The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-07-22

the powers of the executive and trans. i ferring his most important functions to the legislature they were convinced they
 were vesting power in body more re- l sponsive to public opinion and, therefore | safer depositories of power, and that by l such action they removed all fear of that | executive tyranny and arbitrary conduct
 which had brought about the revolution i In 1831 coincident with the rise tc ! power of Andrew Jackson. and the adop- | ton of his views of the democratic party | there was a general movement embrae- | ing the entire country, to increase the | power of the people and entrust them l with more control over elections and i this tendency of the times found ex- ] pression in Alabama in an amendment tc the constitution, by which circuit and in-
 ferior judges were made elective by popular vote instead of by appointment by the legislature. In all subsequent ' constitutions. the power of appointment was gradually withdrawn from the leg
 islature and vested in the governor and 1 limitations on legislative power embed jed in the constitution, manifesting a 1 growing distrust of legislative power
 After the close of the civil war, the con institution of 1S6S which was framed by a convention from whose member ship all who had proved loyal to the Confederate states government were practically excluded, was submitted and rejected by the people at the polls. but forced upon the state by congressional action
 When the democratic party re- gained control of the state in 1871,
 among it's first acts was to call com istitutional convention The bonded debt of the state had been enormously in creased by the legislatures of the re- construction era, new and unneces- sary offices created, fraudulent bonds issued, the treasury footed and most onerous system of taxation imposed on the people. Hence the primary pur-
 pose of the convention which met in I1S75 was to reduce the expenses, to
 place stringent constitutional restric- tions on legislative power and to pre-
 vent a recurrence of that saturnala
 of misgoverment and extravaganza.
 which during the reconstruction era had brought the state to the verge of
 bankruptcy and governmental chaos.
 The framers of the constitution of 1875, having fresh in their minds the waste land extravaganza of the legislatures of the reconstructoin period, were dis
 trustful of legislative power, and the
 result was that for the first time in
 the history of the state the powers of
 the legislative department of the state
 were radically curtailed by numerous constitutional restrictions and inhibi- |tions on legislative eompentency. The constitution of 1875 placed no restruc- tions on negro suffrage The federal government was under the complete control of the republican party, which was bitterly hostile to the south. The fear of federal interference, therefore, prevented any effort on the part of the framers of the constitution of 1875 from undertaking to restrict negro suffrage or lessen it's admitted evils.
 The negro vote constituted an over- whelming majority in that portion of the state known as the black belt, and it was sufficiently large in many other portions of the state, in combination with the white republicans, to con- stantly threaten white supremacy, which was the chief tenet of the demos cratic party. The fear of negro rule,