THE METHODS OF PROCEDURE.
To amend a Constitution is, to all intents and purposes, to the extent that the amendment adds to or takes from the instrument, making a new Constitution-creating a fundamental law upon which other laws of indefinite sweep, for good or evil, may be based. Admitting this proposition, and I challenge contradiction, what is the position of the amendments upon which the last Legislature deliberated?
For myself I have no desire to evade the question nor belittle its serious significance. I am not unmindful that it has awakened widespread concern and that gentlemen of accredited erudition have arrived at antagonistic conclusions. But it has been my business, as a representative of a constituency, loyal to the Constitution, to ascertain what it demands when amendments are proposed. Permit me to read so much of Section I of Article 16 of the Constitution as bears directly upon the question under discussion: "Any amendment or amendments to this Constitution may be proposed in either branch of the General Assembly, and if the same shall be agreed to by a majority of the members elected to page: 128[View Page 128] each of the two Houses, such shall, with the yeas and nays thereon, be entered on their journals, and referred to the General Assembly to be chosen at the next general election."
Mr. Chairman, it is not my prerogative to arraign the last General Assembly. It may have performed its duties as best it could with the ability it possessed, but in so far as it dealt the Constitutional amendments upon which it deliberated, and doubtless voted, it committed one mistake, provided it was the intention to refer said amendments to this-the next General Assembly. It was a sin of omission for which this House can furnish no atonement. The Constitution commanded the last General Assembly, if it agreed to certain amendments to the Constitution, that it should, "with the yeas and nays thereon, be entered on their journals." This was not done. There is no such record-no commanding testimony. The journals of the last General Assembly are defective. Hearsay-rumor-common report-oral testimony does not answer the Constitutional requirement.
