Abstract

The Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention Versus The State Officers

After having finished their projected draft of a constitution, the Pennsylvania convention passed an ordinance providing for its submission to the electors of the State for their approval or rejection. This ordinance, ignoring or disregarding the existing general statutes of the commonwealth contains a body of special rules touching the manner of conducting the election, the count of votes, and their return in the city of Philadelphia, and makes the convention itself, or a committee of it, a board of canvassers to examine the returns from the whole State. Under the present constitution, legislative corruption had become notorious; the law-making power had for years been a mere instrument of advantage in the hands of private persons and corporations. No portion of the American political system is more obscure than the functions of the constitutional convention regarded a! a part of the orderly administration of government, as an instrument for the peaceful and legal reconstruction of the fundamental law.