Original Document

AFTER having finished their projected draft of a constitution, the Pennsylvania convention passed an ordinance providing for its submission to the electors of the State for their approval or rejection. This ordinance, ignoring or disregarding the existing general statutes of the commonwealth, and even any particular statute which may have been passed in reference to the convention and its proceedings, contains a body of special rules touching the manner of conducting the election, the count of votes and their return in the city of Philadelphia, and makes the convention itself, or a committee of it, a board of canvassers to examine the returns from the whole State.

The object of this provision is well understood; in fact, it was openly proclaimed. Under the present constitution, legislative corruption had become notorious; the law-making power had for years been a mere instrument of advantage in the hands of private persons and corporations. Upon this foundation is built, not the supremacy of the Republican Party, but the domination of the men who have obtained control of the machinery of the party. The proposed constitution, through its limitations upon the legislative power, which have been carefully prepared under the light furnished by a costly experience, and which are even more minute and peremptory than those contained in the latest constitution of Illinois, will destroy this stupendous evil.

A result so much desired by all good citizens, and so necessary to the great commonwealth itself, is naturally dreaded by those persons who, obtaining and keeping power by means of the evil, seek to have it perpetuated. The word had therefore gone forth from the secret chambers of the Ring that the proposed constitution must be defeated at the polls; and the elections of the last few years make it clear that if the voting machinery of Philadelphia should be left in the hands which ordinarily manage it, an opposing majority adequate to the emergency could easily be returned from that city.

Knowing these facts, the convention has undertaken to possess itself for the time being of this voting machinery, to supervise the election, to count the votes, and finally to examine the returns from the entire State. It thus seeks to ascertain the actual will of the electoral body, and to prevent the wholesale alteration of returns, and falsifying of results which, in representative government, is the most stupendous crime against society of which men can be guilty, more base and more dangerous even than treason.
This action was riot a scheme devised by one party to injure another, for the convention was decidedly Republican, and the ordinance received the assent of all the members except a few delegates from Philadelphia. The State officials, however, deny its validity, refuse to obey its, directions, and are endeavoring to procure a decision of the courts pronouncing it null and void. That the convention's plan should be successful so far as its immediate objects are concerned, must be the wish of all who fall hope for the overthrow of organized political corruption; but it may be possible that with the best of motives and for a most laudable purpose, the convention has overstepped the bounds of its own authority in such a manner and to such extent that the ultimate consequences may be more disastrous than the present evil which it desires to remove.

Whether there has been any such excess of authority or not, whether the ordinance of the convention is valid or void, are questions which involve the very bases of our peculiar civil polity. No portion of the American political system is more obscure than the functions of the constitutional convention regarded as a part of the orderly administration of government, as an instrument for the peaceful and legal reconstruction of the fundamental law. A correct conception of the logical position of the convention, and of the nature of the process by which a State constitution is framed and adopted, is not a mere abstraction; its practical importance equals if not excels its scientific interest; and it alone furnishes an answer to the specific questions which we have just proposed.


Credit: The Nation, December 4, 1873, p. 365.