The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1896-12-02

dav," said farmer representative, of
sound head and honest purpose, land
be compelled, as am, to lit here aud
see things done that l know are wrong,
but which am poweress to prevent"
Another, an intelligent member of one
of the professions, who has seen SER
vice in both branches of the Legislature,
found the source of much of the int fiji
cheney of that body in the tend ncy of
men to use public Office for the pay
ment of political debts. The failure to
repeal the abortive legislative commits
sion law, or to adapt it and its official
crew TO the narrow practical purpose
the law serves, would deprive the eX-
ecutve of the means of paying his pO-
litcal debts, and reduce the crop of Of
ficiol plums. SO there is a strong meT-
cenary interest to retain upon the stat.
ute books law the cos of whose adj
ministratiOn bears no reasonable rela-
llOi W llo IIuOllNhl DtilSuNSs
How much of this reasonable cause
for complaint as to the inetliciency of
the Legislature is due to inherent hui
man weakness, and how much to an
abnormal legislative system? Very
likely an accurate division and assign
ment of responsibility to each of these
sources Of imperfection could not be
made. AS to the latter, however, several
things are indisputable. If the people
OF Vermont were to day confronted
with the task of constructing repub-
lican form of government, the existing
system, in some of its most important
features, would be the very last that
would be proposed; or if proposed at
all, its author would BE- deemed a fit
subject for assignment to the ward for
the hopeles,ly demented in some
asylum for the insane. Assuming that
the two-chamber plan of constituting
law-making body were adopted, what
body of intelligent freemen would to-
day disregard entirely population, and
constitute so many acres or square
miles of territory, defined by imaginary
boundary lines, as the basis of repre-.
sentation in the popular branch of the
Legislature? But this is the system
now existing in Vermont. 1t is, in
its most aggravated form, the "rotten
borough system" which once pre-
vailed in England, but which that
country abolished more than half a CEN
fury ago. Discarded or unrecognized,
as this system is, by every one of her
sister commonwealth of any impor-
lance, why is it still adhered to in Yer
mont?
This system allows TO every COM
munity, bounded by arbitrary lines,
from less than 100 to 1000
inhabitants, the same representation as
to other communities having from 1000
to 10000 inhabitants. 1t is unrepub-
lican and Representative to the last
degree. 1t packs the house of repre-
sentatives with an unwieldly mass of
crude legislators, chosen anew every
two years. 1t is an unbusiness-like
body, created by unbusiness-like meth
DDS, and is in itself alone, as it must in
evitably be, responsible in some large
measure for the results, or lack of re-
suits, the people biennially deplore,
and of which they have just cause to
complain, but for which they are
themselves directly responsible. If
they are made to understand this, and
to understand that nothing better can
come out of the existing system, and
will be getting into the right frame of
mind to consider this matter of legisla-
tive reform dispassionately, without
prejudice, without sel6shness, on it's
merits, from republican point of
view, a beginning of much-needed
may be made by the legis-
lature of 1900, which will have the
power to propose the necessary amend
ments to the constitution.