The record-union., 1894-09-18
LEG1sLAr1NG IN CONSTITUTIONS.

New York is engaged in Constitution
making. Like all modern efforts of that
kind, she is falling into the error of put
ting too much into the document. Ex-
Governor Russell of Massachusetts,, in
his address lately at Yale Law School,
pointed out this tendency in amendments
proposed in all the States-that is. to
make the Constitutions legislate. Chief
Justice Cooley years ago warned consti-
tuition tinkers of the danger in such pro-
cedure, saying: SIN your Constitutions
you are tying the hands of the people,"
A Constitution should express princi-
pies only. both in restraint and in con-
ferment OF powers, with such elastic af-
frmation as is necessary to give them full
effect. Governor Russell holds that the
Constitutions in original form were gen.
orally what Constitutions should be, and
them what they should not be. He quotes
Story, who, fifty years ago, said:
The rage of theorists to make Constitutions
a vehicle for the conveyance of their own
crude and visionary aphorisms of govern
ment requires TO be guarded against with the
most unceasing vigilance.
1t is safe to say that modern experience
has proved the wisdom of his warning.
The New York Evening Post puts it more
strongly, saying:
The small minds which get control of con-
vention seize their opportunity to ''run a
State" as politicians would term it, for the
next twenty or thirty years, and by so doing
undermine the healthy American principle
OF self-government and civic responsibility.
Governor Russell, who has made con-
stitutional study a vocation, says on this
point:
By the creation of important administra-
tive boards and by the many restrictions on
the legislative, executive and judicial depart
ments, the tendency OF these Constitutions is
10 establish q sort of automatic permanent
administration as substitute for our usual
form OF government.
The fathers of the nation carefully
avoided such error. In thirty words they
created the whole national judicial sys-
tenn; in eight words they established the
whole maritime and admiralty jurisdic-
ton, conceded to be the broadest and best
of the age. These men created Consti-
tuition in a few words that, except for
the exigency of the war of the re-
bellion and the destruction of slavery,
calling for amendments, has answered
efficiently the needs OF nation grown to
population of nearly seventy millions,
covering an area reaching from ocean to
ocean,"
Petty administrative DETAIL" says one
critic, has marred and weakened the Con-
stitutions of many States, and made them
almost as voluminous as codes of law.
Russell has discovered that Illinois in
creased her Constitution in the ratio of
eight to eighteen as early as l84S; in 1875
Missouri augmented hers in the ratio of
eleven to thirty-one, and in 1891 Missis-
sippi spread hers over torty-seven pages,
with 2S5 sections.
All which means that modern Consti
tution-makers attempt too much; they
are fearful of the people, the courts and
natural laws. One new Constitution,
says Governor Russell, has ninety pro-
hibitions upon special legislation; an
other fixes the time within which a Judge
must render his decision, and in North
Dakota the Constitution descends to di-
rection that the Supreme Court shall act
as a Reporter and prepare a syllabus of
the points adjudicated in each case.
All along the line new Constitution
makers and the thinkers attempt TO legis-
late for the future, regardless of what the
people may wish their legislative bodies
TO do. Thus prison policy, convict labor
regulation, social science fads, trade regu-
lations and so on have been injected into
Constitutions in great detail.
A Constitution in its original purpose
was intended to create and define govern
ment. and establish fundamental prin-
ciples securing personal and political
rights, and giving guarantees, as, the
right of trial by jury, prohibition of titles
of nobility. prohibition of establishment
of religion, guarantee of republican gov
ernment. etc. Modern Constitution max
ing. showever, goes far beyond and at
tenpts legislation for athe future that is