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Under the criminal laws, all persons who break the peace or threaten to injure the person or property of another may be committed to jail or required to give bail. Intoxicated persons, from their condition, menace the safety of others, and if intoxication is a crime, as I think it is improperly supposed to be, society has a right to demand that preventive means be employed for its protection; if a disease, as I suppose it to be, the victim of social errors and vicious legislation ought to be provided with a retreat, and if possible a cure.

REVISION OF THE LAWS.

In 1869 a commission was appointed, in pursuance of an act providing therefor, to revise the general statutes of the State. At the subsequent session, a portion of the work was reported to the General Assembly and adopted. So far as the work of the revisors has come to my attention, in view of the difficulties they had to encounter, it has been well performed and shows that it has been entrusted to faithful and skillful hands. There having been no revision or codification of the general statutes since 1845, a period of nearly thirty years, and there having occurred, during the time, two several revisions of the Constitution of the State, it requires no extensive argument to show the necessity of completing this work of revision at an early day, that the law may be supplied to public officers and citizens at reasonable cost, and in proper and intelligible form.

If obedience to the law is expected, it seems as if ample provision should be made by the law making power to bring its provisions to the knowledge of those for whose government it is intended, and that, too, in methodical and intelligible form, addressed to the common undestanding. It is therefore to be hoped that this subject may receive at your hands that early and favorable attention which the public interest would seem to demand.

THE JUDICIARY.

It will be the duty of the General Assembly at its present session to divide the State anew into Judicial Circuits, as directed by the 13th section of the 6th article of the Constitution. The duty to be performed is one of much delicacy, and will no doubt be accomplished in the just and impartial spirit contemplated by the Constitution.

REPORTS OF THE STATE OFFICERS.

The report of the Secretary of State, the Auditor, the Treasurer and Superintendent of Public Instruction will be laid before the General Assembly. I cannot permit myself to separate from these officers without testifying to the faithfulness with which all of them have discharged their duties to the State.

These reports present a clear and full statement of the condition of the business in their respective offices, and contain much information of great value to the people of the State.

The State of Illinois is now substantially free from debt, and the time is not distant when it will occupy the proud position amongst the States of having discharged all its obligations, and of imposing no burden upon its citizens except such as may be required to carry on its government.

STATE CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS.

The excellent and exhaustive report of the Board of State Charities contains information of the financial condition and wants of the various charitable institutions, and at the same time affords evidence of the wisdom of the policy that suggested the creation of that Board.

No circumstance connected with my official life affords me more pleasure than to bear witness to the earnest devotion of the members of the Board to their interesting and sometimes perplexing duties. They receive no salaries for their services, though nothing, in my judgment, would be more proper than that they should be allowed hereafter such compensation as will at least partially indemnify them for the loss of

their time.

The report of the trustees and officers of the Hospital for the Insane, the institutions for the Blind, and the Deaf and Dumb, show that they are well managed, and no doubt appropriations will be made adequate to their wants.

It seems to be my special duty to ask the favorable consideration of the Legislature to the condition and wants of the institution for the care of the Feeble-minded. Until lately, this institution was regarded as an experiment; it is now an established success, and is effecting an amount of good for the unfortunates under its care that fully justifies its increased demands upon the treasury. It appears to me that a competent board (and I know of none more competent than the present trustees of the institution, and the superintendent,) should be appointed to select a location that affords all the requisite facilities, and erect thereon a building suitable to its wants. Such buildings as should be provided need not be expensive, but should be adequate to the wants of the class intended to be aided.

INTERNATIONAL PRISON REFORM CONGRESS.

I also have the honor to submit to the General Assembly the able report of Rev. Nehemiah Pierce, one of the delegates appointed by me, under the authority of a joint resolution adopted at the last session of the General Assembly, to attend a meeting of the International Prison Reform Congress which assembled at Middle Temple Hall, in the city of London, in July last.

Mr. Pierce attended the deliberations of the congress, and the report made by him embodies much highly valuable information upon the interesting subjects that claimed the attention of the congress.

The services rendered by Mr. Pierce in attending the congress were entirely gratuitous, and I submit that it would be worthy of the liberality of the General Assembly to appropriate a sufficient sum to repay him for the expenses incurred in preparing his most valuable report.

The reports relating to the Industrial University and the Normal institutions will show the condition of those institutions, and I commend them to the favorable consideration of the General Assembly.

NEW STATE HOUSE.

The commissioners for the erection of the new State House, as will appear by their report, have made considerable progress in the work, and have discharged their duties with fidelity to the State. I cannot doubt but that appropriations will be made and the building pushed forward to completion.

There are other subjects that will demand the attention of the General Assembly, and that might with propriety be mentioned; but as the distinguished citizen who will succeed me has large experience in the affairs of the State, I cannot doubt but that they have already secured his attention, and that his views and recommendations will be submitted to you at an early day.

CONCLUSION.

I am not willing to close this communication and my official connection with the government, without expressing something of my gratitude to the people for the honor they conferred upon me with the chief magistracy of the State. No one is more conscious than I am, that in the necessarily active share I have taken in the varied affairs of this great commonwealth I have, in the judgment of some, committed mistakes; but I have, in all my important official acts, been governed by my own. convictions of duty, only anxious that the free people of the State, to whose candid judgment alone I am responsible, should fully understand my conduct and its reasons and motives, and then decide to approve or relieve themselves from the consequences of what they may regard as my mistakes, by selecting a citizen for my successor who will avoid any error they may think I have committed.

During my administration of the government of the State, I have steadily acted upon political principles that I have always cherished as being essential to the well being of my countrymen. I have never faltered in the assertion of the rights of all men to liberty. Habitually distrustful of power, I have insisted upon subjecting all claims of a right to govern the people or to exercise any authority over them to the test of the Constitution, and I have never willingly submitted to any pretension of any person claiming power to act under the authority of the government of the United States, unless the power claimed was found to have been expressly granted or was necessarily implied in some grant of power contained in the Federal Constitution. And when the authority sought to be exercised has been claimed under a State, I have as earnestly sought to know that it was not comprehended within some power the people of the State have, by their Constitution, reserved to themselves or forbidden to be exercised by others. I have, at all times, regarded it as amongst my solemn duties to obey the Constitution of the United States, and to aid in defending the government created by that instrument, in the exercise of all its just powers, nor have I felt that my duty to support the Constitution of the United States originated in my official oath to do so.

My duties to the government of the United States began with my birth, and have never been forgotton nor neglected, and my unalterable purpose to discharge those duties has the support of my judgment and my affections, and I have felt under the most solemn of earthly obligations to obey and defend and support the Constitution and laws of the State of Illinois, and to enforce the laws of the State against all who might offend against them. I need not say that the duty of obeying and defending the laws of the State has the support of my most earnest convictions-for the preservation of the just authority of the States is essential to the perpetuity and usefulness of the government of the United States, and the maintenance of both is essential to that which is more precious than either-the liberties of the people.

The Constitution of the United States and that of the State of Illinois alike admit of amendment and alteration-that of the United States in one of its modes by the action of three-fourths of the States, and the Constitution of the State of Illinois by the consent of its people; but neither the one nor the other, nor the powers created or the restrictions imposed by either, can be enlarged, expanded, or restricted or limited, by mere construction. I do not believe that the civil war or its results altered or changed the Constitution of the United States, or that the war or its results enlarged or expanded the powers of the federal government, or contracted or dimished the powers of the States; nor did the war, either in its origin or history or its results, prove that according to the just theory of the government, the Federal and State systems are rivals for power, or that their powers, when rightly understood and wisely exercised, can be brough into collision. On the contrary, they are mere agencies and trustees of the people, who have assigned to the federal system certain well-defined duties, reserving to themselves in express terms all other powers of government; and then, that the essential rights of the citizens might be made secure, the people of the States have, in their Constitutions, declared that there are powers that no authority shall exercise, and that they possess rights that no government shall invade. I have at all times felt the deepest solicitude for the maintenance of the rights reserved to the States and the people for the reasons, alone, that they are the rights that are in the greatest danger of invasion; and while I have been watchful to maintain the authority of the States and the rights of the people when threatened from any quarter, my apprehensions have been most alive to dangers from the abuse of the powers of the Federal Government and from the influences of powerful and corrupt combinations that have their centre at the seat of the Federal Government, and from that centre extend their baneful influences over the whole country.

It is a fact, attested by history, that all the great dangers and convulsions that have threatened the overthrow of the Republic, and the subversion of public liberty, have had their sources there. It was at Washington that dis-union was conceived, and all the measures that made rebellion possible were organized in the Congress of the United States. It was from their seats that members of the two Houses of Congress from the Southern States aroused the fears and stimulated the hates of their constituents, until they became forgetful of the separate independent existence of the States, and the whole section was organized. into an "United South."

Rebellion was not possible until all the Southern States were stripped of all independent authority, and ceased to be centres of patriotic resistance; and it is from Washington that influences now proceed that threaten the overthrow of the liberties of the people; and to these influences I have felt it to be my duty to interpose a steady resistance. I do not, as may be inferred, attribute unpatriotic purposes to any department of the Government of the United States, but I do declare my belief that as the result of the new and dangerous views entertained by many in authority under that Government, from vicious and dangerous alterations which our political system has undergone from the ambition of some, the corruptions of others, and by the combinations of all these causes, the harmony of our systems and the authority of the laws and the purity of the Government, and the liberties of the people, are in danger.

My belief that these causes and dangers exist, has the support of many facts. The Congress of the United States is assuming to itself the entire domain of legislation, and to draw under its control every interest of the country, and to enlarge and extend the jurisdiction or the courts of the United States, and to increase the mere discretionary powers of the President. There are few subjects that are not now claimed to be within the control of the Government of the United States, and with the support of the doctrine that the authority of the Federal Government over subjects within the scope of its powers, is exclusive of that of the States, the day is not far distant when the right of the States to interfere in the control of the subjects of education, elections, the management of railways and telegraphs, and others of like importance, and their power to enforce justice in their courts, will be denied or greatly abridged. But the whole force of this influence is not confined to mere direct assertion of the authority of Congress, but it extends to the support of the pretensions of persons who hold their offices at the will of a distant authority, to interfere with the people in the exercise of their most important rights. I need not refer to all the facts that exist to support this statement. For nearly two years the rivalries of political parties have disturbed the peace of the State of Louisiana. A faction, largely composed of and headed by Federal officeholders, has notoriously employed the troops of the United States, and vessels connected with its revenue service, and the patronage of the custom house, the post office, and the Federal courts, to defeat and counteract the efforts of their adversaries; and more recently a judge of the United States, by an act of daring usurpation, has assumed the championship of the interests of one of the rival organizations that are contending for power in that unhappy State, and has, by a judicial order, without parallel in our history, on bills filed by persons claiming offices under the Constitution and laws of the State, disposed of and settled the great political questions that grow out of the disputed results of a State election, and he has in fact appointed the future Governor, and the persons who are to compose the Legislature of the State; and after having done so, then, by the use of the army of the United States, took possession of the public buildings and other property of the State; and none of these lawless usurpations and invasions of the laws and liberties of that State have been punished or rebuked. Acts like these may be perpetrated in the State of Illinois, and the consciousness of that fact has impressed upon me the necessity of resisting their influence, and demanding of all obedience to the Constitution and laws. It cannot be that the people of the State of Illinois are weary of the right to regulate and order their own domestic institutions in their own way, or that they so doubt their own respect for the Government of the United States, that they must enlarge its powers and subject themselves to the despotic agencies that are employed in many of the States of the Union. Illinois has always discharged all its duties to the common Union, and its people have every where shown themselves capable of comprehending and vindicating the central principle of American Republicanism, "State Sovereignty, National Union."

JOHN M. PALMER.

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