Page:Address of Frederick V. Holman at Oregon Bar Association annual meeting.djvu/41

 charter was sufficient. This was merely the grant of a power by name, without providing- of what such power consists, for there is no definition, in Section 2 of Article XI, as amended, of what a charter is.

In 1 Abbott on Municipal Corporations, page 40, it is said:

The power to alter, amend, or repeal the charter of a public corporation must necessarily exist without limitation in the sovereign, otherwise there would be 'numerous petty governments existing within the State, forming a part of it, but independent of the central of the sovereign power.'

But in Oregon, by the amendments of 1906, is this sovereign power lodged in the legal voters of the respective municipalities? By the amendment of Section 2 of Article XI of its Constitution, it took from the Legislature the right to "enact, amend, or repeal any charter or act of incorporation for any municipality, city or town," and gave the right to enact or amend their charter to their legal voters, "subject only to the Constitution and criminal laws of the State of Oregon?" In the opinion in Straw v. Harris it is said oi said amendment and of said Section 1a of Article IV:

The language used in these amendments considered would appear to give to incorporated cities the exclusive control and management of their own afifairs, even to the extent, if desired, of legislating within their borders, without limit, to the exclusion of the State.

It can hardly be doubted that this is exactly what the proposers of these amendments, and, presumably, what the majority of the voters in 1906 intended in adopting these amendments. And this was done apparently without a knowledge of the primary principles of constitutional law or of the law relating to municipalities.

In order to arrive at this conclusion, however, the Supreme Court must have overlooked its decision in the case of Hood River Lumbering Company v. Wasco County, 35 Oregon, 498. This was a case where the constitutionality of a statute was involved, which did not provide for notice to the non-consenting owner of proceedings for appropriation of his property and gave him no opportunity to be heard as a matter of right. The Court held the law unconstitutional on this ground. On page 508 Mr. Justice Bean said:

"A notice not provided for by law is, in truth, no notice at all, and it is the province of the Legislature, and not of the Courts, to enact