JUDGE COOLY AGAIN,
because he is a text writer of great authority and for years Chief Justice, I believe, of the Supreme Court of Michigan. He says:
"But courts tread on very dangerous ground when they venture to apply rules which distinguish directory and mandatory statutes to the provisions of the Constitution. Constitutions do not usually undertake to prescribe mere rules of proceeding, except when such rules are looked upon as essential to the thing to be done; and they must then be regarded as limitations upon the power to be exercised. It is the province of an instrument of this solid and permanent character to establish these fundamental maxims and fix those unvarying rules by which all Departments of the Government must at all times shape their conduct; and if it descences to prescribing mere rules of order in unessential matters, it is lowering the proper dignity of such an instrument and usurping the proper province of ordinary legislation. We are not, therefore, to expect to find in a Constitution provisions which the people, in adopting it, have no regard as of high importance and worthy to be embraced in an instrument which for a time, at least, is to control alike the Government and the governed, and to form a standard by which is to be measured the power which can be exercised as well by the delegates as by the sovereign people themselves. If directions are given respecting the times and modes of proceeding in which such a power should be exercised, there is at least a strong presumption that the people designed it should be exercised in that time and mode only; and we impute to the people a want of due appreciation of the purpose and proper province of such an instrument, when we infer that such directions are given to any other end, especially when, as has already been said, it is but fair to presume that the people in their Constitution have expressed themselves in careful and measured terms, corresponding with the immense importance of the power delegated, and with a view to leave as little as possible to implication."
Here I might close my argument and submit this case to
