does it
thereby become a fundamental tenet
of the party or principle essential
TO the preservation of free and en-
lightened government in the State OF
MARYLAND? Assuming that its expe-
diency is the only question at ISSUE
does the voice of the Convention rec
ommending its ratification preclude
Democrat who wishes to maintain his
marty status, from voting for its re-
lection
1t will be conceded that what is
wrong in principle and will be PERM
cious in practice cannot either change
its character or avert its evil conse-
quences through the necromancy prac-
ticed at political conventions. 1t
must be granted that if the Oonstitu-
tional Amendment is vicious legisla-
ton it is none the less so because OF
the sanction of the Convention. That
sanction should not, in this view OF
the matter, carry with it any weight
much less any obligation upon good
Democrat to support il. Parties are
but means to an end, that end is good,
economical government; equal and
exact Justice TO all free, untram-
melted opportunity to the people-the
whole people-to work out for them
selves a loftier patriotism and more
disinterested citizenship. If parties,
in their machinery and principles,
Illustrate such ends, they forfeit their
right to existence and loose the bonds
of allegiance which bind its members
together. A vote who is not a citi-
zen before he is partisan, who subor-
dinates the permanent public good to
temporary party advantage has so far
misconceived the purpose of the cleo
tive franchise as to proclaim himself
unworthy of its exercise.
There may have been time when
political regularity controlled the
thought of the citizen, when its
ethics was the moral code for politi-
cal action, and when for individual
conscience party piety substitut ted the
discipline of the party. But this hu-
initiating condition has ceased to exist,
for a sturdy, independent American
manhood is in control, whose civic
pride and moral courage no longer
yield under the charming eumphem-
ism of the presiding genius of the
party organization, but decree that
the sense of individual responsibility
is the guiding principle without whose
free and spontaneous action demo-
cratic government is all on the sur
face.
IL must be sound political ethics
that no man is bound to support what
his Judgment condemns as wrong, and
he must, therefore, vote against the
Constitutional Amendment if he re-
CARDS it as unworthy of place in our
Organic Law. and il certainly cannot
be clothed with civic righteousness,
SO as to bind his moral sense. by any
convention no matter how selected or
controlled. Every voter is the direc-
tor of his own political action. and
he must answer for the use of it at
the bar of an awakened and enlight-
ened public conscience.
Which shall it be-the stamp of
treason against mere party fetishism,
or the stigma of treason against the