FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41  
42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   >>   >|  
ion of the Governors of all the States, meeting annually in conference as a deliberative body (with no lawmaking power) for initiative, influence, and inspiration toward a better, higher, and more unified Statehood. Its organization will be simple and practical, avoiding red-tape, unnecessary formality, and elaborate rules and regulations. It will adopt the few fundamental expressions of its principles of action and the least number of rules that are absolutely essential to enunciate its plan and scope, to transmute its united wisdom into united action and to guarantee the coherence, continuity, and permanence of the organization despite the frequent changes in its membership due to the short terms of the Executives in many of the States. With the House of Governors rests the power of securing through the cooperative action of the State legislatures uniform laws on vital questions demanded by the whole country almost since the dawn of our history, but heretofore impossible of enactment. The Federal Government is powerless to pass these laws. For many decades, tight held by the cramping bonds of Constitutional limitation, it has strained and struggled, like Samson in the temple, to find some weak spot at which it could free itself, and endangered the very supporting columns of the edifice of the Republic. It was bound in its lawmaking powers to the limitation of eighteen specific phrases, beyond which all power remained with the States and the people. In the matter of enacting uniform laws the States have been equally powerless, for, though their Constitutional right to make them was absolute and unquestioned, no way had been provided by which they could exercise that right. The States as individuals, passing their own laws, without considering their relation or harmony with the laws of other States, brought about a condition of confusion and conflict. Laws that from their very nature should be common to all of the States, in the best interests of all, are now divergent, different, and antagonistic. We have to-day the strange anomaly of forty-six States united in a union as integral parts of a single nation, yet having many laws of fundamental importance as different as though the States were forty-six distinct countries or nationalities. Facing the duality of incapacity--that of the Government because it was not permitted to act and the States because they did not know how to exercise the power they possessed--the F
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41  
42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
States
 

action

 

united

 

powerless

 

fundamental

 

Government

 
uniform
 

lawmaking

 

exercise

 

Governors


limitation

 

organization

 

Constitutional

 

unquestioned

 
equally
 

provided

 

absolute

 

phrases

 

columns

 

edifice


Republic
 

supporting

 

endangered

 
powers
 
people
 

matter

 

remained

 

eighteen

 

specific

 

individuals


enacting

 

importance

 

distinct

 

nation

 

single

 

anomaly

 

integral

 
countries
 

nationalities

 

possessed


Facing

 

duality

 
incapacity
 
permitted
 

strange

 

brought

 
condition
 

confusion

 
harmony
 

relation