Article one of the Declaration of Rights,
Which we are now considering, reads thus:
''That all government of right originates
from the people, is founded in compact only,
and instituted solely for the good of the
whole; and they have at all time's the ina-
lienable right to alter, reform or abolish their
form of government, in such manner as they
may deem expedient,"
As we have gone through this bill of rights,
I voted for the latter portion of that first ar-
ticle, instead of the provision as it stands in
the present Constitution, And I did so upon
this theory, that the people of one generation,
in forming a Constitution for themselves,
have no right by that Constitution to tie up
the sovereign rights of the people of another
generation, or of any other period. I con-
tend that the people have at all times the
right to change their form of government,
independent of any constitutional provisions
which tie them down to a certain mode of
amendment. They have that right, and you
cannot take it from them. It is asserted as
an unalienable right—this right of revolution,
whether it is by force, or under the forms of
law, or in the mode prescribed by the Con-
stitution.
Now, the difficulty which has always arisen,
in reference to the exercise of this power upon
the part of the people of this State—the diffi-
culty which existed in 1850; the difficulty
which existed in regard to the calling to-
gether of this Convention—in my mind, the
difficulty was this; not that the people had
not the right to change their Constitution
whenever they chouse to do so; but it was
that the Constitution prescribed that this
Constitution shall not bealtered, changed, or
abolished, except in the manner therein pre-
scribed and directed. Now, does that estab-
lish the law to the people of a subsequent
generation, the people of a subsequent date?
In my humble opinion it does not. I think
that any people in the formation of any Con-
stitution has no right to tie up the action of
people of a succeeding generation, or to in-
terfere with this unalienable right of a peo-
ple.
The true difficulty has been that it is the
Legislature that has violated its duty; for it
was the Legislature that you could thus tie
up, and this article of the present Constitu-
tion, properly construed, goes to the power
of the Legislature to call a Convention to-
gether. I contended, in the last Legislature,
that as article 43 of the bill of rights of the
present Constitution, provided that the Con-
stitution should not be changed except in the
manner prescribed therein; and as article
eleven of the Constitution provided the mode
in which the Constitution should be amended ;
and as members of the Legislature had taken
an oath to support that Constitution, their
action was prohibited upon that subject; that
is, they could not provide for the assembling |
of a Convention, until the people had first
decided whether they would have a Conven-
tion or not. It was a question which affected,
not the power of the people, but the power
of the Legislature, and hence, as I said in
my argument on this first article, when that
article was under consideration, the Conven-
tion of 1850, as well as the present Conven-
tion, were not constitutional Conventions.
But so soon as the people decided they would
have a Convention, and elected delegates to
it, they represented the people, and was not
constitutional or unconstitutional, so far as
the body assembled was concerned, or so far
as they derived their powers, because they
derived their powers from the people. It was
the Legislature which acted unconstitutional-
ly, in calling the Convention before the people
had voted upon the question of having a
Convention. The Legislature had no right
to do that; and the Legislature in so doing
so far violated their oaths. But when the
people go to the polls, and say by their votes
that they will have a Convention, and will
elect delegate's to it, then it makes no differ-
ence how it was called, whether the Legisla-
ture called it constitutionally or not. The
Convention is then called by the power of the
people.
The amendment I have offered carries out
the idea, that we do not pretend to tie up
the action of a people of a succeeding gener-
ation, But we say to the Legislature, whose
powers are meted out to them and defined
under this Constitution—"you members of
the Legislature shall not provide in any shape
or form for the change, alteration, or abolish-
ment of this Constitution, except in the mode
and manner prescribed in this Constitution,
and which your oaths of office force you to
obey and carry out." I think that by the
adoption of a provision of this kind, you
bring directly home to the members of the
Legislature the performance of their duties
under the Constitution. You confine the
mode of change by Legislature to that which
is provided in the Constitution. But in my
humble opinion you do not interfere at all
with that great fundamental principle, the
unalienable right of the people, to alter, re-
form, or abolish their form of government in
such manner as they deem expedient; which
right lies at the basis of the American system
of government, and which you may attempt
to tie up as you please in the Constitution :
but all such restrictions will be in vain, and
not worth the paper upon which they are
written; for it is but an attempt by one peo-
ple at one time to tie up the rights of another
people at another period, which rights are
just as unalienable as the rights of the people
of this generation.
Mr. JONES, of Somerset. I think the Leg-
islature ought to have the right of passing a
law to take the sense of the people, upon the
propriety of assembling a constitutional Con- |
