and see State vs. Moffatt, 5 Ohio, 358; 3 appropriation bills." And we have also Ohio St., 475. This is the law as declared by the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio. I think we have a provision in our new Constitution which provides, as read by the delegate from Lancaster, (Mr. Carter,) that no bill shall become a law unless it has been voted for by a majority of all the members elected to the Legislature, and no amendment shall be concurred in un less it has been voted for by a majority of all the members of the Legislature. These votes are to be recorded upon the journals kept by the body, and this will hereafter secure the Supreme Court or any other court desiring to investigate the question of whether the requisite number of votes has been recorded in favor of a law or not, an opportunity of going behind the mere formal certificate of the Governor and inspecting the journals of the respective bodies and ascertaining therefrom whether all these forms have been complied with. As correctly read by the delegate from Lancaster, it specially provides in the seventh section of the article on the Legislature: "Every bill shall be read at length on three different days in each House; all amendments thereto shall be printed before the final vote is taken; and no bill shall become a law unless on its final passage the vote be taken by yeas and nays, the names of the persons voting for and against the bill be entered on the journal, and a majority of the members elected to each House be recorded on the journal thereof as voting in its favor." Let us imagine that a year has transpired. The first Legislature assembling under our Constitution has passed a bill, and the certificate that it has passed is given by the Executive, and it is questioned whether a majority of the members elected to either House actually voted for that law. The question is raised in a court by an individual who sees fit to do so, as affecting his rights, if you please, or otherwise. Under these explicit provisions the court can go behind the formal certificate of the Executive and inspect the journals and see whether the requisite number of votes had been recorded in favor of the law. But I now want to go a little further than that. Out of abundant caution we have provided that "no bill shall be passed containing more than one subject, which shall be clearly expressed in its title except provided that "every bill shall be read at The PRESIDENT pro tem. The delegate's time has expired. Mr. MACVEAGH. Mr. President: 1 bave listened to the gentleman from Indiana very carefully because my mind was not entirely decided upon the amendment offered by the gentleman from Lycoming in some of its provisions, and I have been utterly disappointed in that I did not hear any suggestion from the gentleman from Indiana of any manner of investigating this one great evil, the purchase of laws. Matters such as the gentleman from Lycoming has detailed will occur, I suppose, occasionally. At rare intervals there may be a law put upon the statute books which never was passed. A bill may be passed containing two subjects perhaps. A bill may be passed that has not been read at length or only read two days instead of three; a bill may be passed without the yeas and nays having been called upon it. The speaker may sign it at one desk or at another, but what chaff and nonsense it is to talk to us as if these were the things we wanted to prevent. What we want to do is to follow the bribe giver and the bribe taker into the court of ju tice and prov that the law that they parade there as statute, is dead of its rottenness in the hour of its birth, by the infamous corrup- these directory provisions, I want sometion that secured its passage. The people of this country are not going to ruin because the speaker does not sign the bills in presence of the House, or because a bill is not read three days. If the gentleman from Indiana could have enforced for the last ten years in every legislative body in this country the provisions of which he has this morning spoken, still he would have utterly failed to have arrested the decay of your public spirit and the demoralization of your public life. It is the corrupting use of mouey in your legislative halls, and not the disregard of directory provisions that is eating out everything that is worthy of preservation in America to-day, in your form of government, and is slowly rotting its way down to destroy your society as well as your politics. If I am arraigned at the bar of the Supreme Court of this State, and a judgment is rendered against me, and it is exhibited anywhere else, I have the right, if I can, to show that you paid the judges for their judgment. Is the casual legislator of the winter or the Senator of even three years, of whom nobody may have heard before he took his seat and never will desire to hear thereafter in some cases, however estimable and worthy may be the good man who sits at his right hand or his left and keeps his hands pure, to pass a law putting insufferable burdens upon me or taking ny rights from me, without giving me the privilege to prove in a court of justice that the Legislature was bought to pass this very law? Certainly we ought to have that privilege. I do not suppose it would correct all the fraudulent practices, but I think that the existence of the privilege alone will be a wonderful check against corruption in legislation. Ithink the knowledge that every officer in your Commonwealth, high and low, may be brought by the imperative mandate of the court and compelled to perjure himself or to destroy his wickedness will be in itself a very great bulwark for pure legislation, and it is this that I seek to speare, some method of taking a corrupt and rotten statute, bought by money, and proving if I can that it was so bought. It will at least make speculation in statutes less profitable. It will at least notify gentlemen before they spend large sums of money in the purchase of a statute that the investment may turn out to be a very poor one in the end, and therefore while I have no objection to vote for thing that will enable me to go to the heart of the evil and to strike at the purchase of legislative bodies. Mr. S. A. PURVIANCE. As a member of the Judiciary Committee, and as one who gave his consent that the chairman should present some proposition of this kind to the body, and now not being able to coincide in the views of the chairman in reference to the section so presented, I ask the attention of the Convention for a very short time whilst I explain the reasons for my dissent. I cannot assent to the passage of any such proposition, unless it should be aocompanied by a saving of all rights which might accrue under an act up to the time that it might be set aside. But upon full reflection I am satisfied that this is not the proper place for any such provision. The article on legislation would have been the place, and if this section should find a place in any article that is the article in which it should be placed. But this whole subject can be reached by a section like this: "The Legislature shall provide a mode by which a law may be declared invalid on account of bribery and corruption." In these three or four or five sentences in our organic law this power can be conferred upon the Legislature, instead of making here what might be considered a law in extenso. Now, how can this proposition as it is, if placed in the organic law, be carried out? Look at it. It is to be by trial. A trial of what? Why, a trial as to whether bribery, or fraud, or corruption has taken place. Is not that alone proper for the Legislature to provide the formula of trial and all the incidents of trial? I submit to the Convention whether in every case in which bribery has been prac ticed in the Legislature that is to be set aside. Suppose a case in which there has been a law passed by a majority of thirty or forty members. Suppose that one single man alone in that majority had been bribed. Would you set aside that law? Certainly not. On the other hand, if a law be passed by a majority of one, and that one man was a bribed man, then the law might be set aside. But do you not require a general law to provide all this machinery? Again, suppose a law is secured by the aid or by the solicitation of one person, and that person has obtained the passage of the law by bribery, but the law was passed by a large majority whilst it ought not to be set aside. Yet in refe ence to the corrupt man himself who has been guilty in bribery there should be a provision in the law that he should take no benefit under it. This is not in this provision. It is not here. It would have to be set forth in a general law. I do not know whether there is any saving of rights in the article as drawn by the gentleman, for I have only examined it casually. Mr. EWING. There is none. Mr. S. A. PURVIANCE. I am told there is none. Then look at the anomaly that this presents to the consideration of the civilized world. Here is a law passed under the Constitution as we have provided, all requisites complied with, the bill read three several times, that on the final vote the yeas and nays are duly entered upon the Journal, the law carefully examined by the Secretary of the Commonwealth and certified by him to the Governor, and all the formula and all the requisites of the Constitution fully complied with before the Governor approves it. It goes out to the world. Is not that a law; is not that a constitutional law? And, sir, are you to assail that law for any reason whatever, especially if it affects these rights which have grown up under it? Why, sir, I may have purchased a tract of land under that law. It may have been a link in the chain of my title to the tract of land, upon which I have entered and upon which I have made valuable improvements, $50,000 or $100,000, and yet it is to be assailed and stricken down, and my property swept from me. Why, sir, I say it is a most dangerous power. Now, sir, still further. The proceedings are to be set aside for bribery, fraud, and for false pretence. What is a false pretense? A man sits down alongside a member of the House and he is in favor of the passage of a certain measure, and he tells to that member certain things which may operate upon the mind of that member and the judgment of that member, in inducing him to vote for the passage of that law. That very representation might be a false one, but is the law to be set aside on that account? Why, that would be carrying the matter a little too far, a great deal too far. Again, for fraud. What sort of fraud? Should not that be left to the Legislature in a general law to define what the fraud shall be and what the false pretence shall be, what the character of each of these shall be before they shall be regarded as sufficient to set aside the law? I am therefore, sir, of the opinion that this section ought to be voted down, and if we have anything of the kind to insert in the Constitution that we should put it in the article on legislation in these brief words: "the Legislature shall provide a mode for rendering a law invalid which has been passed by bribery or corruption." Mr. HUNSICKER. Mr. President: Yesterday when I made the rash promise that I would make no more speeches upon the article reported by the Committee on the Judiciary I had no idea that within an hour or two a child of such monstrous proportions as this would be produced; and I propose now to state the reasons very briefly why I shall vote against it. He Yesterday the gentleman from Lycoming, with his persuasive eloquence, convinced a majority of this body that the Legislature would always have more wisdom and could always be more safely trusted with all the laws regulating the mere liberty and reputation of the citizen than this Convention could. And he furthermore declared that it was a matter entirely within the control of the Legislature, and with their plastic hands they could mould the remedy to suit the particular exigencies that might arise. furthermore declared that the Supreme Court would be so overburdened with business affecting the mere questions of character and reputation that there would be a practical denial of justice; and that, therefore, it was the part of wise statesmanship to commit these things to the Legislature and this morning he comes in with a proposition that every act of Assembly is to remain in obeyance for one year; that the whole legislation is to wait; and that the rights of the people of the Commonwealth are to hang trembling in the balance, and then when the case is finally brought by the relation of the Attorney General before a court in some county in the State, after it has dragged its weary length along for one, two, three, four, five, six or seven years in the county where it is tried, then it may be carried up by writ of error to the Supreme Court, because, said he, it is one of the kind of rights which ought to be protected—carried up to a court already so overburdened with business, according to the speeches so frequently made by the gentleman from Lycoming, that it is utterly impossible now to get justice accordingto law. But he does more than that. He does not even stop there with his loading down and burdening to death these poor overworked Supreme Court judges, who have so much work that they cannot give an hour to considering a question involving the liberty or reputation of a citizen of this Commonwealth, but he furthermore actually provides that one of these judges shall be detailed to hold the court and decide whether the act of Assembly was passed by fraud, by bribery, or undue means or false pretenses. Is that a saving of time? What becomes of the argument made yesterday against my section, that we would thereby over-burden the Supreme Court so much that it would be a practical denial of justice when you load this weight upon them? Suppose there are three hundred or five hundred acts of Assembly passed in one winter, those five hundred acts of Assembly remain deadletters upon your statute book until the year has expired, because within the last minute of the last hour of the last day of that year the Attorney General may file an information against every one of those various acts of Assembly, and every one may be hung up for seven or ten years. He goes further. He provides that every officer of the Legislature shall be compelled to criminate himself, and I would remind him here that there is a provision in the Constitution of this State which will save a man from criminating himself. It is true he tries to evade that by saying the testimony shall not be used against him, but what does all this mean? Why, it means just this: That now a question of dollars has come up, and just as soon as it comes to a question of dollars the Legislature, which was yesterday so wise, so pure and so upright, into whose hands you could safely at all times and for all time commit the liberty and reputation of the citizens, has in the short revolution of one day become so corrupt that you cannot trust them at all, although you have bound them down in the begining and at the end, tied them hand and foot by restrictions and restrictions and restrictions, until you need but one more to knock away that traditional grant altogether, and that is to abolish them. What is this? Is this legislation or is this organic law? Is this legislation? Will this execute itself? Who is to provide the means for this trial after all? It is to be done by the Legislature, and if they provide none it will be as dead as is your Bill of Rights to-day. I like a little consistency once in a while. I am not at all an advocate of the maxim that consistency is a jewel, but at the same time I believe that it ought to last at least twenty-four hours, and that is all I ask from any gentleman in this Convention. For these reasons I shall cheerfully and with savage joy vote against this proposition. [Laughter.] Mr. KAINE. Mr. President: I think this is a very important proposition, and it is entitled to a fair, full and deliberate consideration by the members of this Convention. And I do not think the personal animosity of the gentleman who has just taken his seat in regard to the chairman of this committee ought to be taken into consideration in considering so important a question. Mr. HUNSICKER. That I deny. I have no personal animosity against him or any other gentleman, not even the gentieman from Fayette. [Laughter.] Mr. KAINE. Then he desires to carry this upon the shoulders of that provision of his which was voted down yesterday. I am very clearly of opinion that some provision of this kind ought to be placed in the Constitution. It has a place in the Constitutions of other States of this Union, and from what we know of the transactions in the Legislature that this is intended to prevent, I think it ought to go into ours. And first, in regard to the amendment now pending of the gentleman from Indiana. That comes very far short of reaching the case. In truth it amounts to nothing whatever as a remedy against the evils complained of. A case was cited by the gentleman who offered this amendment this morning in regard to an act to be found in the pamphlet laws of 1871, entitled "An act in relation to railroads crossing each other at grade," that, I believe, it was established to the satisfaction of everyone, had never passed at all. I know another case, and I have every reason to believe that what I am about to state is correct, and that it can be proved by a number of witnesses, and it only occurred during the last session of the Legislature; and that was this: A bill was presented in the Senate and passed; it went over to the House for concurrence; it was a private bill; it was placed upon the private calendar of the House; it came up for consideration, and it was defeated, not on a call of the yeas and nays, but upon a viva voce vote. It was an exceedingly important bill, although a private and small one, to a corporation; it shall be the duty of the courts, upon a proper case presented before them, to declare such act null and void." and notwithstanding that bill was voted down and defeated in the House of Representatives, yet it appeared in ten days after the Legislature had adjourned as an act of Assembly of this Commonwealth, and is now in the statute laws of this State. How was that done, and how would the amendment of the gentleman from Indiana remedy a thing of that kind? The Journal of the House of Representatives appears all fair and regular; the bill was passed through first, second and third readings, compared and went to the Committee to Compare Bills, signed by the speakers and by the Governor, and yet it was defeated. Through the manipulations of some parties interested some clerk was induced to make the proper figures and the proper memoranda on that bill and on the Journal. Now, how can a case of that kind be remedied unless we have some provision such as the one proposed by the gentleman from Lycoming? I decline to say anything in regard to the nature of that bill or the parties, because I intend that it shall be investigated hereafter in some shape or other. That is a similar case to the one cited by the gentleman from Lycoming. Everything is right and regular in the bill, the Journals are all right, the memoranda on the bill were all right, the figures were all right. Then it is proposed to send to a court to examine the Journals, and if they did not appear all right then to declare the law null and void. The difficulty is that it does appear all right, that it does appear all regular. In such a case you should be allowed to cali upon a member or dozen members of the House of Representatives or the Senate and put them under oath and allow them to swear that such a bill never passed. You should be allowed to bring witnesses who can swear, "I voted against that bill, and I know it was defeated," and can show that it was by the manipulation of others, not members of the Legislature, that these things were procured. If you put a clause of this kind in the Constitution it will prevent at once attempts at things of this kind. In the new Constitution of the State of West Virginia this provision is contained: "Wherever the Legislature is expressly prohibited by this Constitution from doing any particular act, and the same shall be done in violation of such prohibition, That is different, I admit, from the proposition now before the Convention, but it is in the same direction. It is a provision in the Constitution that where an aet of Assembly has been improperly passed there shall be a tribunal that will have jurisdiction to investigate the matter, to take testimony, to examine witnesses under oath before a jury, and decide whether that law was passed or not. Can that do any harm? I understand the amendment of the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Harry White) to be the twenty-fifth section of the report on legislation. I heard it from the desk and I so understood it. Now, sir, if we are to have anything in the Constitution on this subject let us have it efficient, let us have something that will give us a remedy when we desire it. You may make the time shorter, if you please, and require this proceeding to be in six months or three months, in place of a year. That will be notice, and that will remedy the alarm and the difficulty of the gentleman from Allegheny. Then a man acting under such a bill will not have bought a farm or a house and agreed to put valuable improvements on it and have vested rights that nothing can touch. It is not likely there will be any acts of Assembly passed that would affect the vested rights of the gentleman from Allegheny or anybody else in that way. It is these acts of Assembly that are got through for the benefit of special parties and special corporations, and I submit whether they who have been the cause of this infamy and this wrong should take anything by their motion. I am opposed to the amendment of the gentleman from Indiana. I understand that the chairman of the committee who offers this section desires to make some alterations, which will relieve at least one objection of the gentleman from Allegheny, and that is, to strike out the words "false pretence" and insert "undue means," to make the second paragraph conform to the first. "Fraud, bribery or undue means" are the words used in the first paragraph, and "undue means" placed in the second paragraph in the place of "false pretence" will make it uniform and better than it is. I understand that the chairman of the committee who offered this section desires to make an amendment of that kind, to make the one pro |