1, 1853, or March 1, 1870. The other opinion was a vigorous denial that the vote of the people which was required by the law could be regarded as a contingency in any proper sense. Laws to take effect upon the happening of a future event must be complete and positive in themselves, when they passed from the hands of the legislature. It was not permissible that they should become laws at the will of some "foreign or extraneous power", which has been asked to determine as regards the expediency of the law itself. Such a determination as to the expediency of the legislature's course, the judges in their opinion said, had here been contemplated, and the act therefore, must be held to be unconstitutional. This act of the legislature," the leading opinion adverse to the law continued, was 'a most flagrant violation of the Constitution, and of our representative system of government" in whose stead now it was proposed that "a collective democracy, the most uncertain and dangerous of all governments" should be "arbitrarily substituted ".26 66 In Vermont's prohibitory liquor law of 1852, like Michigan's, the point submitted to the people was the date upon which the law should become operative. The Supreme Court declared in this case that the form of the law was such that its coming into force did not depend upon the vote of the people. An adverse vote could have only suspended the operation of the law for a few months. It was a positive act with or without the referendum. This court, however, went much farther than any of the other tribunals. They declared that a favorable vote of the people was a good and sufficient contingency for the going into effect of general State laws, as well as laws affecting local districts. No distinction was drawn between laws for the whole State and laws for the localities. There had been such legislation in free states, the court said, for hundreds of years, and as for its being void and irregular, the opinion continued, it was a singular fact that 20 People v. Collins, 3 Mich. 343. * "the remarkable discovery should first be made in the free representative democracies of America * where the legislators are confessedly the mere agents and instruments of the people, to express their sovereign and superior will to save the necessity of assembling the people in mass ", etc.27 This very democratic opinion is probably without its counterpart among all the decisions in the American courts on the subject of the referendum. In its disregard of the legal barriers which the "Fathers" established in this country to save the people from the rule of the crowd, it must be held to rank as a very unusual state paper and one laden with very dangerous sentiments. A recent judicial opinion in reference to conditional legislation of this kind, was delivered in New Hampshire in 1881, the law of 1879 allowing minority representation in the boards of directors of corporations having come to the court for review. Here the judges drew a very plain distinction between the State and the localities. All our experience, and considerations of policy as well, tend to vindicate the theory that the contingency of a favorable vote of the people may be the occasion of the taking effect of a law which the State legislature has passed to apply to a county, town or other local district. "In the organization of State government," however, said the court in the New Hampshire opinion, “for reasons by them deemed sufficient, the people vested the supreme legislative power not in themselves, but in certain agents as a personal trust. * They were of opinion that while there might be good reason for granting to municipalities a limited power of making local law, it was not wise to attempt to carry on the work of State legislation in town meeting. They might have made an effort to overcome one of the difficulties of that method by authorizing a State committee to propose laws, and requiring the Governor to ascertain and proclaim the result of the popular vote in the manner adopted by the act of 1879 They preferred and they "State v. Parker, 26 Vt. 357. * * established a representative republic; and they did not confer upon the legislature the power of abolishing it, repealing the second article of the Constitution and changing the supreme law-making body into a committee on proposals. That power the legislature would have if they could transfer from themselves to others the responsibility of passing or refusing to pass a law of a non-local character. If the power of general legislation could be conveyed by the act of 1879, to those who might be induced to exercise it in town meeting, all laws could be made and repealed in the same way, and the representative character of the government could easily be extinguished." 28 Thus in but one State, Vermont, do we find a higher court that has made a declaration in favor of the system of submitting general State laws to popular vote, when the legislature is unable to point to a clause in the constitution which specifically authorizes the submission. In Michigan the court was equally divided on the point. The other decisions are against the proceeding. In both Vermont and Michigan, the issue was not quite direct, because of the technicalities which the legislatures had purposely raised to avoid such a result as that one earlier recorded in New York, in reference to the Free School Law. The people were to determine, not whether the bill should become a law, but the mere point of time when it should become effective. The law when it left the legislature, was a positive law in any case; the people were to decide but this single question: whether it should come into force at once, or at some future time, as for instance, nearly twenty years hence, which was the alternate date in Michigan. Nevertheless these decisions seem to have availed the referendum very little either in Vermont or Michigan. Justice Pratt, in his opinion against the constitutionality of the Michigan law in 1854, alluding to the unfortunate division in the court, and filled with alarm for the future, said: "This 28 State v. Hayes, 61 N. H. 264. * sovereign law of our constitutional system of government [the Constitution] says that the legislature shall make the laws for the State; that this and this only is its legitimate business as a distinct branch of the government. But the members of this constitutional body meet and say we will not be governed by the expressed will of the sovereign. * * A majority of the electors sanction such an unauthorized proceeding. The question is taken to the court of last resort, whose duty it is under the Constitution, to determine the question, but the members of that court are unable to agree, being equally divided, so that no affirmative decision upon it can now be made. In view of such a state of things, what is to be the final result and end of this kind of legislation? Our boasted system of representative government is to be perverted, and a collective democracy the most uncertain and dangerous of all governments to be arbitrarily substituted in its stead.” 29 Even in Vermont where the court was so well convinced that the people could be introduced into the system at the legislature's will to accept or reject State laws, the referendum has not enjoyed any marked development. The unconstitutionality of laws of this character is a general principle so firmly established throughout the Union to-day, that the legislature prefers not to run the risk of submitting its acts to popular vote. In the case of prohibitory liquor laws, and other legislative questions of a vexatious character, it is a much more feasible plan, as I have noted on earlier pages, to embody the proposal in an amendment to the State constitution. With the liberalization of our ideas in regard to constitutional law, and the simplification of the process by which amendments may be submitted to popular vote, there is little reason now why the legislature should pursue a course that may bring down upon itself the charge of having misunderstood and violated the charter from which it derives its whole authority. "People v. Collins, 3 Mich. 368. CHAPTER IX THE LOCAL REFERENDUM-BILLS AFFECTING THE SCOPE AND FORM OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENTS IT is in the counties, cities, towns and the other local districts of the States, by whatever name they may be designated, that the referendum has reached the fullest measure of its development in America. In no other field is it so laborious for the student to assemble the facts, since the laws governing the localities make very large volumes in every State, and they are being changed at each legislative session. Rules of a general character are observed in each State, however, in the enactment of such legislation, and all the Constitutions have more or less to say for the guidance of the legislatures. Indeed, in many States, and it is a tendency which has become firmly established in our practice, special legislation in regard to localities is being prohibited altogether, or the privilege of passing "special laws" is at any rate being very much curtailed. This again is an important restriction upon the powers of the legislature, which, as we have seen, has been losing on so many sides, and fewer legislative sessions, shorter sessions and smaller volumes of laws are the most natural and not unwelcome result. The great numbers of private acts which earlier burdened the statute books, and which had reference to separate municipalities,-cities, counties, towns, townships, etc.,-meant to serve a purpose in single emergencies, have been superseded by "general laws' in most of the States. It is true that there are some important Commonwealths in which "special laws" are still permitted by the Constitution, but the evils which have crept into the legislative halls through this system, especially with the growth and development of great cities, have become so of |