cation of the law to coal mines wherein ten or more men are employed, creates an unjust and unreasonable discrimination against mines employing more than ten men. This contention is untenable. It was discretionary with the Legislature to limit the application of the statute to the larger mines wherein ten or more men were employed, and thereby exempt the small mines, in which but few men are employed, from the regulations and burdens of the statute which are more essentially applicable to mines wherein a large number of men are constantly employed. So far as the Legislature was invested with the discretion of limiting the application of the statute to coal mines employing ten or more men, it was the master of its own discretion."

In State v. Barrett, 172 Ind. 169, the Act of 1907, making it a misdemeanor "for any owner, lessee, agent, or operator of any coal mine within the State of Indiana" to do the things thereby prohibited, was upheld when attacked for being repugnant to the Constitution. Mr. Justice Myers quoted with ap proval the following from Munn v. Illinois, 94 U. S. 113: "For our purposes we must assume that, if a state of facts could exist that would justify such legislation, it actually did exist when the statute now under consideration was passed. For us

the question is one of power, not of expediency. If no state of circumstances could exist to justify such a statute, then we may declare this one void because in excess of the legislative power of the State. But if it could we must presume that it did. Of the propriety of legislative interference within the scope of the legislative power, the Legislature is the exclusive judge."

None of the Acts of 1911 that may be classed as progressive legislation have yet been passed upon by the Supreme Court, so far as I am advised. Among these are an "Act concerning

the liability of employers for injuries to and deaths of employes," etc.; "An Act concerning the employment of children and providing penalties"; "An Act to protect life, defining dangerous employment, providing for the safety of the public and persons employed in dangerous occupations," etc.; and "An Act requiring corporations, companies, associations, firms, and persons engaged in mining or manufacturing in this State to pay their employes weekly, in lawful money of the United States," etc.

The first of these Acts, the one "concerning the liability of employers," was obviously passed for the purpose, in part, of supplying the deficiency in the "Employers' Liability Act" of 1903, as particularly pointed out in Bedford Quarries Company v. Bough.

The last one, the one requiring that employes be paid in lawful money, etc., is but an Act bringing together and reenacting fragmentary statutes passed at previous sessions of the General Assembly, one of which was declared constitutional, as above shown.

The foregoing is a brief, but substantially accurate, presentation of the record of the Supreme Court of the State of Indiana on the subject of "progressive legislation."

The general statement may be added that in deciding individual cases under any of the Acts noticed, both the Supreme and Appellate Courts have given such Acts the same fair consideration that they have given any other legislation. I do not mean to say that exact justice has always been administered by these courts "completely and without denial; speedily and without delay"; or that an individual suitor, or the general public, may not, now and then, have had just cause for complaint against the courts and the judges. What I do assert is that our higher courts have manifested no hostility towards

progressive legislation; that they have fully recognized the fact that changed conditions in our industrial life have demanded and required changes in the common law; that in deciding upon the constitutionality of any of the Acts constituting the body of progressive legislation, the Supreme Court has given full force to the principles of law characterized as the "Police Power," and that it has never declared any of these Acts unconstitutional or questioned their constitutionality because it doubted or disapproved the policy which induced its enactment.

In conclusion permit me to say, with all respect to the distinguished author of the doctrine of the "Recall of Decisions," that had that doctrine been formulated as a part of our supreme law, I can think of no instance in this State where there would have been any occasion to apply it.

Constitutional Convention of 1816

HON. W. W. THORNTON.

In the Virginia Act of December 20, 1783, empowering the delegates of that State to convey to the United States the territory northwest of the Ohio River, by deed, this condition was inserted:

"That the territory so ceded shall be laid out and formed into states, containing suitable extent of territory, not less than one hundred, nor more than one hundred and fifty miles square, or as near thereto as circumstance will allow; and that the states so formed, shall be distinct republican states, and admitted members of the Federal Union, having the same rights of sovereignty, freedom, and independence as the other states."

Agreeably to this Act, on March 1, 1784, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Hardy, Arthur Lee and James Monroe, then delegates to the Continental Congress, from Virginia, conveyed, by deed, the territory thus designated to the United States.

The size of the proposed states, as fixed by this Act of Vir ginia, would have been quite small. If each State were lim ited to one hundred miles square, or ten thousand square miles, the territory was large enough to have formed twenty-six states; or, if each were limited to one hundred and fifty miles square, or twenty-two thousand five hundred square miles, it was large enough to form eleven states, with nearly enough over to form another state of that size.

By Act of April 23, 1784, it was proposed to divide the northwest territory into states, and to assign them these names:

Sylvania, Michigania, Chersonesus, Assenisipia, Metropotamia, Illinois, Saratoga, Washington, Polypotamia, Pelisipia. A school map, published in Philadelphia in 1790, had these names of the proposed states, the author laboring under the belief that they had been adopted.

The proposed number of states did not meet with the approval of Congress, which it made manifest on July 7, 1786, stating that it would be attended with many inconveniences, and recommended a revision of the Virginia Act of cession, in so far as to empower it to make a division of the territory into distinct republican states, not less than three nor more than five in number, as the situation of the country and future circumstances might require. In the Ordinance of July 13, 1787, for the government of the northwest territory, by the fifth article, it was specifically provided that "There shall be formed in the said territory not less than three, nor more than five states"; and then it divided the territory into three parts, having substantially the present boundaries of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, except that the north boundary lines of these three states extended to the British possessions. But there was inserted a provision that Congress might, in the future, create one or two other states out of the territory lying north of an east and west line drawn through the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan.

To this provision of the Ordinance, Virginia was expected to give consent, which it did December 20, 1788, by an Act of its Legislature.

The Fifth Article of the Ordinance of 1787 contained this clanse: "And whenever any of the said states shall have sixty thousand free inhabitants therein, such state shall be admit ted, by its delegates, into the Congress of the United States, on an equal footing with the original states, in all respects.