Norwich bulletin., 1911-01-19
Delivered to Joint Session of the Legisla- ture and to the State of Connecticut
APPLICABLE TO WHOLE COUNTRY
Points Out Few Personal ShortcominasEToo Much
 Law Making-Real Sovereignty Reposes with Su- preme Court-Compliments Governor Baldwin and Says Good Word for Corporations and State Riahfs.

I session year. The empire of Great than one hundred acts of parliament per annum. l have read recently of an act of congress that passed one house fourteen times and the other ten l times, without opposition, but never ! became law, because it couldn't get l through both houses during the same | session This sort of thing suggests | the wisdom of the ruie--somewhat l tempered. perhaps-that applied in ffs l days of Magma Grecia, when the man | who proposed & new law wac led to the public assembly with rope around his | neck, and if his law failed to pass bs
 was taken out and hanged.
 History tells us that personal Hb~ | erty, statutes and legislation ars An glo- Saxon inventions. Neither tho 1 Greeks, nor Romans, nor any other nation of record, knew anything about | representation of representative gov ernments, as we understand them, and the Anglo -Saxons when they started. | in to legislate didn't make new laws. they simply declared by public act the | free customs" of the people then ex-
 isting. What the fathers wanted, from | the day they left the shores of the 1 Baltic down to the time they followed Washington to victory. was liberty, no< law. The precious words in tho ! Magma Charta were those that decfsro9 | that freemen should not be deprived of their free customs and these frss customs, or the common law. forbade that any unlawful purpose should bS accomplished by walful means, or that 1 a lawful purpose should be accom- | plished by unlawful means. The law yers present know that 90 per cent of our statutes against monopoly, exfoT- | ton, conspiracy, etc. are more Iess faulty declarations of the common law
 against forestalling. regretting, en- | crossing and covin as interpreted by | the English courts for more than ffvs hundred years. Our fathers in 177e were still fighting for their free cus- | toms," their natural rights" and in the flush of victory they lost their their commerce, their credit and tbstr | confidence in each other. When in an utterly demoralized state. they saw tfss need of a central government that | its face clean, they stood quite ss much in fear of the people as they did of the king.
 | The constitution makers. inciuding Morris, who wrote 1t. attributed the then chaotic conditions to ''the turbu- 1 lent fo1lies of democracy" and our own Roger Sherman in the constitutional convention declared that the people would never be sufficiently informed
 to vote intelllgently on all candidates \ that might be presented" Through | fear of the king, the powers of tho executive were closely guarded. snd I through fear of the people the powers of the legislative branch were care fully limited. and the real sovereignty was by acident, or otherwise. placed | in the supreme court. Congress has | no power to destroy or limit its fune- ! tions, and it is the only court fin the l world that is not dependent upon the legislative branch of the government 1 When Chief Justice Marshall in May | bury vs. Madison declared an act of | congress to be void and of no effect as | contrary to the constitution, and when l in 1884 the supreme court finally de- | termined that the government had th@ power to issue green backs" as one of
 the powers belonging to a sovereign | nation, mot expressly withheld from congress by the constitution" the su- | preme power of the government be- :! came vested in the supreme court and some good men today agree with Mr- | Justice Brewer, who said in 1902 | ''The constitution Is supposed to pos- | sess an elasticity which would msks the manufacturers of India rubber | criticised? Can we safely assume fhat | we have reached perfection in our con- ! stitutional restriction upon the living
 to legislatsr for the 1iving7
 | Our constitution, according to Mir. Gladstone, "the most wonderful voFk ever struck off in a given time by fhe brain and purpose of man" ts wonder l fu1 if 1t Is wise and not because C fs old. We are told that the bfcamernf | plan for the legislative branch of the l was copied from the English parIia- ment which was in turn an accident. | due to the disinc1fnation of the second
 estate or clergy to act as . third leg islative body in conjunction with the lords and commons. Political scholars | of high rank today insist that the sep | aration of the executive from the lex- | islative was a blunder committed by I vnH A. r-x | MontesQuieu and passed along to ths American constitution builders. And Professor Ford points with great force | to the modern tendency in city. state
 and other nations to bring the execu- | tive and legislative branches torefber under one head directly responsible to | the people.
 In the last twenty years four hun | dred and thfrty-hve amendBoueB C ! the constitution have been proposed. | and not one of them has passed both | branches of congress Is 1t not quiss possible that 1t has been the duty oc | our supreme court to bend at 1esDc this impregnable wall which con- gross has built around the constftg- | ton, in order that the free customs" that the administrative sovereignty of the United States may be located | somewhere? To me 1t is exceedingly | interesting to note that in England l mere they BULL ntNc d hlnSs tl2 pEJ pie are constantly pressing the power away from him and his lords. to q government by a single assembly, and l in America, where there fs no king,
 the people are constantly pressfss | power away from the only body that directly represents them to the execu- tive and the courts. If congress has
 ceased to represent the people. fs fe
 not in part duce to the fact that the people have ceased to take an s~-4 has thus been at liberty to spend | it's time hurling laws. good or bad. at conflicting special interests How = ever careless the people may be fn
 their methods, whether they are unscientifc or not in the means en- p1oyed, 1t is pretty clear that thsy are determined to secure as soou e pos1ibie economy in 1sezsaadon, Dee- ductton ana d1Scr1nutzon 5ust now 0o people, Wfse1y or unw1se1J. Doom 1w
 have the idea that the solsztiou e t1o problem of self-o0VBnueDt - h moro government pr0feck1on om m1U t11A 1m 1omm 5sa xrn<1r,n &-n