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[XXVII] PROTEST

In Senate, March 17, 1831

The undersigned Members of the Senate, Protest against "an act entitled an act making valid the acts and resolves passed by the Legislature of the year Eighteen hundred and thirty, and for other purposes passed on the seventeenth day of February, in the year of our Lord Eighteen hundred and thirty one; and respectfully ask that this their protest may be entered on the Journals of the Senate.

The preamble of this Act asserts, that great and serious doubts have arisen whether the acts and resolves passed by the Legislature of this State are obligatory, in consequence of the unconstitutional manner in which said Legislature was constituted and organized, sundry doings thereto appertaining having been decided and determined by the Judges of the Supreme Judicial Court to be unconstitutional and void; and also asserts that the acts and doings of the Executive Department of Government for the last political year were unconstitutional. The act then proceeds to declare the acts and resolves above mentioned to be valid to all intents and purposes and that none of the rights of property real or personal gained by any of the acts and doings of the Executive Department shall be set aside or made void by reason of the unconstitutionality of such acts or doings.

We are at a loss to understand whence these great and serious doubts have originated inasmuch as there has not been a solitary petition or representation from any quarter made to this Legislature intimating that the People are disquieted with doubts as to the Acts and Resolves of the last Legislature or the acts and doings of the Governor and Council of the last year, or are in any manner dissatisfied with the same