A democratic society can not exist without the right of assembling. Our government officials are our agents; nothing else. That such officials ever should stop peaceable meetings, or refuse to accept petitions, or dare to forbid petitioning, is in our times incredible. Such negative provisoes, quite frequently occurring in the federal constitution, are not subjects for a real bill of rights. Lotteries are games, and may be allowed to-day and forbidden to-morrow, without mentioning them in a constitution. Divorces are litigious cases belonging by themselves to the tribunals.

"11. The people of this state, in their right of sovereignty, are deemed to possess the original and ultimate property in and to all lands within the jurisdiction of the state; and all lands, the title to which shall fail, from a defect of heirs, shall revert or escheat to the people.

A special escheat law has to settle the rights about property without owner. This may well be left to the towns, a part of the state where it has been presumptively acquired. So the clause will not be missed here if obliterated and transplanted into the statute-book.

"12. All feudal tenures of every description, with all their incidents, are declared to be abolished; saving, however, all rents and services certain which at any time heretofore have been lawfully created or reserved.

"13. All lands within this state are declared to be allodial, so that, subject only to the liability to escheat, the entire and absolute property is vested in the owners according to the nature of their respective estates.

"14. No lease or grant of agricultural land for a longer period than twelve years, hereafter made, in which shall be reserved any rent or service of any kind, shall be valid.

"15. All fines, quarter-sales, or other like restraints upon alienation, reserved, in any grant of land hereafter to be made, shall be void.

"16. No purchase or contract for the sale of lands in this state, made since the fourteenth day of October, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, or which may hereafter be made, of, or with the Indians, shall be valid, unless made under the authority and with the consent of the legislature."

There seems to have been no logical connection between those clauses and a real bill of rights. All such things belong to the statute-book.

"17. Such parts of the common law, and of the acts of the legislature of the colony of New York, as together did form the law of the said colony, on the nineteenth day of April, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, and the resolutions of the Congress of said colony, and of the Convention of the state of New York, in force on the twentieth day of April, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven, which have not since expired, or been re

pealed or altered; and such acts of the legislature of this state as are now in force shall be and continue the law of this state, subject to such alterations as the legislature shall make concerning the same. But all such parts of the common law, and such of the said acts, or parts thereof, as are repugnant to this constitution, are hereby abrogated, and the legislature at its first session after the adoption of this constitution, shall appoint three commissioners, whose duty it shall be to reduce into a written and systematic code the whole body of the law of this state, or so much and such parts thereof as to the said commissioners shall seem practicable and expedient. And the said commissioners shall specify such alterations and amendments therein as they shall deem proper, and they shall at all times make reports of their proceedings to the legislature when called upon to do so; and the legislature shall pass laws regulating the tenure of office, the filling of vacancies therein, and the compensation of said commissioners; and shall also provide for the publication of the said code prior to its being presented to the legislature for adoption."

All laws enacted by a legislative body of the state of New York, or the colony of New York, must be obeyed until repealed. What laws are valid is the business of the jurists and courts to know. This proviso seems therefore to be superfluous.

"18. All grants of land within this state, made by the king of Great Britain, or persons acting under his authority, after the fourteenth day of October, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, shall be null and void; but nothing contained in this constitution shall affect any grants of land within this state, made by the authority of the said king or his predecessors, or shall annul any charters to bodies politic and corporate, by him or them made before that day, or shall affect any such grants or charters since made by this state, or by persons acting under its authority, or shall impair the obligation of any debts contracted by this state, or individuals, or bodies corporate, or any other rights of property, or any suits, actions, rights of action, or other proceedings in courts of justice."

ence.

This proviso is in connection with the colonial history. In 1775 the first Congress of the thirteen states assembled at Philadelphia, New York among them. In 1776 appeared the Declaration of Independence. A special act may be useful to guide the courts in regard to the beginning of the political state independConstitutions have nothing to decide on private rights, This is the business of the judiciary. All these provisoes from twelve following are in connection with the manor difficulties existing in this state. About the different modes of possessing property, the statute-book must be explicit. A feudal tenure is land, the limited title of which is derived from a feudal lord, or superior proprietor, who retains a superior property right, recog

nised by tribute, rent, or services. The opposite is allodial property.

We have in a great measure disentangled our state institutions from many features of an English origin, and still have perseveringly to pursue this course of reform to make them American. But before we part from this so-called bill of rights, I should point it out as a sensible trait of this constitution worthy of imitation, that its framers have not inserted the stereotyped phrase generally occurring in other "northern" constitutions, which prohibits involuntary service or bound labor; because it is not only entirely superfluous, this kind of labor being in the north self-prohibitive, but also discourteous toward our southern states, and exceedingly injurious to personal freedom, by frightening away the masters with their bound laborers, from such states, thus depriving the slaves of a chance to become acquainted with society where free labor prevails.

A constitution is a frame, a form, an organic law, and neither a statute, nor a grant or compromise, in the proper sense of these words. The frame must fit society easily; society must not be cramped into the frame.

I take advantage here to add a few remarks on American common law. What bears this name at present is of English origin, and, in regard to general maxims, fair enough, but not better than the Roman law, the main source of all European codes, called, on account of its sound reasoning, written reason. However, the English common law does not exactly answer for our purposes. In order to come to an indigenous common law, our state constitutions should-firstly, prohibit all reference to any foreign law of whatever origin; secondly, it should be a general maxim that the judiciary, if called upon to judge on the constitutionality of laws, shall so construe the constitution as if it never intended to interfere with the rights of self-government, of persons, families, towns, and counties, but that one of their main objects is to protect and guaranty those rights; thirdly, that a rule be laid down for the division of overgrown political districts, and that these districts are prohibited from contracting debts for private or non-political subjects. to avoid all chances for repudiations and similar dishonest acts; fourthly, that towns are made responsible for all damages in persons and property caused by riots of bands; that counties are

responsible for the same caused by riots of the people of a whole town, and that they shall be respectively charged and assessed. If persons are killed, the tariff or principles generally followed in railroad and similar accidents may serve as a rule. By-the-by, these railroad indemnifications prove that in law every person, and not a bound laborer only, has a money value.

Those who wish to appreciate the name American, as Washington desired in his farewell address, must long for a common law of our own. We are too much governed by foreign laws antagonistic to our institutions. If I appear as speaking harsh upon such inherited laws, I wish it to be understood that I do not reflect upon men. I recollect to have seen in Sparks's Life of Franklin, an old letter from that true nobleman, Larochefacault, wherein he congratulates the doctor on the federal constitution, adding expressly that it would now become necessary to change our code of laws. I write from memory. If we strip our legislatures of all power to meddle with non-political business, and thus confine their whole attention and time to the better realization of justice, should we not easily and naturally arrive to a more perfect state of public administration and public virtue, too, than the present? Why not make our states in this, their proper sphere, perfect?

My suggestions on the management of our states are at variance with the present practice, and why? because I maintain that only strictly political business should be intrusted to governments, while the usual policy starts from the idea that a state government may do anything it thinks proper for society. The difference, therefore, is in business, not in men. I further maintain that my views are strictly American, and the other European or Asiatic. If our legislatures ordain that the counties shall have power to establish poorhouses, and tax the people to raise the funds for their support, they assume that the supporting of poor men is a political business, while I call it a mere charitable private personal act of brotherly love. The Christian church, from its beginning, took hold of this business, tried to introduce communism on this account, and later, when united with the states, transferred it to them. We have separated the church from the state, and the church has to take back this charity business, if it may not be entirely left with the benevolent, as a mere personal private affair; instead of doing so we have, by bad centralization, made it

a county business. The motion made in the legislature of the state of New York of 1857-8, to create a central state-board, for the governing of the poor and almshouse affairs, consisting of a number of commissioners with a salary of four thousand dollars each (I write again from memory), would, if successful, only increase this bad centralization. Still, as gratuitous as this motion appears, it is in fact not worse than the law which creates political county poorhouses.

Another illustration. Sciences and arts are no doubt non-political business. Still at the same legislative session a motion was made to create a state-scholarship. Also this proposition has not been acted upon; but if we have state regents for colleges, etc., why not have state scholars, too? Such things are anti-American, while the Grand Turk and Queen Victoria may create as many state or court histographers, scholars, painters, etc., as they please, and give them salaries, pensions, orders, titles, etc., beside, and Napoleon III. may forbid soldiers to write newspaper articles. Such motions and laws are to be deprecated in our society. They creep into our statutes in spite of our bills of rights, so that they seem not to be set up with an eye to the perfecting of the American system of governing. But this should be the case, if they are for any use at all.

LETTER IV.

Elective Franchise. Restrictions. - Citizenship.-Ballot. - Family voting right.Woman. Connecticut. Christianity. - Polygamy. — Utah.

Kansas Scandals.

NOTHING has been a greater stumbling-block for legislators, both ancient and modern, than the voting laws, nearly related to the citizenship right. Age, birth, property, taxes, color, religion, and other more or less irrelevant items have been made suffrage conditions, and no two of our states have uniform laws about it. They at least all conflict with those of Congress in regard to the voting of naturalized citizens. Still the suffrage right is the main spring in our political machinery. It brings us good or bad legislators and governors. This constitution has adopted what is