results, while my good friend from Brookline (Mr. Whipple) is initiating a law which is going to relieve all poverty and make all men equal and distribute the wealth not only of Brookline but of the rest of the Commonwealth, somebody else is going to initiate a law that will produce exactly the opposite result, and probably both laws will be passed, and then after all we will have to do as they did in Oregon, come back to that poor, old, much abused Legislature to get the problem straightened out. [Laughter and applause.]

Now, gentlemen, there are many of these details with respect to the imperfections in the working of the law that will be obvious to you on any consideration of it. The minority has attempted to point out some of them in its report. But there are certain larger aspects of the situation of which I want to speak to you a moment in the light of those things that have been said by my friend from Brookline in the fourth division (Mr. Whipple).

If I understand him right, and I want to state it with absolute fairness to him, but if I understand him right he believes that if a law which has been passed by the Legislature is declared unconstitutional in the courts, it then should be so provided by this resolution which is before you that the majority of the people who may happen to vote on it may immediately engraft some change on the Constitution so that such a law cannot thereafter be declared unconstitutional. Now I want you to follow that out just a minute.

As I understood the gentleman from Brookline in the third division (Mr. Walker), the wrong that appealed most to him was that some court had decided that the workmen's compensation law was unconstitutional. That may be so. It is not within my observation. All I know is that no Massachusetts court has ever so decided, and we have no such evil to deal with, we have no such problem to consider, we have no such danger to guard against. I want to give you an illustration of the kind of law that our court has declared unconstitutional, and as it is one which touches closely those members of our assembly who are interested in the welfare of the labor organizations I use it because I know it interests them. Perhaps it annoys them, perhaps it irritates them, perhaps they think it unjust; but look at it and scan it and analyze it fairly and see if it is unjust.

You know that for many years the courts have said in labor disputes that there were certain situations where the use of the injunction to prevent irreparable injury to property was proper and right, and injunctions have been issued to prevent destruction of property or interference with the use of property when the interference that was threatened was such as to be dangerously and irreparably destructive. Aiming at the exercise by the courts of that power to enjoin, the friends of labor obtained the enactment of a law which declared that the right to labor was not property, meaning thereby to accomplish the result that a court no longer could issue an injunction to protect it. Now, what is the first result of that enactment? It is that a man who does not belong to a labor-union finds himself deprived of the opportunity to earn his daily bread unless he joins that union. He comes to the court and asks for protection. The court is confronted with the law which has been passed by the Legislature, saying the right to labor is not a property right and shall no longer be protected, and that man, who has exercised his freedom and has decided that it is for his best interest to

stand upon his own two feet and depend upon the labor of his own two strong hands, appeals to the court for protection. Our court has said

Mr. BROWN of Brockton: I desire to ask a question, because I have an opportunity, of the learned gentleman. Will the labor man then be deprived of the protection he now has under a claim that he has a natural right to live and to work? Is he deprived of that if it is decided that labor is not property?

Mr. CHOATE: I will answer the gentleman from Brockton by running out my illustration to its end, I think.

The court held that the right to labor was property, and that no individual could be deprived of it. Now, if that is the kind of law which my friend from Brookline (Mr. Whipple) would argue should be upheld, if he would say that the court, having made that decision, should be immediately overturned by the passage of a law which should say: "Notwithstanding the Constitution as it has been, we will change the Constitution and say that the right to labor shall no longer be a property right"

Mr. WHIPPLE: The gentleman stated that he understood me to say that in case of a measure being declared unconstitutional by the court there should be an immediate change of the Constitution, so as to make such measure constitutional. I did not intend to be so understood. I cannot remember that I said that. But I would like to correct that misapprehension in the mind of the gentleman who is speaking and in the minds of other gentlemen here. All I said on the subject, as I remember it, was that I asked one interested in the subject whether he would have a feeling against the courts provided in thirty days or three months such a change could be made. That is all that I said that could possibly bear that interpretation. What I did say was that there ought to be a reasonably easy way to change the Constitution if the people desired to do it to have particular legislation, and that a reasonably fair way was provided by the Walker measure.

Mr. CHOATE: I do not understand that the gentleman's statement now differs from my apprehension of it when I first stated it, but if I am wrong as I restate it I beg he will set me right. It is this: That granted you have a Constitution which is a compact between all the people and every individual in it, and a law is passed which the Supreme Judicial Court says violates and is repugnant to that compact, the gentleman from Brookline believes that an easy way should be provided to change the Constitution to meet that situation, and that that easy way is to permit the majority of the people who vote at any election to change the Constitution upon the occasion of that single piece of legislation which may have for the moment aroused the antipathy or the excitement or the opposition of some who are opposed to it. Do I state you wrong, sir?

Mr. WHIPPLE: The proposition is stated, but not completely stated, because my suggestion, or our suggestion, of a measure is not that a vote should be taken while the people are heated on the subject, but that after 50,000 signatures are secured it should be submitted to the Legislature, that it should then lie over, in case either of favorable or unfavorable action, until a year later, that it should then again come before the Legislature and in case either of favorable or unfavorable action should then at a subsequent election, nearly two

years after the proposal, be submitted to the people, and that if a majority after such discussion and deliberation should state that the Constitution ought to be changed, the change should be effected. They can do the same thing now if they could only get the Legislature to act. The only difference is that 50,000 people could initiate it, rather than leaving the people helpless in the hands of the Legislature.

Mr. CHOATE: I caught the gentleman in his original argument as saying that the change might be made in thirty or sixty days. Perhaps I was wrong, or perhaps he did not mean me to understand that it might be so quick as that; but it is not necessarily the speed with which the Constitution might be thus changed, though speed is one of the essential things which the advocates of this measure desire to obtain. The fundamental wrong of doing the thing which it is now argued by my friend from Brookline he wants to do is just as obvious if the change is made in six months or a year as if it is made in thirty or sixty days. It is the wrong of imposing upon the other party to the contract the change which you alone wish to make in it. It is the wrong of taking away from him the guarantee which you solemnly have agreed he should have. Whether you do that in thirty days or in a year matters not. You, because you are stronger, take away from him that which you guaranteed that he should have.

Are you ready to abandon the fundamental proposition that the constitutional form of government is a wise form of government to live under, and to say that it is better to substitute for it the right of the majority to rule? And when I say the right of the majority to rule I use it in the sense in which the advocates of this measure use it, not the real majority but a majority who may happen to vote in favor at any election. That is the proposition which you now have got to decide, whether you will throw overboard the constitutional safeguards under which we have thriven and prospered, whether you will substitute for them the right of a majority at any election to make the Constitution what they please. That is the question which you, sitting now and here, have got to determine, whether you will recommend to the people, in the language which the advocates of this measure have again and again used, in its true sense, the right and the power of the majority to rule without let or hindrance, the right of the majority to enact their will without any interference or any restriction upon their own conduct, because is it not self-evident that, assuming you start with your fundamental compact or Constitution, the moment you give one of the parties the right to change it whenever it wishes to you have got no contract or compact or Constitution left? If my friends on the other side can deny that proposition they have established their

case.

Mr. BROWN: I should like to have the gentleman address himself on that matter of compact to the provision in that compact that you have the right at any time to alter or change the government completely. I should like to hear him on that.

Mr. CHOATE: I do not admit, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, either that any such term is in the compact or that the spirit of any such term is in it, and of course the idea that it can be changed by one party to it is foreign to the whole nature of such a proposition.

Mr. QUINCY of Boston: I ask the gentleman from Southborough if he will not elucidate to my mind, and doubtless to the minds of the other

delegates, somewhat more fully the nature of this contract or compact. He has spoken of several parties to the contract. I should like very much for my own enlightenment to have his view as to these parties. Who are the parties to this contract?

Mr. CHOATE: Mr. Chairman, I will endeavor to do so. first the language of the preamble of the Constitution:

I quote you

The body politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals. It is a social compact, by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good.

Now, I think that that very plainly presents to every man's mind the picture of a compact, a contract, with at least two parties to it, all the people upon the one side and the individual upon the other in any given case. The individual is protected by that guarantee that the majority will restrain their power to take away his right to free speech, his right to worship as he pleases. If it were not for that guarantee, if it were true now that it was within the power of the majority of the people to to-day pass a law taking away from the individual the right to worship as he saw fit, you then would have the situation which I submit will follow from the adoption of this resolution. You would have the individual deprived of the guarantee which that compact gave him, a compact by which the majority of the people had agreed not to exercise their power with respect to certain specific things, one of which is the right to worship.

Mr. QUINCY: Does the gentleman mean that it would not be within the power of the people under the Constitution, proceeding by the method prescribed by the amendment of 1820, namely, adoption by two legislatures and then by the people, to take anything, guarantee whatsoever, - out of the Constitution which they see fit, or to change the Constitution in any respect whatsoever which they see fit? Cannot that be done without a violation of the compact?

any

Mr. CHOATE: It certainly can, and as I tried to point out earlier in my remarks it is then done by as nearly as possible, as nearly as practicable, obtaining the consent and approval of all the parties to that compact. I say the theory upon which that method of changing the Constitution was adopted must have been this: That all the people, individuals, groups, classes, high and low, rich and poor, wage-earner, farmer, mechanic, all others in the community, in every geographical section of the State, were represented as nearly as human machinery could devise a means by their representatives in the General Court, and that when those representatives had given their sanction to a change you had obtained as nearly as possible the approval through their representatives of all the individual citizens of the Commonwealth. You then submitted it for ratification and confirmation to all the people by their vote, and as nearly as machinery could provide you had obtained the approval of all the people and every individual to the change that was proposed.

Mr. ANDERSON of Brookline: I should be very glad if the gentleman would address himself to the seventh paragraph, I guess you call them paragraphs, of the Bill of Rights, and tell the committee how he construes that in connection with the "Compact" language in the preamble. He will pardon me if I read and direct his mind to one or

two things on which I am particularly anxious to get his opinion. It reads:

Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity and happiness of the people; and not for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men: Therefore the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible

three very long words

right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, their protection, safety, prosperity and happiness require it.

when

My question is, if that means what it says, does that assertion of a fundamental right really mean that the government cannot be changed without the assent of the Legislature, which is a creation of the same instrument that asserts this fundamental right?

Mr. CHOATE: It seems to me that the answer to the gentleman's question is this: It is a familiar rule of construction, well known to all lawyers, that every part of a document should be so interpreted and construed as to be consistent with the rest. Here are two provisions, one of them that which the gentleman from Brookline (Mr. Anderson) has just read. Brookline is strong on this point, which is declaratory in a general way of the rights of the people. That which is found in the preamble is a voluntary restriction which the people have placed upon themselves for the common good. One cannot deny that it is essential; even the advocates of this measure do not deny the principle of the good of a Constitution, only it seems to me that while they are admitting that a Constitution is a wise form of government under which to live, at the same time they are asking us to adopt a method of dealing with it which, against their wish, sooner or later will destroy it.

Mr. DEAN of Fall River: I should like to ask if the gentleman from Southborough is familiar with the statement which appears on the forty-eighth page of the Manual of this Convention, which sets out the discussion before the committee on Bill of Rights on this very matter of a social compact. I should like to ask him if he agrees, or if he will discuss the statement made there by Richard Henry Dana, who says:

In our committee (Bill of Rights) we resolved not to attempt to rewrite the instrument, and only to make necessary changes. We discussed the principle of the "Social Compact" which is set forth in it, and we found not one man who believed in it. . . It is a mere fiction, which served its turn against tyranny, but cannot stand examination.

Mr. CHOATE: I believe, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, that a distinguished ancestor of mine was guilty of saying that the Constitution was nothing but a lot of glittering generalities, but we have lived long enough under it to know that that was but a mere rhetorical statement, and I judge that that statement of Mr. Richard Henry Dana's was rhetorical, and of about the same force and effect, and to be taken with about the same seriousness as that remark that the Constitution was nothing but a lot of glittering generalities. We know better. We know when we look back upon the things in which it has protected us, protected our forefathers, that it has been the most valuable thing that we have ever possessed, and we are not going to throw it away. Now, what I was saying when I

Mr. BENNETT of Saugus: There is one point that I do not exactly