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It may be said that the passage of a statute has no analogy to a lawsuit. Not to have seen the analogy has been one of our great national errors. By a legal fiction, deeply embedded in our jurisprudence, we have assumed that every statute, whether public or private being the act of the sovereign people is dictated by benevolence, has its motives in public policy and its language prompted by wisdom. The lawyer, who is called upon to aid the court in the interpretation of statutes, oftentimes feels the absurdity of this fiction when in deference to it he speaks seriously of an intention of the Legislature, a propos of an absurd or mischievous bill which he well knows was introduced during the last days of the session; was smuggled through without debate, and which either by accident or the result of deep laid design escaped the adverse scrutiny of the few able and sincere members of the legislative body. That bills of sinister and far reaching intent are thus delayed to the last days of the session before submission, so as designedly to prevent notice and debate, is a well-known fact. That during a session a considerable number of appropriate and useful laws are passed, goes without saying, and that a great number of obnoxious bills are supressed is also true. The condition would be intolerable were it not 80. But that the people regard the sum total of congressional and State legislative activity as maleficent instead of beneficent, is clearly shown by the fact that they look forward to the convening of these bodies with dread, and hail their adjournment with a sense of relief. Some few years ago I was driving with a friend through Parliament street in London, which faces the Victoria tower on the top of which brightly burned the lime light telling to all London that Parliament was in session; he said to me that he felt safer because six hundred wise and honest men were considering what was best for the Nation, and it always seemed to him no harm could well come to England as a whole, so long as Parliament sat. I could not help contrasting this confidence in the wisdom and integrity of Parliament with the feeling with which our people regard our law factories. On investigating the causes which create so great a disparity between the legislative results in the mother country and those of her numerous cis-Atlantic progeny I was forced to come to the conclusion that the greater part of the difference in results is due mainly to differences in methods.

In no other department of human activity is there any such disparity between results achieved in Eng. land and those which the United States are able to accomplish. The latter manufacture as good machinery, run railways as successfully as Great Britain does, and in many departments of human activity far surpass the mother country; for example, in the making of agricultural implements, sewing machines, pianos, machine-made boots, etc. For a reason important in this connection to discover, the American intellect has not devoted itself to improvement in its legislative machinery to keep pace with the demands of the age.

Much of this thought stagnation, on so important a subject, is doubtless due to the confidence that was felt, until the outbreak of the civil war, that the organizers of our government were so wise in their application of the theories of government to practice that we could dispense for all time with thinking on the subject, and that somehow this department of human activity was an exception to the law of evolution and progress. We were taught to believe that governmental questions were solved for us by a superior intelligence. This indulgence in a fetishism which has retarded our progress has now to be settled for. every turn we discover that our institutions, if administered by the old methods, fail to offer a solution

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for the new questions which modern civilization pre

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Organisms have grown up, dangerous to the Commonwealth, because we have carried our confidence in existing political machinery to an extreme not justified by any principle of political philosophy. The ready answer that it was devised by the founders, stayed progress to such a degree that institutional reforms have, since 1789, found less encouragement in the United States than almost anywhere else. There has therefore been scarcely any improvement in legislative machinery since the organization of the government, and yet what a vast change the past one hundred years have wrought in population and condition, increasing the four million of inhabitants, scattered along the Atlantic coast into a Nation of fifty-five millions, changing them from a homogeneous people of farmers and planters into a Nation embracing within itself all the diversified industries and economic wants of almost the whole human family, and occupying a continent which lays under contribution for its development the whole field of sciences and of arts.

Washington and Jefferson probably crossed the Potomac on a rope-ferry or pontoon bridge. No railway engineer thinks that a good reason for taking a train of cars across a bridge, which though good enough for the saddle horses or gigs of these great ancestors, is wretchedly inadequate for the perfected machinery of steam land transportation. In refusing to change the machinery of legislation fitted for the conditions of 1789, to the needs of to-day, our countrymen have been as devoid of wisdom as would be an engineer of a railroad were he to attempt, out of respect for the wisdom of the layers of the foundations of our government to use the rope ferry of revolutionary times for his transportation service. We still convene and manage the legislative business on the theory that we are a homogeneous Nation of farmers and planters and with a machinery so wretchedly inadequate for the purpose that the wonder is that the condition is as tolerable as we find it to be.

With the application of steam to industrial pursuits, the modern era of production on a large scale, and through the instrumentality of corporate management began almost simaltaneously with the organization of the government. Not ignoring the enormous advantages, which from a politico-economic point of view flow to society through corporate existence, and that wealth is more economically produced by concentration in production, it is nevertheless true that the corporate conscience is something other and less developed than the individual conscience, and that corporations require from the law-maker more watchfulness than the individual, because the corporate life is longer, and its grasp wider; it is less considerate of private rights, it has as a rule more money than private individuals have, and therefore more power; and it has less direct personal responsibility in the exercise of this power than the individual. Hence the necessity for strengthening the law-making power to prevent the citizens from being wronged by this creature of the law which has grown for want of proper and timely restraint almost into a master of the law. England also freely chartered corporations, and also from about 1825 to 1845 ran mad with the new found toy of civilization-unlimited enterprise with limited liability. She found the lobbies of her halls of legislation swarming with agents of her corporations buttonholing members, and exercising ofttimes, as Francis, the historian of the railway, says, influences of a corrupt nature, so that public legislation was impeded and private and special legislation took the foremost rank in Parliament.

England's statesmen of the last generation had wisdom enough to see that successfully to cope with the

ingenuity of the captains of the modern industrial era it was necessary to arm the Legislature with additional and better methods to sift legislation so as to separate the useful from the mischievous. At an earlier period, but subsequent to the foundation of our own government, the British Cabinet were converted from personal advisers to the crown, to the chief executive committee of Parliament, and as a part of the responsibility which attached to the party in power the guardianship over the law and the changes therein to be made to meet public exigencies was assumed by the ministry in office as part of its duties. We on the other hand, have adopted party government without attaching thereto this grave party responsibility. Our public laws and changes therein are not committed to the care of any official body. This important change in the English Constitution was the first step in legislative development and reform, which culminated in the adoption of the standing orders of 1848, and completed the separation between the method of treatment of public from private and local bills. The former are placed under the wing of the cabinet. The latter are no longer treated as legislation, strictly speaking, but as petitions to Parliament for special immunity or privileges which are conducted by private parties, subject to a strict rule of procedure, tried as a lawsuit, the petition and bill being filed before the beginning of the session and opposed at every step, as a whole and in detail, by the board of trade, and by every private interest which may be menaced or affected thereby. Counter petitions, attorneys, counsel and a trial, a standing and a day in court, before the bill can become a law to all parties in interest, prevent wrong to individuals; counsel for the ministry for the public bills, and for the private bills, committees to aid them in the intelligent discharge of their work, prevent the possibility by collusion of wrong to the public.

By virtue of this system of standing orders no private or local bill is considered by Parliament unless deposited in the private bills office sixty days in advance of the session. If it be a railway or canal project a deposit of five per cent of the estimated cost of construction must be made at the time of filing the bill. If it involves the exercise of the right of eminent domain, evidence must be given that notice of intention to file the bill has been served on all the persons whose interests are likely to be affected adversely by the legislation. Accompanying these documents as to the contents of which the most precise instructions are given in the rules, there must also be deposited a sum of money to cover the expenses of preliminary examinatious of the bill in order officially to ascertain whether the standing orders have been complied with.

The opponents of the bill have until fifteen days before the opening of the session of Parliament to file their objections to the bill and to point out wherein the standing orders have not been complied with by the petitioners. If either by the unaided investigations of the official examiners or at the suggestion of adversaries, it becomes apparent that the promoters have failed to give the requisite notice by advertisement in the public gazettes, and by personal service, or that the map is not in conformity with the bill, or in any other particulars they have failed to comply with the standing orders, the bill is indorsed, "standing orders not complied with," and Parliament is relieved from its consideration during that session. If there be a question whether the standing orders have been complied with, the parliamentary agent is heard upon the subject. If he can explain a seeming neglect, the examiners may allow the bill to be entertained, but no substantial deviation from the rules is tolerated, and non-compliance means non-consideration.

If the bill is entertained a further payment is to be made by the promoters to pay its way during its consideration in committee. Each one of these payments is about £50. Bills then are separated by the chairman of the ways and means committee and the chairman of committees of the House of Lords. Those that involve railway or canal projects or which involve the exercise of the right of eminent domain are referred for special scrutiny to the board of trade. All are examined by the chairman of committees of the House of Lords, who makes his suggestions and amendments, which are generally accepted by the parliamentary agents, who are the attorneys for the promoters of private and local bills, in filing the same and conducting them until the parliamentary committees come to consider the bill in open session. The bills are then referred for trial. The trial committees are composed of chairmen, who are members of Parliament, one or two additional members and several experts, thoroughly conversant with the technical elements of the subject-matter of the bills and who need not be members of Parliament. A calendar is then prepared containing a list of the bills, analogous in character to calendars of trial causes in a court of justice, and a trial is had in which the petitioners as well as the adver saries against the bill are represented by counsel. The question of the expediency of the passage of the measure is determined first, as a whole, on the preamble, and then by sections, and every injury direct or indirect is presented for the consideration of the committee, to be guarded, if possible, by amendments of clauses of the bill or by the awarding of proper compensation. The adversary who succeeds in a defense of a property right to secure by amendment the insertion of a clause which, in all fairness, should for his protection have originally been inserted in the draft deposited by the promoters of the bill, mulcts them to pay his costs. If the committee determine in favor of the bill they so report together with their amendments to the House, and with but very rare exceptions, the House regards the findings of a committee on a private or local bill as final. The methods of ascertaining the merits of a measure is so complete, the examination of witness and experts is so thorough, every element that can enlighten the mind of the legislator has been brought to bear with so much accuracy and forensic skill that the margin of human error after such a trial is very small. The amount paid to Parliament for considering a private or a local measure is on an average $1,000 a bill.

By these payments, which are somewhat in excess of the costs of the service of examination, private legislation is not only no financial burden to the English Parliament but even pays the expense of public legislation. Now note the very great difference between that system and the no-system of the United States. It places the business of draughting proposed legisla tion (both public and private) in the hands of skilled specialists, called parliamentary draughtsmen. The services of the best intellects from among these specialists of parliamentary draughtsmen and counsel, are employed by the speaker, by the chairman of committees, and by the ministry, and they are consulted by the parliamentary agents in important cases of private legislation. This system has caused the lobby virtually to disappear, a fair trial and no favor being now had for private bills. A member of a committee regards being buttonholed or privately talked at in the interest of a measure before his committee, almost with the same disfavor with which a self-respecting judge would regard a like attempt out of court to entrap his judgment or influence his opinion. In place of the lobby as we know it, composed of a disreputable set of go-betweens to bribe a bad measure through a committee or to negotiate

for the release out of committee of a good one, England now has a trained bar analogous to the commonlaw bar; the parliamentary agents take the place of attorneys, and parliamentary counsel take the place of barristers. A division has been made between the treatment of public and private legislation, which recognizes the fundamental distinction between them, to the advantage of both public and private legislation. A private bill is either an exception from a public burden or it is a special privilege. Therefore in exercising this power the Legislature acts much more in a judicial than in a legislative character, and the legislature should therefore be armed with all the instruments given to the courts to ascertain the truth.

One other important fact was recognized by this ebange; that in the pressure of modern society for development the general body of the law cannot possibly keep pace with its ever varying features and necessities; no attempt therefore was made to restrict private legislation, but it was subjected to rule and form, submitted to scrutiny and surrounded by safe-guards, so that while on the one hand Parliament may meet the demands for legislation of a private and local character to vary the general law, it yet, on the other hand, to meet such exigencies, does no injustice to other private and local interests; and above all the general body of the law is not allowed to be torn to pieces at the demand and under the pressure of private interests.

We also have recognized the corruption and evils incident to our system of legislation, but have sought the remedy in a diffierent direction. Discovering that our method of dealing with demand for legislation has resulted in corruption, we determined to cut off the legislation which yields this crop of corruption. We took recourse to constitutional restriction upon special and private legislation in numerous cases which theretofore gave food to the lobby, and have said that such objects shall thereafter be accomplished by a change of the general law. This attempted remedy for an undoubted evil affords us no protection whatever, but on the contrary, within a few years after the adoption of such amendments, is is discovered that special legislation of the worst possible description lurks under the form of amendments to the general law, and instead of driving the enemy of pure legislation from the field we have driven the devil under a monk's cowl, not thereby lessening his mischievous activity, but rather enabling him still more adroitly to catch the unwary legislator. The demand for special legislation is a justifiable and a constant one; to attempt to repress it, as with every natural want, causes it to seek secret means for its gratification. The wise legislator regulates human activity, and makes no attempt at the repression of proper natural desires. Every such attempt must end in failure, and has so ended from the beginning of time.

In my own practice, since the inhibition of special legislation, in 1874, three instances of special laws under the guise of general laws were smuggled through the Legislature for the purpose of affecting litigation relating to private interests, and which changed the course of such litigations. Almost every New York lawyer in an active practice must recall like instances within the last decade. In several cases where the disguise was too flimsy the Court of Appeals recognized the attempted evasion, and declared the acts to be unconstitutional.

But many acts more skillfully disguised will pass the scrutiny of the courts unharmed, so that in many cases the general law has and will continue to be changed under the pressure of private interests, and no discovery will be made of the lurking intent of the Legislature, as a judicial inquiry into the origin of the

law and an examination of the history of its progress through the legislative halls is one which the policy of the law now forbids.

The constitutional restriction of the Legislature to pass special and local acts has not only failed to accomplish the purposes of the projectors of the reform, and produced a condition of affairs more dangerous than that which it was intended to cure, but it has also placed the general body of the law in great jeopardy by creating a strong incentive to destroy the general law to serve special interests. Under ordinary circumstances a special interest finding that the general law does not provide for the exigencies of its situation, will attempt to secure by special act such legislation as will meet its requirements and necessities. In this effort it now finds itself balked by the Constitution, and it bends its energies to change the general law to meet the special case. And what is there to hinder if it has political influence and money, and is willing and ready to use both unscrupulously, or what is there to protect the general body of the law from such desecration? It is nobody's business to stand guard over the law; we have no governmental or political organization that is charged with the daty of guardianship over the statute law as England has. We look in vain for any organism in the State to protect the general law from change or invasion at the dictate of private interests. It may be said that that is part of the duty of Congress and the State Legislature. True, but the duty of initiation and watchfulness is one that must be coupled, for their habitual exercise, with responsibility, and to charge a whole body, constantly dissolving into its constituent elements, with the duty of initiation and watchfulness, is practically to charge nobody with it. In all other constitutional forms of government the dominant party which is responsible for the ministry is, through the ministry, held responsible for the public legislation during the period while the party wields power. We have no National nor State ministry to hold responsible for public legislation. The United States Cabinet is composed of executive officers, and although in their annual reports the heads of departments may suggest to Congress such statutes as their experience may have taught them to be appropriate for their administration, yet they scarcely ever venture to draft the bill, and any active interposition to secure its passage would probably be regarded as an intrusion; at all events failure to secure proper legislation is not laid to the door of the Cabinet, and they are not held responsible by the people for mischievous public legislation. Congress is therefore left without leadership on these matters of great public importance. The only leadership 'that it has is of a political character to influence public opinion, and therefore the legislation which is prompted by such leaders is not done for its own sake, but to affect an ulterior object, and is sure to be carelessly done. The little attention that is paid to the language of legislation is somewhat indicated by the fact that there is not a single American work upon legislative expression. Although I am addressing lawyers who probably have extensive libraries, among which the Law Library Series, published in Philadelphia many years ago, surely has a place, I venture to say that few of you remember the little treatise on legislative expression, reprinted from the English work of Coode, which never yet found a venturesome American editor to apply it to our needs.

The States have not even executive cabinets, excepting such suggestions of a very slight texture which the governor in his annual message may make to the lawmakers, there is no initiative for public legislation in any State organism. The party in power is occupied with the important question of how to keep the other

party out of power. The suggestions for the public legislation generally come from without. The opposition to proposed general legislation also generally comes from without. A curious illustration of this is to be found in the recent history of code legislation in the State of New York. Several commissioners, of which Mr. Throop was at the head, were charged with the duty of revising the Code of Procedure. Now, I shall express no opinion how well or ill this duty was discharged. My business is done when I have drawn your attention to how theCode came to be enacted after the commissioners reported. Scarcely had the report been made when the bar awoke to the great changes that were impending in the law of procedure, and the many incongruities (probably necessarily) involved in so extensive a task. Sides were taken in bar associations for and against any change, and finally it was determined that if some important amendments could be incorporated it should be suffered to pass as a whole without strenuous opposition. Whatever sides the legislators took in this controversy was mainly of a personal character, and as instructed by the bar associations or the commissioners. At last the first seven chapters were passed. It was then discovered that the repealing clause threatened a general jail delivery, and that section had to be amended subsequently before the Code could be permitted to take effect.

Another instance of the slipshod manner in which the Legislature does its work is given by the so-called Municipal Code, which passed the Legislature of 1882. The commissioners appointed to adopt this Code reported a volume to reduce to order the laws which affected the city of New York. In reprinting it for the Legislature a page of the printed report was left out. Did a single legislator discover the omission? Not one. There was of course no third reading, as a whole of the bill, and it was passed and signed as a law with this omission. A subsequent Legislature was called upon to make good the omission. The responsibility of this law was left entirely with the gentlemen intrusted with this codification. The Legislature took their work on trust. If the bar association or some other body had taken the trouble to analyze it, suggested amendments or its rejection, there might have been a contest over its adoption. The governor is constantly compelled to use the veto power to throw back upon the hands of the Legislature bills which were passed in so slipshod a manner, although possibly meritorious in themselves, or great confusion would arise if they were permitted to become laws. There were three notable instances of this during the very last session of the New York Legislature.

Enough has been said to show my hearers that there is no such organization, either in the National or State law-making bodies, to prevent mischievous special laws from being passed under the guise of general laws, nor to prevent the whole body of our law from being torn to pieces at the instigation of individual self-aggrandizement, which our institutions tend so abnormally to develop. Hence all limitations on special legislation are particularly dangerous in this country, where there is no safeguard protecting the corpus juris from attack, particularly when the attack is of an insidious and disguised character, so as to evade the constitutional amendment inhibiting special legislation.

Upon lawyers as a class a very onerous burden is cast by this condition of affairs. In every department of human activity constant practice brings rest in labor. In time the processes which were laborious efforts of the mind become mechanical, and are done by what psychologists call unconscious cerebration. The artist, as his reputation increases and his remuneration enlarges, paints his pictures with increasing facility, and there comes to him, if frugal, not only monetary ease,

but increasing pleasure in his work, arising largely from decreasing painful efforts. The doctor, with increasing experience, diagnoses, and prescribes for familiar diseases by an acquired instinct. How different

it is with a lawyer in active practice? The constant changes in the law, aggravated by the limitation on special legislation, makes it impossible for him ever to feel safe in advising a client, even on the law of promissory notes, without first consulting the recent volume of statutes to see whether to meet a special case the Legislature has not been induced to obliterate all the old land marks.

Not content however with the quack medicine of restricting special legislation, and thus rapidly destroying our general body of the law, there is another restriction now advertised by political charlatans warranted to cure all the evils of bad legislation, which is somewhat less mischievous but more absurd than the one which we have already adopted. That is the suggestion for biennial instead of annual legislative meetings. Dr. Sangrado to the life "When the body is sick, the blood is sick. Take from the patient half his sick blood, and he is but half as sick as he was". Our Legislatures do more harm than good when they meet; cut their years of meeting to one-half, and, presto! but half the mischief.

That legislation is the highest function of man's activity, and when rightly exercised its most beneficent manifestation is a fact which all this course of reasoning leaves out of sight. A manufacturer who finds himself running behind hand, because his processes are out of date, will not prevent his competitors from turning out better blankets than he does, or keep himself out of bankruptcy by running at half time. He must tear out his antiquated machinery, discharge his incompetent workmen, and improve his methods of manufacture.

To allow two years to intervene between sessions of the Legislature in busy communities like our own, wherein the powers for evil are almost as busy as the powers for good, is to offer an additional inducement to every plotter against the Commonwealth or its people to perfect its plans, under the existing lax laws, to circumvent the legislation of the day,and if he succeed in so doing that, for two years at least he will not be interfered with. It is well to bear in mind that for thirty years our Legislatures have been run by the corporate powers in their own way; that the legislation of the past generation has been whatever the strong nets and long purses of our builders up of corporate wealth chose to have it. We are just now awakening to the fact that competition is not the solution for the things that will not compete, but combine; and that the State owes to the community an intelligent supervision of the artificial organisms which it has created so that these artificial organisms, endowed with huge maws and everlasting life, do not devour the natural flesh and blood organisms which create and constitute the State. To strike out what has been inserted in the statute books for special and sinister purposes, and to put our legislation on a level with our achievements in machinery, in agriculture and in commerce would require a continuous session of several years.

To cut in half the time of the session of our Legisla ture as a cure for bad legislation is not only to prove ourselves ignorant of the cure for our evils, but also to ignore the causes of the evils as well. Insufficient time for investigation, inadequate machinery for investigation as preliminary to legis ation, absence of notice to parties to be affected by proposed legislation, hurry, absence of method and of publicity, absence of deliberation, are among the main causes of bad legislation. Now, how do you cure this by biennial Legislatures, with the consequent doubling at the least of the pres

sure upon the Legislature when it does meet? Reducing the time for deliberation increases the hurry, and necessarily dispenses with the little method that is still observable. It is true that the dread of the meeting of the law-makers comes upon the community only biennially instead of annually. Large interests would be adversely affected but once in two years, instead of every year, but if that reason should govern in the introduction of this proposed reform, it does not go far enough; why not put off the dreadful visitation for a decade or a generation!

This proposed remedy is contrary to the tendencies of modern civilization; it is the abdication of a function, not its specialization and development; it is the merest refuge of imbecility, a confession that we are bankrupted in thought on this subject, that instead of being able to turn out better laws by selecting better legislators and improving their methods, our invention offers no other cure than to close the gates of our legislative mills every other year, in the vain hope that in the alternate year they may produce better wares. In the domain of social affairs recourse to false measures works the same kind of mischief to the body politic that recourse to quack medicines does to the physical body. They treat symptoms and allay the outward manifestations of the internal disease; the disappearance of the symptoms of the disease creates a fatal confidence that the disease itself has ceased its ravages, until the patient is too far gone for genuine therapeutic treatment. There is no other remedy for the evils of our legislation, and the harm they call forth than first to recall our prohibition of special legislation, and the abandonment of the idea of biennial Legislatures, as twin progenies of Dr. Sangrado's brain, and then earnestly set to work to secure the adoption of a series of constitutional amendments which shall prescribe-

1st. A division of local and special laws from general laws, treating the former as private petitions, to be tried before enactment, and attach to the preserva. tion and amendment of the latter the safeguard of party responsibility.

2d. To carry out this latter purpose, either institute cabinet or ministerial responsibility, or raise a permanent board of revision as a bar to further mischievous innovation to subserve private interests.

3d. A requirement that all bills which create or extend corporate powers, or which change municipal or local laws other than by general law, granting any special privilege, or which involve the exercise of the right of eminent domain, shall be filed in a proper public office sixty days before the beginning of the session, and that in all cases notice by publication must be given of such filing, and personal notice before the beginning of the session to all property owners whose fee or easements are proposed to be taken in invitum.

4th. Oblige the petitioners in every case of an improvement, the creation of which involves legislative sanction to deposit a percentage of the amount of the cost as evidence of good faith, and so as to prevent speculations in public franchises.

5th. The establishment of a schedule of legislative fees to be paid to the comptroller, and to be subject to the joint drafts of the presiding officers of the legislative bodies to pay the expenses for the consideration and trial of private and local bills, and to that end the committees are authorized to employ experts and counsel as aids to inform them. This sum should be sufficiently large to deter frivolous applications to the Legislature, and to enable the Legislature to secure ability of the highest order.

6th. The enactment of a simple code of legislative procedure for private and local bills to secure a fair trial, examination of witnesses and argument of counsel before these committees, and to allow committees

to call in as aid, but not to vote on final determination, experts who are not members of the Legislature, to sit with them.

7th. The creation of a legislative bill of costs to indemnify successful and punish unsuccessful litigants before legislative committees.

8th. An absolute prohibition of all local and private legislation (except under circumstances of great public exigency, which can easily be provided for) which has not passed through the ordeal of this improved method of legislative procedure.

9th. A complete remodelling of the organization of committees and the rules of the Legislature to conform them to the new system of orderly trial of bills instead of the prevailing irresponsible and haphazard method.

Many of these suggestions may be embodied in laws instead of being incorporated in the Constitution.

Enough should go into the Constitution to make the change imperative. It is not to be expected that ail the smaller details of a statute should be imbedded in the Constitution, but experience has taught us however that constitutional directions to the Legislature may be of too general and vague a character to enforce obedience.

Since 1848 the Constitution of the State of New York contained a provision that the Legislature shall restrict the powers of municipalities to create indebtedness, but until recently it has failed to do so. The constitutional amendment of 1874 required the Legislature to pass a general street railway bill. It failed to do so from 1874 so 1884, and many other instances may be cited to the same effect.

When we shall have introduced into our law-making bodies something like scientific procedure we shall then have done much to abolish that noxious and corrupting element known as the lobby.

When every measure involving private interests must stand a fair trial, the same change will probably take place in the United States that has already taken place in that country whence we derive our laws. The adoption of the standing orders substituted for the lobby agent the parliamentary bar, as honorable a body of men in our profession as is to be found at the common law bar or in the equity courts. Preferment to the bench is not so frequent an honor to the silk gowns of St. Stephens as to those of our brethren of the Supreme Court of Judicature, but the emoluments of the parliamentary bar are somewhat higher. Much of course remains to be done by the destruction of party machinery, and liberating constituencies so as to raise the personnel of the law-makers. I do not share the popular conviction of the wide-spread corruption of Legislatures; it is the inability of the average legislator to know the truth, which gives to the corrupt few their great opportunity.

The great remedies for the evils of our institutions are publicity and investigation of a judicial nature. The test of merit, to my mind, of the recommendations that I have made this evening lies in the fact that they secure both these elements. And as the first creative act was the Divine ordination, "Let there be light," so through all time more and more light is the first condition of progress in every department of human activity.

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW-LOTTERIES.

NEW YORK COURT OF APPEALS, JUNE 24, 1884.

KOHN V. KOEHLER. Lotteries which are the subject of condemnation under the Constitution and laws of this State are schemes, where money is paid for the chance of receiving money in return.

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