The rapid growth of State debts during the half century preceding 1870 was another cause of great dissatisfaction with the legislatures The total State indebtedness in 1825 was $12, 790,728; in 1870 it had risen to the portentous sum of $352,866,898. Drastic measures were taken by a large number of States to prevent further squandering of the people's money by their representatives, with such success that the total of State indebtedness was reduced to about $172,000,000 in 1904, since which time there has been only a small total increase save in the States of New York and Massachusetts where bond issues for canals and for highways have enlarged their combined debt to an amount of approximately a quarter of a billion. Most States forbid the legislature to contract debt for more than a maximum amount fixed by the constitution. (For example, $50,000 in Oregon; $1,000,000 in Pennsylvania). New York State allows the legislature to issue deficiency bonds, not to exceed $1,000,000, and to contract debt for the purpose of repelling invasion or of sup pressing insurrection, but for all other purposes the approval of the voters is necessary before a loan can be contracted. Moreover, nearly every State requires that a sinking fund be es tablished for every bonded loan issued.
This distrust of the legislature is traceable to several causes. State legislation has been frequently hasty and ill-advised. In New York from 1895 to 1904 the courts pronounced 41 laws, passed by the legislature, unconstitu tional. Special legislation has engrossed the attention of the legislators and has often been so obviously opposed to the general welfare that public opinion has imputed the worst of motives to the members. The people are con vinced that the party Thoss° controls the legis lature, the members of which merely register his will; and that he orders measures passed for partisan or corrupt purposes. The second of these reasons is unquestionably the most influ ential. A vast majority of the laws passed in the average legislature concern local or special interests. Eight typical States, in 1901, passed a total of 7,032 statutes, of which 5,876 were of local or special import. The objections to this class of legislation are two-fold. First: the time and interest of the members are so largely occupied with the work of obtaining legislative favors for political and personal friends that insufficient time and attention are given to bills of a general character whose ef fect upon the private or political fortunes of the legislators may not be so intimate. Second: Special legislation, particularly for corporate in terests, gives ample opportunity for bribery and corruption, which, although doubtless not so great as is often charged, is commonly believed by public opinion to be associated with the pas sage of such measures. Perhaps an even
greater evil is the constant changing and amend ing of city charters and other local government laws in the interests of the °boss° or party which controls the legislature, or of influential public service corporations. Sometimes an en tire city government has been legislated out of office, as in the Pennsylvania °Ripper° Act of 1902. To check this abuse, 39 States have adopted constitutional provisions forbidding special or local legislation. These provisions vary greatly. Some of them are very sweeping and stringent and others have not been care fully enough draughted to prevent the continu ance of the practices they were intended to abolish. The most common of these provisions require incorporation under a general law; pro scribe legislative auditing of private claims; prohibit exemption from taxation, except under general laws; forbid the passage of acts, ex cept as general laws for the chartering and government of cities and towns and, in the realm of purely private law, interdict legislative divorce and legislative admission to the bar.
The result of the presence, in the constitu tion, of this great mass of matter, either di rectly or indirectly restrictive of the powers of the legislature, has been to abolish the distinc tion in character which formerly existed be tween constitutional and statute law, and to in corporate in the body of supposedly fundamen tal law details that more properly belong in a statute or even in an administrative ordinance and thus enormously to increase the size of the constitution. It must be remembered that the State legislature is not, like Congress, a body exercising only delegated powers. Any power within the competence of the State it can legis late upon, unless forbidden by the constitution; hence any limitation of its power must be ex pressly stated in the constitution. This is the reason why distrust of the legislature has caused such an increase in the size of our State constitutions.
The frequent and lengthy additions to our State constitutions are themselves a fruitful source of further amendment, for the more elaborated the fundamental law is in a grow ing civilization the more frequent will the changes be. Dealing, as they do, often in mi nute detail, with a large range of subjects, con stant revision is necessary to remedy defects and to meet the needs imposed by changing conditions. The New Hampshire constitution of.1776, excluding the preamble, contained 600 words; the constitution of Oklahoma contains nearly 50,000 words.