legislative power of this state shall be vested in the senate and assembly," states the substance of the foregoing rule, omitting the governor. I have already noted in the first volume the fact that the convention that framed the first Constitution once voted to include the governor as a part of the legislature, but later, on Mr. Jay's motion, receded from this plan.

The status of the people of New York in relation to the British government was radically changed by the adoption of the Declaration of Independence and other action taken by the Provincial Congresses, and instead of being part of a great nation governed primarily by a King and Parliament, and immediately, in their colonial affairs, by their own legislature, they assumed a position of independence; or, as the framers of the first Constitution say, in the introduction to that instrument, by reason of the action already taken by the Continental and Provincial Congresses, "all power whatever hath reverted to the people." The Convention had been chosen for the express purpose, among other things, of framing a new government, and the members of the Convention always remembered and frequently asserted the source of their authority; thus we find in the introduction to numerous articles in the first Constitution the statement that "this Convention therefore, in the name and by the authority of the good people of this state, doth ordain, determine, and declare," etc. This Convention definitely eliminated royal and executive authority from legislation, so far as the enactment of laws was concerned, by the provision included in the first Constitution, that "the style of all laws shall be as follows, to wit: 'Be it enacted by the people of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly.' The second Constitution did not prescribe the form of the enacting clause. The legislature was therefore at liberty to change the form required by

the first Constitution. A change was made and appears for the first time in that part of the Revised Statutes embracing the first twenty chapters passed on the 3d of December, 1827, the enacting clause being in the following form: "The people of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do declare and enact as follows:" and the explanatory act passed the next day has the same enacting clause. With the first act passed by the legislature of 1828, January 4, the present form of the enacting clause was used, omitting the words "declare and," but other parts of the Revised Statutes subsequently passed used the form adopted in the first part. The form adopted in 1828 was included in the Constitution by the Convention of 1846.

§ 15. [Manner of passing bills. ]—No bill shall be passed or become a law unless it shall have been printed and upon the desks of the members, in its final form, at least three calendar legislative days prior to its final passage, unless the governor, or the acting governor, shall have certified to the necessity of its immediate passage, under his hand and the seal of the state; nor shall any bill be passed or become a law except by the assent of a majority of the members elected to each branch of the legislature; and upon the last reading of a bill, no amendment thereof shall be allowed, and the question upon its final passage shall be taken immediately thereafter, and the yeas and nays entered on the journal.

[Const. 1846, art. 3, § 15.]

Important changes were made by the Convention of 1894 in relation to the enactment of laws. In the article. on the legislature, in the chapter on that Convention, I have given a sketch of the propositions and discussions relating to this subject, including the power vested in

the

governor to waive the constitutional requirement concerning delay in the consideration of bills. The cases cited in this note relate to legislative action under the section as it existed prior to the amendment of 1894.

In People ex rel. Scott v. Chenango (1853) 8 N. Y. 317, the court say that it is a legal presumption "that a law published under the authority of the government was correctly passed, so far, at least, as relates to matters of form. . . . There is nothing in the Constitution which requires the yeas and nays to be taken in receding from an amendment which the senate had once adopted by the requisite vote and in the prescribed form. . . . The provision of the Constitution requiring the question upon the final passage of a bill to be taken immediately upon its last reading, and the yeas and nays to be entered on the journal, is only directory to the legislature. There is no clause declaring the act to be void if this direction be not followed. . . . It is not competent for the legislature to make the failure of its officers to append the proper certificate defeat the provisions of the Constitution. Such would be the effect of the act if the want of a certificate was made conclusive evidence that three fifths were not present when the final vote was taken."

In People ex rel. Purdy v. Highway Comrs. (1873) 54 N. Y. 276, 13 Am. Rep. 581, the court say that "when it is necessary to inquire by what vote a law was passed, the judges are to determine from the printed statutes or from the laws on file in the secretary of state's office, whether the requisite vote was received. Upon such an inquiry the printed volume is presumptively correct, and the original act is conclusive." The same subject is also considered in Purdy v. People (1842) 4 Hill, 384; De Bow v. People (1845) 1 Denio, 9; Commercial Bank v. Sparrow (1846) 2 Denio, 97; Rumsey v. New York & N. E. R. Co. (1898) 130 N. Y. 88, 28 N. E. 763; People v. Devlin (1865) 33 N. Y. 269, 88 Am. Dec. 377, where Judge Potter expresses the opinion that “legislative journals were not legitimate evidence to impeach the statute produced. They are not made evidence by the Constitution; they are not made so by the statute; they were never made so at common law. They are doubtless evidence, from the necessity of the case, on grounds of public convenience, and from the public character of the facts they contain, to prove the proceedings of the body whose records they are, because the Constitution requires them to be kept. Whenever any act or proceeding of

such a body becomes necessary to be shown as evidence, such journals may be received, but to impeach the force and effect of a solemn statute duly certified, no authority can be found within the limits of my research to admit them to be legitimate evidence, but much authority may be found to the contrary." By the legislative law of 1892, chap. 682, the presiding officer of each house is required to certify to the passage of every bill by a majority of the house, and, if required in a particular case, that three fifths were present, and that it was passed by a two-thirds vote; and such a certificate is declared to be "conclusive evidence" of the facts therein stated.

This section is cited, but without special discussion, in People ex rel. McSpedon v. Stout (1856) 23 Barb. 349, involving a question of the delegation of legislative power. The case is cited under that topic in notes to 1 of article 3.

§ 16. [Private and local bills limited to one subject.]— No private or local bill, which may be passed by the legis lature, shall embrace more than one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title.

[Const. 1846. art. 3, § 16.]

Sections 16, 17, and 18 present constitutional principles which, while modern in form, are not new in fact. The unpublished manuscripts in the State Library include the instructions issued to William Tryon on his appointment as governor of New York. The instructions bear date February 7, 1771. Two paragraphs relate to the enactment of laws, and they show that the English statesmen who directed colonial affairs fully appreciated the mischiefs intended to be prevented by these three sections. It has already been pointed out in the Introduction that these executive instructions formed a part of the colonial Constitution, and were as binding on the governor, the council, and the assembly of that period as the Constitution is upon the governor and legislature of the present day. These colonial paragraphs relating to the enactment of laws are equivalent to a modern constitutional

mandate on the same subject. Possibly the constitution makers who formulated these sections were familiar with the colonial precedents; at any rate the ideas expressed in the Tryon instructions and in these sections are similar and in some parts identical. One provision relates particularly to the subject embraced in § 16, another to § 17, and still another to private laws, and will be found in a note to § 18. The policy of § 16 is thus expressed in paragraph 12 of the instructions:

"You are also as much as possible in the passing of all laws to observe that whatever may be requisite upon each different matter be accordingly provided for by a different law, without intermixing in one and the same act such things as have no proper relation to each other. And you are more especially to take care that no clause or clauses be inserted in or annexed to any act which shall be foreign to what the title of such respective act imports, and that no perpetual clause be part of any temporary law."

This asserts the principle of the foregoing section and almost in the same language. The Tryon instructions will be found in Vol. III., Appendix B. The section was included in the Constitution by the Convention of 1846. The evils of the practice prohibited by the colonial instructions had largely increased with the growth of legislation in the state, and it was manifest that reform was needed. The Convention sought to put an end to the practice by limiting private and local statutes to one subject, which must be expressed in the title. The application of this restrictive policy in actual legislation has been a fruitful source of litigation, and the validity of numerous statutes has been challenged on the ground that they violated this provision. These statutes cover a great variety of subjects, being, of course, local or private, but so unrelated that a classification by topics is impracticable. Hence,