The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1889-03-06
A Petty Usurper.

ALVIN P. HovEY, it appears from the
! extraordinary communication he trans
! mitted to the legislature Saturday, pro-
! poses to set himself up as a dictator in the
state OF Indiana; to ignore any laws which
may be passed by the people, acting
| through their representatives in general
assembly convened, which are not to his
which no governor of the state
of Indiana has ever exercised or
attempted to exercise; 10 arrogate
to himself authority which he has
no more right than the humblest citi-
zen to assume, unless the legislature sees
fit to clothe him with it. In a word, Al
WIN P. HOvEY proposes to defy the consti-
tuition, override the law, and play the role
of an autocrat and tyrant.
If an expressive vulgarism may be par
doned, ALVIN p HOvEY has bitten off
good deal more than he can ''chaw." He
is no doubt a very great statesman,
profound constitutional lawyer and all
that sort of thing. But he is not nearly
so great a man as he imagines himself to
be; and is certainly not greater or wiser,
or more powerful, than the people OF In
diana, as he seems to believe. If he per-
sists in his present ridiculous attitude, he
will find this out in the very near future.
1t is said that ALVIN P. HovEY was
born on the day that the great Ma
PoLEoN died, and that he has for many
years been laboring under the de-
fusion that the soul of that mighty
warrior, when it burst the letters that con-
fined it to his frail body. did not vanish
into infnity, but winged its way straight
from st. Helena TO Posey county, Indiana,
where it entered the body of Indiana's
| future ruler, making of him a veritable
child of destiny. 1t was doubtless under
the spell of this superstition that the mes
sage OF Saturday was written.
But our Napoleonic governor is not GO
ing to play despot in Indiana. OF that he
may be we'll assured. Indiana is not
despotism, but republic. Her system of
government is a carefully devised scheme
of checks and balances. She has a written
constitution which clearly defines the re-
spective powers and functions of the sew
eral branches of her government. They
are three in number-executive, judicial
! and egislative-co-ordinate and each in
| dependent of the other in its de-
fined sphere. The powers of the
governor are very limited. He is the
commandments of the military and
naval forces, and may call them out to
execute the laws, suppress insurrection,
or repel invasion; he may approve bills
which pass the general assembly, or he
may allow them to become laws without
his approval, or he may veto them, but
they may be passed over his veto by the
same vote by which they were originally
passed; he may grant reprieves, pardons
and combinations for all ofenses except
treason and cases of impeachment. His
other duties are chiefly ministerial. The
principal duty with which he is charged
is ''to take care that the laws be faithfully
executed" He must not only obey all
laws himself, but must see to it that others
obey them.
The constitution does not clothe him
with the power to decide as to the con-
stitutionality OF laws. That power is
confided exclusively to another branch of
the government-the judiciary; and when
the governor assumes to exercise it he
trespasses upon the domain of a CO.
ordinate department and becomes a mere
usurper.
ALVIN 2. HovEY, in the message OF Sat
urday, told the general assembly very
plainly that he did not intend to obey GER
tain laws made by that body, although he
has no more right to ignore them, or to
question their validity, than any private
citizen. He declared that he would re-
gard no one as a state officer who did not
bear commission signed by himself as
governor, and that he did not propose to
issue commissions to any officer whom he
did not appoint; and he further asserted
that to permit the general assembly to
control the appointment of statutory Off
GERS "would be to abandon our repub-
lican form of government and sink into
an oligarchy."
This we do not hesitate to say, is the
most astounding deliverance ever made by
a chief magistrate of the state. 1t is an
| open and contemptuous defiance of CO.
ordinate department of the government,
and of that department which is nearest
to the people, and which is clothed by the
organic law with the largest measure of
power; of a department which can per-
form any function OF government not ex-
pressly forbidden to it by the constitution,
subject only to its responsibility to the
people, the judiciary alone being compe-
tent TO determine when it has transcribed
| its constitutional functions.
As TO the merits of the governors con-
tention they are quickly disposed Of 1t has
none. Ii to permit the general assembly
to fill offices created by statute is to
abandon our republican form of govern
ment, it was abandoned many years ago,
| for the general assembly has been filling
such offices for generation or more. The
propriety and expediency OF this method
of appointment have been questioned;
its constitutionality, never. OLIVER P.
| MORTON, THOMAS A. HENDRICKS, CONRAD
| BAKER, JAMES d. WILLIAMS, ALBERT G..
PORTER and ISAAC P. GRAY recognized the
constitutional power of the general assem-