ALBANY, November 1, 1808. Present-Governor Tompkins; Lansing, Chancellor; Spencer, Thompson and Van Ness, Justices. A bill entitled "An act to enable the directors and company of the Canajoharie and Palatine Bridge to rebuild the same," was before the Council, which adopted the following objections, reported by Justice Yates, viz.: Because, by the first section, it is enacted that such stockholder as shall not pay on each share, the first requisition of the additional sum of $15, on or before the time limited for the payment thereof, is not only deemed to have waived his or her right of increasing the sum payable on each share, as to the shares on which such payments shall not be made, but the president and directors. are authorized to cause such shares so waived to be sold at public vendue, in manner therein described, and to pay the proceeds arising from such sale to the person or persons who were the owners of such shares, in proportion to the number of shares such person may have had, after deducting the costs of advertising and sale thereof; whereby the existing right of such stockholder under the act entitled "An act to authorize the building of a toll bridge over the Mohawk river," passed 31st of March, 1801, would be materially impaired if not virtually extinguished, without the assent of the stockholders. The Senate refused to pass the bill; consequently it did not become a law. ALBANY, February 24, 1809. Present-Governor Tompkins; Lansing, Chancellor; Kent, Chief Justice; Van Ness and Yates, Justices. A bill entitled "An act for laying out Canal street in the city of New York, and for amending the acts relating to streets and roads therein mentioned," was before the Council, which adopted the following objections, reported by the Chancellor, viz.: Because, by the seventh section of the said bill, it is provided that the commissioners therein described shall be authorized to enter upon and appropriate such lands as may be necessary for the purposes of the said act, before tender or refusal of the damages awarded or assessed therefor, and that if such damages are not paid within three years from the passing the said act, an action may be sustained by the owner of such land for the recovery thereof from the mayor, aldermen and commonalty of the city of New York; and by the twentieth section of the said bill, it is provided that it shall not be necessary to make payment or tender of any sum awarded for ground taken for streets, but that the owner of such ground may, in case the sum so awarded shall not be paid within one year after finding verdict, ascertaining the same, recover in like manner in an action of debt; thus appropriating private property to public uses, deferring a recompense therefor to a remote day and putting the owner to his action for its recovery, and thus sanctioning the dangerous doctrine that the lands of the citizens of this State may be taken from them for ordinary public exigencies without an immediate compensation, leaving the time of making it to be varied at discretion and to be pursued in a course of litigation which may involve great injury or even the ruin of the persons affected by it. Because, by the thirteenth section of the said bill, it is enacted "that whenever any of the proprietors of any such lands, tenements, hereditaments and premises shall be infants, non compos mentis, or absent from the city of New York, the said mayor, aldermen and commonalty may pay the sums mentioned in such report that would be coming to such proprietors, respectively, into the Supreme Court, to be received, disposed of and improved as the said court shall direct, and such payment shall be equally valid and effectual as if made to the proprietors themselves, if they had been present, of full age and compos mentis," which provision is incompatible with the organization of the said court and its modes of conducting business according to the course of the common law, and because the duty thereby attempted to be imposed on the judges of that court, of securing, disposing, and improving such money, is not in the remotest degree connected with the exercise of their judicial functions. The Senate refused to pass the bill; consequently it did not become a law. ALBANY, February 24, 1809. Present-Governor Tompkins; Lansing, Chancellor; Kent, Chief Justice; Van Ness and Yates, Justices. A bill entitled "An act to enable the trustees of the Reformed Dutch Church of the township of New Utrecht in Kings county to sell the parcel of land therein mentioned," was before the Council, which adopted the following objections, reported by the Chancellor, viz.: Because the third section of the act entitled "An act to amend the act entitled 'An act to provide for the incorporation of religious societies,"" passed March 14th, 1806, authorizes the Chancellor, upon the application of any religious corporation, to make an order for the sale of any real estate belonging to such corporation, and to direct the application of the moneys arising therefrom by such corporation; and because the Chancellor can, in a summary mode, with little expense or trouble to the applicants, institute an inquiry into the title by which the same is derived to such corporation, and whether the same is affected by any condition or limitation detracting from a general right of disposition, and which, if existing in this case, from the terms of the bill, appears not to have been an object of attention. The Legislature refused to pass the bill; consequently it did not become a law. ALBANY, March 14, 1809. Present-Governor Tompkins; Lansing, Chancellor; Kent, Chief Justice; Thompson, Spencer, Van Ness and Yates, Justices. A bill entitled "An act to equalize the four great districts of this State," was before the Council, which adopted the following objections, reported by the Chief Justice, viz.: The bill is to be considered either as a new apportionment of the Senators, or as a new division of the districts, and in either view it appears to the Council to be inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution and the public good. 1. By the fourth article of the amendments to the Constitution it is provided that upon the return of every census the Legislature shall apportion the Senators and members of Assembly; and the Legislature did accordingly, on the first day of April last, by the act entitled "An act apportioning the representation in the Legislature according to the rule prescribed by the Constitution," make such apportionment in pursuance of the census taken in 1807. The apportionment having thus been made, the provision in the Constitution is complied with, and it ceases to operate until the taking of another census. The same article says also, in the like words, that upon the return of every census the number of the Assembly shall be increased, and yet it must be obvious that the increase cannot be admitted at any other time than upon the return of the census. The fourth article says nothing about the division of districts. It does not say that the districts shall be apportioned to the Senators, but that the Senators shall be apportioned among the great districts, and the true construction of it is, that upon the return of the census, the Senators may be apportioned among the districts as they stand, and not that the districts are necessarily to be disturbed and altered upon every such census. And it is extremely important, both as it respects the security of the Constitution and the just rights of the electors which are concerned in these apportionments, that when an apportionment is once made it should be steadily adhered to until the return of another census. There is no rule for making another apportionment by the census of 1807, and that becomes an uncertain guide for a second apportionment, because the population of the districts has varied in the meantime and that variation increases every year. If a second apportionment may be made now, it may equally be made in any future session and even in the year preceding the taking of another census, and thus all accuracy in the rule of apportionment would be lost and the constitutional objects of the census defeated. That the present bill does in reality make an entire new apportionment of the Senate appears from the second and third sections of the bill which contain the provisions for that purpose. Every general division of the districts necessarily involves in it a new apportionment of the Senators. The one object cannot well be obtained without producing the other, and consequently public convenience would seem to require that every general alteration of the districts, whenever the same shall become necessary, should be made at the same time with the general apportionment of the representation. 2. But if the bill could be considered (as its title purports) only as a new division of the districts according to the power vested in the Legislature by the twelfth article of the Constitution, it appears to be equally objectionable. That power was given expressly "for the convenience and advantage of the good people of this State;" and whenever such alterations are made, public convenience requires that they should not take effect until some future and distant day, so as to give the people sufficient opportunity to acquire that general information within their new districts which may be requisite to a judicious choice of their rulers. The present bill is to take effect at the ensuing election. This is evidently too short a period, and the bill may operate as a surprise upon the electors, especially in the eastern district, which by the bill is made to comprehend very distant counties which from their local situation have hitherto had very little commerce or intercourse with each other. To break up and new model all the great districts within six or seven weeks of the senatorial election cannot, in the opinion of the Council, conduce to the public good or the convenience or advantage of the people. The act of the 4th of March, 1796, presents a valuable precedent upon this subject. It made alterations in the districts far less material than those contained in the present bill, but it provided that the alterations should not go into operation until the ensuing year. There are other and very inconvenient consequences to which the principle of this bill might lead, and there are abuses to which such a precedent might hereafter be perverted, but the Council deem it unnecessary to trace them. The public good seems to dictate that the great districts should not be new modeled very frequently; that when alterations become necessary, they should, to every practicable extent, preserve the original district character of the Senators elect; and that they should not go into operation very promptly, least they might affect the suffrages of the freeholders, by distracting their choice or confounding their efforts to unite in upright and intelligent candidates. The Assembly refused to pass the bill; consequently it did not become a law. |