duty and powers, (which on executive business, is confined to their advice and consent to the acts of the chief magistrate,) although there is no such express provision with respect to the advice of each member in the constitution of the United States.

Thus we see that every part of the constitution illustrates and confirms that construction which the Civil Officer has maintained, whilst every part is utterly inconsistent with the whole and every other part thereof, according to the principles of the Friend to Candour, and the conduct of the council.

The Friend to Candour seems to be at some loss to ac count for the council being expressly called in the constitution The Council to the Governor, and the reason he has laid hold of to solve his doubts is curious, and has at least the merit of originality; it amounts to this, that they are called the council to the governor, because the governor is to obey them, and promulge their acts. One would have supposed that this would be the last reason in the world that a mind ordinarily constructed could have urged; but he tells us, by way of confirmation, that the oath they take calls them Counsellors of Maryland, and that this oath was prescribed by wise men, many of them members of convention: this oath is very proper as an expression of reference or description, for they certainly are not counsellors for Penn'sylvania, in whatever manner some of them may act; but surely it cannot be contended that this oath gives them any powers, or alters the constitutional style. That constitution declares them to be the council to the governor; and for this plain and evident reason, which we have explained, they always had been the council to the governor, and were so continued by constitutional provision, with curtailed powers, and a different mode of appointment, as an establishment already well known to the laws, on the same principles that an assembly, governor and courts, &c. were continued.

But it seems, according to the Friend to Candour, that the Civil Officer has glided, with wonderful dexterity,

over what is to be done in the absence of the governor. The Civil Officer believes, that by this time he has said as much on that subject as the Friend to Candour is willing to hear, but that writer may possibly learn hereafter, if the question should ever come before a tribunal of justice competent to decide on this clause of section 34, that in the absence of the governor no one but the first named of the council, not the first named of those members who assemble and call themselves a council, can preside; that the first named of the council must preside as governor; that to act as governor he must qualify as such; that he can only qualify as such on the death, resignation or removal out of the state of the real governor; that he can only do this until the assembly can meet to choose a governor for the residue of the year; and that these are the only cases of absence of the governor in which sect. 34 provides, that the first named of the council shall preside as such and vote when the other members disagree. The Friend to Candour may also then learn, that instead of amusing themselves with devices of a great seal, and examining into the conduct of their clerk, the convention intended that counsellors should go home and transact their own business in the absence of the governor, as counsellors had been used to do when their advice was not required; that the convention expected that every man that could be elected a counsellor would have some business of his own to transact, such as it might be; that they expected the main business of annual appointments on which they are to advise the governor, would be completed in the third week of November; that the other extraordinary occasions that might require their concurrence could create no great interruption of their private pursuits; that if indeed the legislature have tacked the council to the governor, in the execution of almost every trivial executive power, it could not be foreseen by the convention, who had authorised the governor to transact all executive business, where the concurrence of council was not required by law; and that even with all these duties, and almost the whole of the powers of the governor which they have assumed, the council find themselves at leisure two thirds of the year; and when the constitution is executed and this clause is

settled, the governor may also learn, if he does not yet. know it, that if he should go home with the council for a great part of the year, it will be better for himself and not worse for the public. We see governors of other states, with greater powers than the constitution ever contemplated to vest in a governor of Maryland, and where there is no council at all, live generally at home, and sometimes leave the state; we see the president of the United States absent from the seat of government half the year, and the sun still rises and sets as usual, without a council to regulate its course. All this may teach a governor and council of Maryland, that their absence is not likely to cause any great political chasm-that it never was committed but to one ATLAS to sustain the world on his shoulders, and that the great art of governing well, is not to govern too much.

On the authority of the governor of Maryland to preside in council before the revolution, we shall speak fully in our next, and we shall close for the present with due notice of one of the most extraordinary passages of this address of the Friend to Candour: But for that personal respect which we wish to preserve, we should observe that it would defy the powers of chemical analysis to ascertain whether this is an extract from lead or brass, or from a compound of both, amalgamated in the same crucible, or whether it is only an harmless joke intended as a jeu d'esprit; if the latter, it is certainly as aukward as the gambols of an old-fielder just escaped from the ides of March. The passage is this" If the council should "advise that he, (the governor,) should act the hero, (a "term by no means ridiculous among military men,) this "advice would operate as an order; and if after a parti "cular period they should advise him to relinquish that "command, it would be equally imperative." So if they should advise him to act the hero, he must do so, whe-. ther he is an hero or not: This is imperative with a witness this is commanding nature as well as the governor. This hint seems evidently taken from the governor of Barataria, the only governor of history, or romance from whence the Friend to Candour could have derived his ideas of government-the passage to which it is sup

posed he alludes is not quite accurately quoted: it is from lib. 4, cap. 1, (Smollet's translation of Don Quixotte,) it stands thus-Arm my lord, the enemy approaches-advises one counsellor. For what should I arm, replies the governor, I neither know the use of arms, nor can give you protection: How, my lord governor, cries another counsellor, what despondence is this. Come forth! and be our guide and our general, seeing of right that place belongs to you as being our gover

nor.

A governor may be very infirm and decrepid with the gout, as one governor of Maryland has been; he may be totally unacquainted with military affairs, as several have been, and in the present state of the military science this knowledge is not to be gained by intuition, and will not be ridiculed by military men, or any wise men; in fact a governor may know no more of an order of battle, than the Friend to Candour knows of the constitution of Maryland: and above all a privy counsellor within may whisper and advise, Mr. Governor do not go! you will certainly run away the first shot that's fired! And yet under all these impressions, if the council advise it, he must play the hero whether he will or not! if so they should be better counsellors than the Friend to Candour-they should be men who would not insult the public with such a rhapsody of nonsense. What is the language of the constitution? sec. 33, "The gover"vernor, when embodied, i. e. militia, shall alone have "the direction thereof, and shall also have the direction

of all the regular land and sea forces, &c. but he shall "not command in person, unless advised thereto by coun"cil, and then only so long as they shall approve thereof." In what part of this clause did the Friend to Candour find that he shall command in person, if the council advise it-The power conferred on the governor here is precisely, (by the language,) the same as the other powers he is to exercise by the advice and consent of council; the phraseology only is necessarily altered, as it stands as an exception to the general power, conferred on the governor alone immediately before, of directing solely the military force; an exception founded on obvious and

sound reasons; a governor may desire to command in person; he may believe himself qualified; he may think military knowledge ridiculous, and may imagine himself an hero as many men have done till they were tried; and he may feel it a point of honour to render his personal services: The convention therefore to avoid the misfortune of an inexperienced and unqualified man at the head of the army, has qualified that general direction which it vested in the governor over military affairs, by compelling him to obtain the advice and consent of council to his command in person; and as the council can advise him to command indefinitely, they may also limit the term to which that advice shall extend; this perhaps would have been the case without express provision, for omne majus continet in seminus—and the power of advising for an indefinite term, naturally includes a power to advise for a less or limitted term:— Where then is this extraordinary power to be found by which the council could order an infirm gouty old man, an inexperienced lawyer, or a feint-hearted coward, (no personal allusion is here intended,) to command in person, whether he will or not?-only in the distempered imagination of the Friend to Candour.

This candid writer "believes, that the Civil Officer can shew no public act prior to the constitution, which positively directs the governor to preside in council." To have rendered his negative creed more complete, he might have added, that no public act could be produced authorising the assembly to pass laws, or enacting the common law the indefeasible birth-right of every British freeman that emigrated to Maryland. But in all these separate articles of belief he would be equally mistaken the most ample and satisfactory public acts still remain on record, enacting and declaring all and each of these organic provisions; and as he appears so unfortunately defective in legal information, we shall endeavour to suggest to him those sources, whence he may derive some knowledge of the constitution and laws of Maryland prior to the revolution, forming, as they still do, the basis of those under which we now live.

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