Page:Palmore v. State.pdf/5

252 Rh  grand jury should be householders or freeholders. Gantt's Digest, sec. 3654. This section is not obnoxious to the constitutional objection interposed by appellant, for the act of 1871, from which this section was taken, does not conflict with sections 22, 23, art. V, Constitution of 1868, by embracing more than one subject, and in failing to copy the law, revised or altered, entire. The constitution required singleness of subject, to prevent omnibus bills, by which various distinct schemes could be united in one bill, and the like, and the friends of separate measures be thus united to carry through measures which, alone, could not be passed. It was not intended to require that minute separation of subjects as is here claimed. Neither does it conflict with said section 23, art. V of the constitution; the object of which was to prevent that system of amendments, which, instead of inserting the amendment or alteration, together with so much of the old law as was retained, provided, in terms directory, that a given law should be amended as follows, to wit: in a given section or line, strike out given words and insert others, leaving the court, by this direction, to make the amendment itself and make a new law out of the two. This constitutional provision intends to check all that kind of legislation, and requires the legislature to give us, in the old and the new put together, what the new law is intended to be. By these rules it is easy to see that this provision of the act of 1871 is perfectly constitutional; none of the old sections was wanted, hence none is retained. It is expressly repealed, or by implication, by the inconsistency of the new section. The subject is sufficiently embraced within the title. There is nothing in this exception.

After the demurrer was sustained to appellant's motion in abatement of the indictment, and he had thus excepted, he waived arraignment and pleaded not guilty, and the cause was continued until the fall term; at which time the case was tried,