Morning journal and courier., 1882-03-23
Thursday Morning, March B. 1882.
AN INTERESTING REPORT.

A committee of the Massachusetts House
 of Representatives has made an interesting
 and important report concerning a bill pro- 1 viding for the submission of a prohibitOry
 law to the people for ratification. The com
 mittee is of the opinion that such submission
 would be unconstitutional It is we'll settled,
 says the committee, that legislation may be
 conditional and it's taking effect dependen:
 on some future event, where local, private or
 limited interests are concern q. A charter, l for example, or amendments thereto, may be
 made conditional on the acceptance of the corporators, for they have a special and pc culiar interest in the terms and conditions of such law. For the same reason, the ques- tion whether a county or township shall be
 divided, or two townships or school districts
 be united, or municipality contract par l ticular debts, or engage in a particular i'm
 provement, is always 8 question which may
 with propriety be referred to the voters of
 the municipality for decision. It is also well
 settled in Massachusetts that local option laws are constitutional. In the cases which have been decided the court confines its de- cision to the narrow ground of the cases, and holds that, as license is matter of police regulation and of local interest and expense, it is question which may properly be de-
 cided by those specially interested. In other words, it puts local option the same ground as the acceptance of charter, and carefully refrains from the broader question of the submission of general law to the people.
 The committee points out that the consti-, tuition forbids the Legislature to exercise powers pertaining to the other departments of government Ito the end that this may be government of laws and not of men, and gives it full power and authority" to make all laws. It is not expressly prohibited from submitting law of any sort to the people, but the occasion on which it shall refer it's action to the people is carefully defined. Even in this case, in change of the fundamental law two Legislatures are required to act inde- pendently, and upon their own responsibil- ity, before an amendment to the constitution can be submitted to the popular vote The people can prevent an amendment of the constitution favored by the Legislature, but they cannot obtain an amendment except through the medium of the Legislature act ing independently As the question of the right to submit general law to the people is only matter of inference from the constitu- ton, and has never been passed upon by the courts of Massachusetts, the committee is obliged to look for guidance to decisions in other States and to general principles Among the citations in support of the opin- ion is one from Judge Cooley's "Constitu- tional Limitations" part of it is as fol- lows:
 ''The prevailing doctrine in the courts ap- pears to be that, except in those cases where | by the constitution the people have expressly reserved to themselves power of decision, the function of legislation cannot be exer- cised by them even to the extent of accept | ing or rejecting law which has been framed for their consideration. Chief Justice Rug gles in Barto vs. Aimrod (S N. Y. 4S9,) | says: "The exercise of this power by the people in other cases Is not expressly and in terms prohibited by the constitution, but it implication. The Senate and Assembly the only bodies of men clothed within the power of general legisla- ton. They possess the entire power, with the exception above stated. The people reserve no part of 1t to themselves (with that exceptlon) a9d can, therefore, exercise it in no other case. It is therefore held that the Legislature have no power to submit pro- posed law to the people. nor the people 1 power to bind each other by acting upon it. They voluntarily surrender that power when i they adopt the constitution. The govern ment of the State is democratic, but it is a representative democracy, and in passing gen i eral laws the people act only through their representatives in the Legislature. Nor, it can such leQislatiOu be sustained as legislation of conditional character whose ! force is to depend upon the happening of some future event, or upon some future change of circumstances