The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1882-08-10

both voted down new judicial systems,
West Virginia provided, in 1880, for
jury of six, by consent, in civil cases,
and Iowa last year reduced grand
juries to from five to fifteen members,
and empowered the Legislature to
provide for indictment "in any 'crtmi-
nal offense, without the Intervention
of a grand jury" Connecticut, 1880,
has vested the selection of higher
judges in the Governor and .Legisla-
ture Iowa gives the Legislature the
dangerous power Of changing districts
at will instead of once in four years,
and Maryland has changed the curious
p,o'ieiVn when gave any Judge eiec-
ted to fill n vacancy in the fifteen
year judicial term, fifteen years to serve.
Legislative powershave been sharply
restricted in Minnesota, 1881, by the
usual limitations on special legislation,
the sixty days limit on the session
adopted in 1860 has been abandoned,
and stay pat on sessions by paying
members $5 day; the pay has been
SO for only ninety days in future.
Wisconsin in the same year decided
on biennial sessions, and raised legis-
lative pay to $500 session, q sum
which, in frugal Western States, is
still the average legislative pay, as it
was in the East up to the close of war,
and few years after. Maine, 1880,
| extended the term of its House of
Representatives to two years but the
Legislature sits annually. The solitary
change made or proposed in the office
of Governor is his election by =
plurality vote in future in the same
| State.
Election law has received more than
customary attention in the last two
years Indiana has moved out of the
October States, and Iowa will do the
same thing next fall, while the useful
provision requiring thirty days resi-
dedce in the precinct was adopted by
the former in 1851. Virginia passes
next fall ON the abolition of the poll
tax as qualification for suffrage,
Massachusetts, last fall enfranchised
pauper soldiers, Nevada has struck
out the word white" from its Consti-
tuition, and, curiously enough, at an
election, where Chinese immigration
was overwhelmingly condemned,
passed n provision which will permit
naturalized Cinnamon to vote. AN
amendment permitting female suff-
rage is pending between two Indiana
Legislatures, as it is in Iowa.
Constitutional provisions relating to
taxation are usually brief and chiefly
negative. Their amendment is rare.
Minnesota has found it necessary to
! extend the right of municipal taxa
tion-perhaps one should say con 6sca-
tion-wthout regard to value and
based on benefits conferred-to the
constructions of water works in towns
of 5000 inhabitants, dangerous
liberty. Kansas has refused to strike
out the exemption of $500 of per sonal
property now existing. Nevada has
| prohibited taxation for any but now
sectarian purposes, and New York
passes next fall upon an amendment
which lays on taxation the burden OF
maintaining the canals and paying
the canal debt. The economic effects
of this measure are likely to make it
the most important of all the amend
ments summed up here.
Prohibition, an issue whose rising
Importance is little appreciated in the
East, has been placed in the organic
law of two States, Kansas and Iowa,
and it is pending in Indiana. 1t is a
mere question of time when this
amendment, for defeat or success as
the case may be, appears in half the
States in the Union.