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341

The undersigned members of the House of Representatives protest against an act intitled [entitled] " An act making valid the Acts & Resolves passed by the Legislature of the year Eighteen Hundred & Thirty & for other purposes" passed on the seventeenth day of February in the year of our Lord Eighteen Hundred and thirty one & respectfully ask that this their protest may be entered on the Journals of the House

The preamble of this act asserts that great & serious doubts have arisen whether the acts & resolves passed by the last preceding Legislature of this State are obligatory in consequence of the unconstitutional manner in which said Legislature was constituted & organized - sundry doings thereto appertaining having been decided & determined by the Judges of the Supreme Judicial Court to be unconstitutional & void - and also asserts that the acts & doings of the Executive Department of Government for the last political year were unconstitutional - The act then proceeds to declare the Acts & Resolves above mentioned to be valid to all intents and purposes - & that none of the rights of property real or personal gained by any of the acts & 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 & 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 & resolves of the last Legislature or the acts & doings of the Governor & Council of last year or in any way dissatisfied with the same - This assertion then we consider as 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

The reason alleged for this extraordinary & anomalous piece of legislation is not that the acts & doings of the Legislature or of the Executive were not for 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 & resolves & 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