biennial, but it should have been constitutionally prohibited from ever meeting at all at any time. At the last session one of its members seems to have been impressed with some idea of this sort, and therefore he did propose another constitutional "amendment," which was to reduce the time of its biennial sessions from one hundred and three working days to seventy-eight working days.

The time when the laws of the last session were approved by the Governor, may fairly be taken as a just representation of the way our Legislative business has always averaged during previous sessions. Its sessions, as we all know, are now constitutionally required to commence on the first Monday of December, and end in one hundred and twenty consecutive days thereafter. The last session therefore ended on the 30th of March, 1874. In December (last session), our Legislature passed thirteen statutes. In January it passed thirty-nine. In February it passed one hundred and nine. In its thirty days in March it passed five hundred and eighteen statutes. Over six hundred bills and joint or concurrent resolutions were passed during the last thirtyeight days of the session. If the members had worked ten hours every day during that period, and they probably did fully that or more, (I have worked there sixteen hours a day many and many a time,) they would have found the constitutional limitation afforded not exceeding ten minutes for the full consideration and passage of each measure in committee, and in each House, and not exceeding five minutes for the executive examination and approval, where that was necessary. And this too includes the time offered for the passage and the executive approval (which it received,) of the new Constitution for this State, which the last Legislature prepared, vicariously, instead of leaving it to a Constitutional Convention to do, as the plain rights of the people, and the present Constitution both plainly required.

I cannot suppose there is now anybody in this State so little informed of the habitual conduct of our Legislature, (almost required by the Constitution, certainly not prohibited), as not to know that it repeatedly adopts laws at every session which are never read at all in either House. This, to say nothing of the other and far greater objections, most unjustly and most enormously increases the duty and the necessary vigilance of the executive, not merely to veto unconstitutional acts, but also to veto acts not even properly worded, nor sometimes even expressing the meaning they were intended to convey. And this is what we call passing laws by the supreme legislative power of a great and intelligent State! This is the kind of thing we suffer intelligent nations to point at as the "American system of government,” as one of the constitutional plans of the " model republic!" Every

citizen knows, or ought to know, that the great volumes of "the Codes" of this State were so passed, were so "rushed" through the legislature, without so much as even being read at all in either House. And this was done through no willful and intentional heedlessness on the part of members, because the present Constitution not only permits laws to be so passed, but in such a case, conceding it was wise or tolerable to pass all said laws at one session, the Constitution did not afford sufficient time to read them all through in each House, provided other legislation for the country was to be attended to. And it is scarcely probable that the Executive would not have subjected himself to noisy abuse if he had called an extra session for that purpose; and even if he had, what kind of consideration is that to give to the laws of the country, which is to be gained by merely hearing them hurriedly read at a clerk's desk, or having them scattered in printed sheets on the desks of members, not one half of whom could be reasonably expected to comprehend and well understand them all, even if they read them or heard them read? But we have not yet told all. Of the six hundred and seventy-nine statutes passed at the last session, (and the kind and quality of our legislation now to be referred to, I regard as but the average of what always happens at every session, and always will occur until a new plan is adopted,) no less than five hundred and eighteen of the six hundred and seventy-nine were merely local or personal acts, and of no moment to the State at large. Not even one quarter of the statutes passed, approved, and published at the expense of the State, are of any more real importance to the State than though they were so many ordinances passed by our smallest country village trustees. No less than thirty-two of our last session's Statutes of California, were passed to permit county sheriff's or clerks to leave the State, (instead of leaving them to resign their offices if their private interests required them to go abroad,) or for the private interests of some persons in the way of getting money claims allowed, justly or unjustly. Nine several seperate statutes were passed to enable school districts to build school-houses, or to do something else of a like local nature in behalf of school districts. One statute to change the orthography of some unknown place, and two or more to change the names of some such places. Three several statutes were passed to prohibit hogs from running about in some of the counties, and one to prevent horn-cattle, and one other to prevent sheep being allowed to do so. Several separate statutes were passed to make counties pay debts they apparently were not obliged to pay otherwise. One special statute to authorize the County Government of San Francisco to hire a messenger; and, I believe, one other to enable it to better provide for removing dead dogs from its streets.

No less than nine different statutes were passed to enable as many counties to build bridges, and thirty-seven to enable that number of different counties to provide for making, roads or highways in their respective counties. This kind of legislation would all be better performed and more safely and more in accordance with the wishes of the people of the counties, if the counties were first well provided with a respectable and completely safe local government, and then left to do their own purely local business themselves. But the quality of the legislation our Legislature performs, is also frequently of such an imperfect character, that it might almost as well be called "perpetrated" legislation as "enacted" legislation. There is no provision whatever made in the Constitution to insure any intelligent care and scrutiny; and then such haste is required by the amount of business and the shortness of the sessions, that even at the last session no less than thirty-four separate statutes were passed to repeal or to amend that number of statutes improperly, or imperfectly, or uselessly passed at the session only next preceding the last. And no less than thirteen several statutes were passed at the last session and approved by the Governor, to repeal or amend thirteen other statutes previously passed and approved by the Governor at that very same session. So that even before the one hundred and three working days had passed by, they found it necessary to begin again to repeal or to amend some of the very acts both Houses had just passed, and the Governor had just approved only a few hours or a few days previously. Talk as we may; think as we please; throw the blame where we choose; is it not plain to the most ordinary comprehension, that there must be something seriously wrong in the constitutional organization of our Legislature, and that a convention ought to be immediately ordered, if for no other purpose than to effect the needed reorganization of this one branch of the government alone?

But I have already occupied too much space. Our community seems to be growing into such impatience at mental effort, that I am told I ought to present all that need be said respecting so vast a subject as the one under consideration, in fifty or a hundred lines, or "nobody will read it." Anybody. will read through a romance of two or three volumes. But I am told nobody will wait long to read through even an appeal made to them in behalf of redeeming their country from manifestly approaching disaster. And of saving republican government from the just reproaches and the reasonable apprehensions of the most thoughtful and intelligent men, not only throughout our own country, but also everywhere in Europe, where our example is now being held up in terror, and no longer in admiration. It is sad to reflect that we are no longer permitted to see

great men amongst us filling the great positions of our country. They seem to have all passed away suddenly and at once. And there seems to be now none left to guide us securely to the means of that redemption in our public affairs, which, I am convinced, we all earnestly pray for. But can there be any doubt that we should at least try to do something for the immediate State in which we live, and where our homes are established?

I have not even hinted at one half the defects which, I am sure, are to be mainly attributed to the badness of our constitutional system now in use, and not to the badness in our people, as most "statesmen" insist.

In proportion to the numbers of our population, no State has so much mental energy and culture, and intellectual power as ours. Why should it not be engaged to organize a good Constitution of government for us? And when will there be a better or more appropriate time to begin the accomplishment of that indispensable duty, than at the beginning of the new century now at hand?

Nineteen years ago I pointed out a score of other difficulties in our Constitution, none of which are herein referred to. Some of them have been attempted to be removed by Legislative patch-work and botch-work "Amendments," but nothing of that sort has, or reasonably can afford us much, if any, adequate relief.

In conclusion, I now earnestly beg of you-my countrymen, my fellow Californians!-to exert your own minds, and help me by your own reflections, to realize the seriousness of some of the defects to which I have referred, and which your own reflections, and your own intelligence will add to, beyond all I have suggested and beyond all I am able to suggest. I appeal to you to reflect earnestly upon the fact that our contrivances for passing laws, and for administering them, and almost our whole machinery of government, are still crude, cumbersome, imperfect, and almost unchanged, since our fathers first blocked them out in their first experiment of self government, undertaken for their small and sparcely settled collonial States, and for their universally plain-living, hard-working, simple-minded, generally uneducated, and deeply religious populations. Now, an empire has already arisen; and the frames of government they then invented, we have as yet but little, if at all improved; and we are seeking to stretch them and make them serve for a totally different people, with almost totally different habits, thoughts, opinions, beliefs, and modes of life. Already we have nearly three times the number of States, twenty times the number of population, and our own single State, here on the Pacific ocean, is three thousand miles from the settlements they formed and provided for, and in a region

unknown to them, and which they, in their age of wagons and stage coaches, could not have imagined would be reached and occupied as an American State in ten centuries, if ever. And yet here we are already, and in an American State more magnificent than any they possessed, and about as large as all their thirteen colonial States put together. Are we acting reasonably with ourselves, or justly toward their noble undertaking in behalf of self-government, when we idly refuse to attempt no improvements of moment for ourselves, and our own condition, as they did for theirs? And when we indolently, but not ignorantly, seek to make their plan for a few simple, ox-wagon States, on the Atlantic, serve to govern an Empire of Republics, united by iron roads and steamships and telegraphs, and already embracing the whole continent-which they but touched upon.

It would be as idle and foolish to say there shall be no further advances made in any science, as to say there shall be no more advances in the science of government. The age and the country in which we live, is not at all like the age in which our present plans of constitutions were originated. And the lapse of the next century we are now entering upon, will present an Empire of Republics no more like ours of to-day than ours are like those of the age we have wholly passed and left (even in a single century,) far behind us.

Indeed, respecting our forefathers, we have remained but imitators of the uneducated and over-religious Hindoos. We have been trying to make out, and to insist on the belief, that our ancestors were gods, although we know in fact they were but human and erring men like ourselves.

No man can love the fathers of the Republic more than I do, nor more revere their memories; nor more adore their courage and their patriotism; nor more revel in their memories; nor more earnestly strive to be governed by their political examples. My own ancestry extends back more than two centuries amongst them. But it is just to them, and to us, to remember that they were not even so thoroughly American as we ourselves, or most of us are. They were citizens of Great Britain by birth and by education. It adds to their glory, whilst it does not diminish the importance of our remembering the fact, that they were legally and constitutionally the citizens and subjects of the king, the constitution, and the laws of England. They had the educations, the opinions, the religious convictions, and the famous prejudices of Englishmen. They wisely refused at the outset of framing their governments, to agree to hardly anything that had not been previously tried in England. They adopted the English plan of organizing the departments of their governments, and the English plan of refusing to permit universal suffrage, and of requiring