1442 JOINT RESOLUTIONS

In order that this great purpose might be accomplished, it
was essential that each State should be preserved as an inde-
structible political unit.

In the oft quoted words of the Supreme Court of the United
States, their purpose was to establish "an indestructible
Union composed of indestructible States."

For "without the States in union, there could be no such
political body as the United States."

It is manifest, therefore, that when the people, in this same
Federal Constitution, conferred upon Congress and the Legis-
latures of three-fourths of the States the power to "amend"
that Constitution, it could not have been their intention to
authorize the adoption of any amendment, or any measure
under the guise of an amendment, which would wholly or
partially destroy the States, by taking away from the States
any one of their functions, essential to their separate and
independent existence as States.

The right of a State to determine for itself by the vote of
its own people, who shall vote at its own State, county and
municipal elections is one of those functions.

When we surrender to any outside power the right to say
who shall vote at our state elections, we surrender the right
to determine who shall govern the State, and, without the
right of local self-government, we cease to be a State and
become a mere province, with far less power to determine our
own destiny than we had prior to the American Revolution,
under that charter granted by the British Crown.

Resolved, Further, That the General Assembly of Maryland
could not exercise the power to ratify this so-called nineteenth
amendment, conferred upon it, or supposed to be conferred
upon it, by the fifth Article of the Constitution of the United
States, without violating, in most flagrant fashion, the Con-
stitution of our own State.

The Constitiition of Maryland limits the rights of suffrage
to men. The people of Maryland have not conferred upon
their General Assembly any right to amend that Constitution
by extending the franchise to women.

Yet this proposed nineteenth Amendment to the Federal
Constitution, if adopted and held valid, would, in effect,
amend the Constitution of the State of Maryland in that
respect and establish woman suffrage in this State, without