Page:State v. Little Rock, Mississippi River and Texas Railway.pdf/13

. 31], or implication. In order to take an act out of the Constitutional provision, the legislature must direct that the act, as a whole and entirety, shall take effect at a different time; and it is not sufficient that certain parts of it might have a construction which would, taken separately, give those parts effect at an earlier period."

In the case of The Board of Supervisors of Iroquois County v. Keady et al., reported in 34 Ill., 293, the question as to when an act of the legislature took effect, again came before the same court, in which Mr. Justice Beckwith, who delivered the opinion of the court, said: The 5th section of Art. 7 of the Constitution, provides that no county seat shall be removed until the point to which it is proposed to be removed shall be fixed by law, and a majority of the voters of the county shall have voted in favor of a removal to such point. This provision contemplates the passage of a law authorizing an election to be held, and prescribes the time and place where it shall take place, the manner in which it shall be conducted, and the results made known, without which the proceedings would be those of an unauthorized assembly. Before the passage of the act of February, 1863, there was no law authorizing such an election to be held by the voters of Iroquois County. An election was held on the 16th of April, 1863, and if the act mentioned had not then become a law, it is evident that no such vote has been given in favor of the removal of the county site as the Constitution provides. Sec. 3, Art. 3, declares that no public act of the General Assembly shall take effect, or be in force, until the expiration of sixty days from the end of the session at which the same is passed, unless so expressly declared by the legislature. The session of the General Assembly which passed the act, had not terminated when the election was held, and the act could not have become a law until after the expiration of sixty days from the end of the session, without the express declaration of the legislature to that effect.