74 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



any time. It is simply a requirement that the people may have an 

 opportunity to vote on the question of a new constitution at stated 

 periods. The States have not been slow to take advantage of this privi- 

 lege. Since 1890, Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana, South Carolina, 

 Alabama, Virginia, New York, Mississippi, and Utah have adopted 

 new constitutions. New constitutions have been framed and rejected 

 by the people in Connecticut and Rhode Island. A convention to revise 

 the constitution was in session in New Hampshire during the past 

 winter. It submitted ten amendments, only four of which were adopted. 



The general characteristic of all these constitutions as compared with 

 those they have superseded is their great length. The New York con- 

 stitution is three and one-half times as long as the old constitution of 

 1846. The new constitutions of the southern States are about twice as 

 long as the old ones they superseded. The tendency everywhere in 

 constitution-making is to include in the new instruments a great mass 

 of law which has no connection with the framework of government. 1 

 At present there is no limit to what a convention may put into a con- 

 stitution except the restrictions on the States to be found in the con- 

 stitution of the United States. The result is that the members of a 

 constitutional convention take upon themselves to make such laws as 

 they think necessary in addition to making a frame of government. 

 Each member usually has some particular idea that he is especially 

 anxious to have put into the new constitution, and by a process of log- 

 rolling, a bargain to support each other's propositions, many members 

 succeed in getting their ideas incorporated into the fundamental law. 

 The leading cause of so much legislation being put into the constitu- 

 tions is the prevalent distrust of the legislature. The fear is general 

 that the legislature cannot be trusted, and therefore the constitution- 

 makers feel that the subjects on which legislation is most desired should 

 be attended to by the convention and the matter settled once for all, 

 instead of being left to the uncertainties of the legislature. 



This desire to limit the power of the legislature reached the extreme 

 in the new constitution of Alabama, where, besides a great deal of 

 special legislation, the convention substituted quadrennial for biennial 



' R. H. Whitten, New York Stale Library Bulletin, No. 72, p. 28. 



