Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/612

600 members; why should one hundred be able to retain law against the will of two? Suppose there had been only one legislative chamber of three hundred members; would the negative of one hundred members on the proposed repeal of a law, have controlled the negative of the two hundred as to its continuance?

By our constitutions a power to legislate is bestowed, generally, upon several legislative branches; but the legislature of Vermont consists of a single chamber. Bestowed either upon several branches or this single chamber, it is an affirmative power. What reason can exist why this affirmative power should in substance be acquired by a moiety or a third of the legislature, when it consists of two or three branches, and be yet incapable of being aequired by a moiety or third of a legislature consisting of a single chamber? Legislative power is bestowed on both in the same terms. Yet in consequence of the feudal form of putting a question, this moiety or third of the legislature constituted in the first mode, makes law by retaining it; whereas no such power can be exercised by the legislature constituted in the second mode, although the powers given to both are precisely the same.

Thus a body of men gains out of a form moulded by itself and subject to its own pleasure, a power to legislate, bestowed neither by the constitution, nor by republican principles, nor even suggested by sound reasoning, in a government planted in a compromise between three orders. When the true question is whether an old law shall continue," the collateral question whether a new law shall pass." important only from its incidental influence upon the true question, bestows upon a negative vote an affirmative power, or a substantial legislative power, which it could never exercise by voting affirmatively. And a negative upon a bill by one legislative branch, supersedes negatives upon the continuance of a law by two, in consequence of an arbitrary form, in a country whose policy it is, that law should be the genuine result of common consent affirmatively enunciated.