Page:State v. Little Rock, Mississippi River and Texas Railway.pdf/15

. 31] enforce itself. It defines certain powers; but to make them operative, legislation is necessaly.

The authorities upon this point are numergys and clear, and we do not understand counsel as contending that, in order to give effect to this constitutional provision, legislation is not necessary; nor that it is not also necessary, before the passage of an act which provides for loaning the credit of the State for railroad purposes, that the qualified voters of a State, should assent to the passage of a law by a majority vote. But they contend that if a majority so voting, vote for railroad, the law becomes operative and is in force. But if this be true, and the law is to take effect as soon as the vote is counted and the fact ascertained, it was certainly not in force before that time; nor when the polls were opened, the votes taken, and the count made, because all these acts must precede the ascertainment of the result, which calls the act into existence; and as a consequence, at the time when the election was held and the vote taken, there was no law in force; no legal obligation upon any one to make a correct and fair return of the result, which is sometimes found to be so important in the due administration of the law. So that this construction is unavailing, or, if well taken, we are unable to conceive how a legislative enactment, which of necessity must be complete, can be made to take effect for one purpose and not for another.

The whole act must be perfect in all its parts, before it leaves the legislative department. And unless by an express declaration in the act itself as to the time when it is to take effect, under the express provisions of the Constitution, it does not go into effect, and is inoperative as a law, until ninety days after the adjournment of the session at which the law was passed.

The remarks of Mr. Williams, special judge, in the case of Whitehead v. Wells, that a law did not take effect until ninety