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[XXVIII]

This assertion then, we consider and entirely gratuitous and without foundation.

But if everything asserted or insinuated in the preamble, be assumed to be true, we protest against the Act for the following reasons

1st. The reason alleged for this extraordinary and anomalous piece of Legislation is not that the acts and doings of the Legislature or of the Governor and Council of the last year were not promotive of the public good or were not calculated to advance the best interests of the state, for if this were the case, this Legislature might apply the ordinary corrective of repealing obnoxious acts and resolves and counteracting the doings of the Executive Department, but that the Legislature was not invested with power to do what they did or rather that we had no Legislature last year, clothed with power to do any acts nor any Governor and Council constitutionally competent to do any acts in consequence of the unconstitutional manner in which the Legislature was organized.

We believe this is the first instance in the History of the Legislature in our Country where a Legislature has undertaken for any purpose to claim and exercise the right of examining into and adjudicating on the manner in which any preceding Legislature has been organized, and if it be competent for this Legislature thus to do in relation the the last Legislature, it is equally competent for them to enquire into the manner in which any other Legislature since the adoption of our Constitution has been organized, And if found to be exceptionable to proceed as in this instance to denounce their acts and doings as unconstitutional.

But the exercise of this power necessarily involves the right of examining the returns of votes for Senators the elections of members of the House