its acts come into frequent collision with the Constitution, we may charitably infer that the latter perhaps is outgrown.

Constitutions, like creeds, are stationary while people grow, and people outgrow Constitutions as they outgrow creeds.

The history of Constitutions in general is marked by two eras: that of blind, unquestioning reverence, when the people are deemed to be made for the Constitution, and that of awakening scrutiny, when the Constitution is deemed to be made for the people. We have reached the second era in Pennsylvania.

Just a year ago our unwilling hearts were made to bleed for our friends upon the Supreme Bench by the cruel and strenuous demonstration of our President, that the fault for certain legal conditions in this Commonwealth lay with that tribunal and not with the Constitution which it expounded; hence it will be a labor of love at the present time to correct that impression and restore the tribunal to the respect which it formerly enjoyed, by directing our brief attention to the Constitution. We may speak without reservation, for "What in here is the Constitution between Friends?"

A very large part of our trouble with this instrument undoubtedly arises from the absence of definitions, and this omission from so modern a production, in so intelligent a civilization, is both surprising and inexcusable. Every important and comprehensive enactment, either in the form of statute or of Constitution, if intended to be permanent and not temporary, should contain its own interpretation of principal terms, and not leave the interpretation to be judicially surmised when its terms have acquired a different sense in popular or professional use. The value of a little lexicography in the statute law is plain without citing examples, and its value in the fundamental law needs no discussion. It may be urged against this proposition that definitions in the Constitution of the United States would have

destroyed its efficiency, and this may be conceded in the light of history. The Federal Constitution was only intended as a mere frame, the barest possible outline of government, and, being thus necessarily brief as well as experimental, and being subject to strict construction, wisely omitted definitions, thereby avoiding a pre-determined interpretation and securing a flexibility of construction which was more effective than war to make the nation strong; but the Constitution of our beloved Commonwealth, as you well know, is somewhat more than a frame or outline, and is more than a Constitution in any proper sense. It is a comprehensive code of laws and like every code should contain its own lexicography. If it had only vouchsafed to say, in connection with that comprehensive bill of prohibited particulars just what it meant by "special," how much presidential exertion a year ago, how much judicial dialectics for a generation, and how much professional lucubration during all these weary years would have been saved for the better service of God or man! If its provision for trial by jury had only avoided the dustcovered ambiguity of "heretofore" by express restriction and exclusion, how much more respect we would have for the bulwark of our Liberty! If its grant of immunity to the press excepting "for abuse," had only defined the exception by metes and bounds so that the grantee could not encroach without detection, how much gubernatorial agony during the last terrible three months might have been avoided, and how much fine editorial indignation might have been devoted to Kishineff or the post-office frauds! If its denial of increase in salaries of public officers had only explicitly included or excluded the judiciary, what a load of suspense would have been lifted from many a judicial heart hankering to enjoy an adequate salary! If its guaranty of the individual right to pursue one's happiness had only said in so many words that happiness means absolute right under law to choose one's own associations without hindrance or dictation, how completely and authoritatively would such a definition bring

to shame the crude and distorted conceptions of social right which now sway millions! These sundry suppositions furnish a rude outline for what remains of this discourse.

I.

ARTICLE III, SEC. 7. "The General Assembly shall not pass any special law," etc.

I hasten to acknowledge my inability to furnish a single new idea, or even a single new expression of an old idea on the subject of special legislation. Inability means impossibility. The confession does not dishonor me, but does honor the Bench and Bar, who, in the brief space of one generation, have performed the supreme intellectual achievement of exhausting one rich mine of thought.

And yet we are not satisfied!

Dissatisfaction reached high water mark only as late as 1902, and its ebb since has been only resignation, not contentment. The deplorable thing connected with our condition is, that we are really uncertain whether the cause of discontent is in the court or in the Constitution. The sick man who does not know his ailment is said to derive comfort from the certainty that he has got appendicitis; and we perhaps may obtain similar solace from the assurance, which I do not hesitate to administer, that the cause of discontent is in the court and in the Constitution. The court is causa proxima, the Constitution is causa remota, and as causa remota in fact, if not in law, is the more culpable of the two, I will say for this occasion causa remota non proxima spectatur.

I will not quarrel with the deduction of our former President that the court is inconsistent; but inconsistency has always been recognized as the prerogative of great minds. The proclivity of great minds is ingenuity. We have numerous judges in Pennsylvania who will refuse to accept the new emolument, but not any who are able to

resist the temptation to be ingenious. The Bar has always suffered, and must continue always to suffer in patience, from this incurable judicial proclivity.

Wheeler vs. City of Philadelphia was merely an exhibition of ingenuity, for which we find the Constitution responsible in failing to say what it meant by the term "special."

The different species are elaborately enumerated, but the genus is indeterminable. Hinc illae lacrimac! The court left to itself and confronted with the hideous spectre of a lazaretto inland, rushed for refuge to classification. We call it that, but in fact it is sub-classification. The distinction between class and sub-class often escapes notice, although it is not subtle. Classification is general, subclassification is special. Legislation for a class may be natural, appropriate and necessary, but legislation for a subclass may be the reverse.

Cities or school districts as municipal classes, distinct from boroughs and townships, make proper subjects for legislation, but cities or school districts of a certain size as municipal sub-classes distinct from cities or school districts of certain other sizes, crowd the Constitution hard. To differentiate things of the same kind on the basis of physical dimensions is not to classify but to specialize, and while this sort of sub-division may be allowed for intangible entities like private corporations, it has a different aspect when applied to geographical localized entities like municipal corporations. Of course, the sagacious framers of the Constitution had all this in mind while they wrought upon this matter. We should do them grave injustice not to assume they thought as we think, and so we do them no injustice to scold them for not saying what they thought as well and wisely as we have said.

Constitutional restraints upon legislation are valuable adjuncts to civilization, and it is aggravating to think that we have lost, by mere want of care in the expression, a large part of the heritage intended for our benefit.

I go one step farther to express regret that the framers, besides prohibiting special legislation in terms capable of evasion, also failed clearly to prohibit general legislation beyond certain bounds, say fifty pages once in two years. Of course I should not have dared to venture such a revolutionary suggestion until after we, as an association, did our deadly work in 1901, but in all soberness and truth we are outrageously over-lawed. Doubtless the framers, in 1875, comparing the emaciated volume of that year with its corpulent predecessor in 1873, complacently attributed the contrast to their work in the convention, but in 1901 their survivors must have felt the cruel shock of disappointment to behold a volume swelled to ancient dimensions even without the help of "special" laws.

The wisest man of antiquity bewailed the fact even before the age of novels, that "of making many books there was no end"; and we, who are the wisest men of our day, may well bewail the fact that of making many laws there is no end. The execrable need for biennial adjustment of one's legal equipment to the latest statute is the bane of a barrister's existence.

The pamphlet laws of 1901, lying undigested and indigestible upon my professional stomach, have shortened my life almost as much as those laws are longer than the pamphlet laws of 1899. If the Legislature of 1903 had simply passed appropriations and adjourned, so that a blessed interval of four years would ensue unbroken by a single other enactment, the people would not be harmed one whit, the lawyers would simply be in clover, and even the Governor would be a happier man.

Relief from this plethora will not be gained by abstinence of the legislator, for he is bound with his colleagues in a reciprocity of mutual obligation to please respective constituents; nor by veto of the Executive, for he must show some respect to the legislative branch; nor by decision of the judiciary, for it must give to the Act the benefit of a reason