Page:The Government of Iowa 1911.djvu/11

 PREFACE. the preparation of this book it has not been the author's purpose to write an exhaustive treatise on the Constitutional Law of Iowa. On the contrary, he has aimed in these pages to give a narrative and descriptive account of the government of Iowa, divorced as far as possible from legal verbiage and prosaic references to articles, titles, chapters, sections, and paragraphs of Constitution, Code, and Statutes. For the convenience of students and teachers who desire the exact wording of the State Constitution, the text of that instrument has been added in an Appendix.

The tendency, in recent years, of constitution makers to limit the powers of the legislature by incorporating numerous and often non-essential subjects in the Constitution has made many of our State Constitutions lengthy documents. Sometimes we find jumbled up with the outline of the framework of the government subjects which have no place in a written Constitution. Where such provisions occur in the Constitution of Iowa, they have frequently been passed over by the author as unimportant in the study of Iowa government. Moreover, our State Constitution is not altogether systematic in its arrangement. Sometimes the same subject is referred to in several places. vii