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6 effective this provision of the Constitution disfranchising cer- tain persons or disqualifying them from holding office." Although the Legislature has passed a Registration Law, it has as yet passed no law to carry into effect the provision of the Constitution disqualifying certain persons from holding of- fice, and it is settled law in Maryland that such a provision in the Constitution is of no force until the Legislature shall have passed the law which they are directed to enact. This posi- tion is clearly established by the decision in the case of Ban- del vs. Isaac, 13 Md. Rep., 231. At the adoption of the Constitution of 1850, the legal rate of interest was 6 per cent. That Constitution forbade the Legislature to increase it, and declared "that the Legislature should provide by law all ne- cessary forfeitures and penalties against usury." It was in- sisted that this action itself worked a forfeiture of all usuri- ous contracts, although the Legislature had passed no law on the subject because it was a constitutional declaration that such contracts were discountenanced by the organic law. But the Court of Appeals decided that the Constitution in this re- spect did not execute itself and that until a law should be passed by the Legislature forfeiting such contracts they remained valid except as to the excess of interest. In the same way we are satisfied in this case, that in the absence of an. act of Assembly declaring how such disqualification shall be ascer- tained and fixed, the latter member of the concluding sentence of section 41, of Article 3, is as inoperative as the first mem- ber of the section would have been, had not the Registration law been passed. But other sections of the Constitution demonstrate this still further. By section 8, Article 1, all persons then in office under former elections or appointments are required to take the new oaths of office, and by section 6, Article 12, all such officers are to continue to hold their offices for the residue of their terms. There ia nothing said here as to whether the persons thus serving out their full terms of service sliall be registered voters or not, and it is not improbable that among such officers may be some who have not been registered. Are they therefore disqualified in the face of the positive di- rection of the Constitution, that they shall continue to serve? And are all the judgments or other official acts of such per- sons since the adoption of the Constitution void? This House may well pause before they can make such a decision, which might render nugatory laws, disturb titles and unseat possessions throughout the State. But the expression in a law of a purpose with regard to one class of objects is uniformly regarded as an exclusion of such purpose with reference to all others. Sections G and 8 |
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Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly, 1866
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