extraordinary growth in the number and variety of restrictions on the legislative power. And each individual one of these restrictions has been the result of some abuse.
And this historical fact is equally true of our local legislatures in municipal affairs. City councils have been stripped of power after power, until in New York and Brooklyn they are mere shadows. And in Chicago few people would mourn if the common council were nothing more than a shadow.
Here, then, is a fact in constitutional history. The development of our organic law since the republic was founded exhibits a growing distrust of legislatures and an incessant multiplication of measures calculated to hedge them about with restrictions.
And this state of public opinion, so clearly reflected in constitutional enactments, has become deeply impressed on the public consciousness.
Nothing is more common than the opinion that our legislative bodies, from Congress to the common council, are both ignorant and venal. We all remember the case of the young member of Congress from the far west, who, when he first took his seat and listened with awe to the speeches of his colleagues whose names had been to him household words, audibly expressed the wonder how in thunder he got there. After he had been a member for a year he wondered how in thunder any of them got there. More than one business man since 1893 has despairingly wished that Congress would adjourn for ten years. And in his old age one day Gouverneur Morris remarked to John Jay: "Jay, what a set of damned scoundrels we had in that Second (Continental) Congress." And Jay assented. This was the Congress which declared our independence and waged the Revolutionary War.
And the periodical adjournment of our state legislatures is usually welcomed with a sigh of relief. It is well understood that these bodies as a rule are not independent lawmakers. They move only as the wires are pulled by their various masters, political and financial. The taint of jobbery and bribery infects them. The lobby has come to be called "the third house" —
