men, although I deny that there are any here at all. All that part of the section which declares that railroads are common carriers, and that all citizens of this Commonwealth have a right to be transported upon these railroads by themselves and their freights, is entirely unnecessary. All that is the common law of the land; all these rights now exist; and why declare them over and over again in section after section? I admit there is some force in what my colleague says, that we are lumbering the Constitution unnecessarily with provisions that look like special legislation; but, sir, nevertheless, let us, even if it should enlarge the Constitution, put in just the language necessary to produce proper restrictions, and certainly then no one can complain.

Before I take my seat I desire to withdraw the amendment that I proposed in the fifteenth line of the section, and to offer another, striking out, in the sixteenth line, the words “called for and needed," and substituting in lieu thereof the word "required."

It has

Mr. LEAR. Mr. Chairman: been said more than once by gentlemen who rose to address this committee upon the different sections of this report, and it has also been exemplified by their practice, that it is proper for any one discussing the report to define his relations to railroads and canals. I do not exactly see the necessity or propriety of that; but as it seems to have become the custom in committee of the whole to do so, it may not be improper for me to do the same. My relations with canals and railroads have not been of a particularly agreeable character. I was once, I remember, under the bottom of a boat, in the bottom of a canal lock, and I was once run from the track on a railroad, and had a very rough ride over the ties. I have lost immense sums of money by railroad companies failing to pay me dividends; but, as an extenuating fact, let me say that perhaps the reason was because I never owned a share of stock upon which dividends were payable. [Laughter.]

But, sir, I come here, not as the representative of any railroad company, not as the advocate of their peculiar rights, if they have peculiar rights. I have been the attorney of some corporations of that kind when they have occasionally had business in our county, and they have paid me for my services; but where I have been employed by a single corporation of that kind, I have been employed by a

thousand individuals of the human species, and I consider my obligations to them paramount to any obligations that I owe to any soulless corporation, or any body outside and beyond the people.

When I had occasion, a week ago this morning, to make some remarks on the subject of this report of the Railroad Committee, I believe I excited some feelings of resentment towards me for the manner in which I discussed its features generally; but as I took occasion then to state it was not entirely in reference to the report of the Railroad Committee that my remarks were applicable; and to-day I endorse the sentiments and the language of the gentleman from Allegheny, (Mr. J. W. F. White,) in the remarks that he has made with regard to the manner in which we are attempting to amend the Constitution of the State.

I said a week ago that I had been looking with anxiety for some committee which had the courage to report a section or an article of the old Constitution back without an amendment. To-day I will add another word to "courage," and I will say I have looked with anxiety for a man who had the modesty to admit in this Convention that he was not wiser than all the statesmen who have ever gone before us, and as being competent to make something new and superior to that which Pennsylvania had ever seen or lived under in the past.

That feeling in this Convention has shown itself in this report most conspicuously, because, where before we had nothing, the committee have brought into this Convention a lot of materials out of which a dozen Constitutions might be made, if they were put together in an artistic and finished manner. But as produced here, it is not more like a Constitution than a pile of building materials along the street are like a finished mansion; no more like a Constitution than the unchisseled block that lies beneath Pentellicus is like one of those finished pieces of statuary that grows beneath the hand of the accomplished and skilful artist. It is a mass of crude matter.

This Committee on Railroads and Canals went to work in the performance of their duty long ago, and have brought forth this report after a long trial. They were at work upon it early in the sessions of this Convention in Philadelphia, and they were put to set upon this railroad egg thus early in our deliberations, and after an incubation of three months, and

rules of law, and the Modocs to-day are the freest people upon this continent.

Mr. BAER. Will the gentleman permit me to ask a question?

Mr. LEAR. Yes, sir.

force the provision of this Constitution? Is it to be wound up like a clock? Is it to be automatic in its performance? And when provisions are put in the Constitution by this Committee on Railroads and

Mr. LEAR. The gentleman might have saved himself the trouble of interrupting me in my discourse, by consulting the Convention Manual, and he would have seen there, probably, upon which committees I was. There is one report of a committee that I was on that went through this Convention, and it went through, I believe, in a single session. I have not had any very great duties assigned me to perform in this Convention; but it is, I conceive, one of my duties to look after that which is attempted to be done by others.

The gentleman from Allegheny, who addressed the committee first this morning, (Mr. T. H. B. Patterson,) on the subject of this report, and this section, says that this is not a place for the display or ventilation of legal learning or vested rights, and that we should not talk about the rights of corporations or those vested rights that are supposed to exist in those organizations which have been created heretofore under the laws that exist. Why not talk about vested rights? Is it, as he said, simply a question of expediency? While I am in favor of preserving vested rights, I am also in favor of restraining corporations within a proper limit. I am in favor of doing what the gentleman from Philadelphia proposed yesterday, to provide against all unjust discrimination; but the Committee on Corporations were not in favor of that, and they were not satisfied with it, and they wanted something more.

Now, here is the gentleman from Allegheny, (Mr. T. H. B. Patterson,) who says that the common law is re-declared to be sure in some of these provisions, but that the common law is not enough, because it is known that if a manufacturer or shipper goes into a court for the purpose of enforcing his rights as a shipper, he will meet with such persecution from the railroad company that he undertakes to bring to justice, that he will be deprived of his rights as a shipper upon that road. Why, Mr. Chairman, I ask you, because you know a great many things, and I ask members of this Convention, who probably know something besides the gentleman from Allegheny, how are we to en

adopting them, will it execute itself? Will it be like the great solar system that was sent upon its pathway of ages from all eternity, and has kept on its course with unabated speed and regularity to this time? Is that the way that the Committee on Railroads, in their omniscience and omnipotence, propose to regulate the great corporations and the little corporations of Pennsylvania; by having something, I suppose, like an automatic instrument, that shall operate by its simply being wound up by the vital and superior power that exists, inherently, in this Constitutional Convention?

No. They will still have to go into the courts. But it seems to be a favorite idea, not uttered in direct words, affirmatively, by any of the gentlemen on this floor, but it seems to be shadowed by the manner in which they treat the subject, that whenever a thing is put into the Constitution, that is enough; it has declared its purpose, and there is no necessity of going further; that it has some superior power to a statute of the Legislature, or it has some other superior power by which it will communicate its preserving and its amending qualities to the laws of this State, that is not in act of Assembly. Why, sir, I say that the provisions of this section, and the provisions of the sections that we have passed upon this subject, are objectionable for the very reason that they will take more judicial power than the present laws to interpret them. They are of that incongruous character that no legislative provisions can be successfully engrafted upon them. They are of that complicated and obscure quality, that it will require all the judicial wisdom of the State of Pennsylvania to fathom their mysterious depths. The judges, when they sit upon the bench, will have to resort to that weakest of all sorts of weak logic, deducing from deductions, drawing conclusions based upon inferences which are themselves inferences from inferences; because, when you come to discuss and examine some of the provisions, and especially the provisions in the section which we adopted last evening before we adjourned, that charges for freight and fares for passengers shall, for equal distances in the same direction, be

an insufferable amount of cackling, they have brought forth this remarkable chicken, [laughter,] a rara avis; a bird of incongruous proportions and ill omen.

Why, Mr. Chairman, this committee have, as has been apparent from the views expressed by many members of this Convention, produced here an amount of material that can be worked up only after great pains and labor; and it was a delicate way of stating this case, as some gentleman did a few days ago, when I was not present, but I saw an account of it, or heard of it after I came back, that this committee were not competent to perform their duties when he moved that the subject be referred back to them, and that four practical railroad men should be added, in order that the committee might have the benefit of their experience and judgment in doing that which they had shown themselves not able to perform. I say that the delicacy of that manner of approaching this subject ought to be commended by the members of that committee, instead of being resented. I take the rather plainer ground, and say, emphatically and literally, that I have reluctantly arrived at the painful conclusion that these gentlemen were incompetent to the proper performance of the task that was assigned them.

Now, I say that, and I say it fearlessly, before this Convention. Why was there an objection to putting railroad men upon this committee, or men who had some practical experience in regard to railroads? When we appointed a Committee on the Legislature we put at the head of it a gentleman who was in the Legislature. When we constructed a Committee on the Judiciary we put the ablest lawyers, as we supposed, in the Convention upon that committee. When we had any duties to perform in connection with any branch of business, we sought the men, as we supposed, who were most conversant with the functions that were devolved upon them by their appointment in reference to the particular department. But when it was asked to have gentlemen put on the Railroad Committee that were acquainted with the duties which they had to perform, it was considered an insinuation against the capacity of the existing committee, and rather offensive on the part of the mover.

Mr. Chairman, I do not see that they ought to object to that manner of approaching this subject; and the very manner in which this report has been pre

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sented to this committee; the very manner in which we labored yesterday on the section which has just been passed, and the result which was produced after vo ting down some things that were sensible, show that the Committee on Railroads and the committee of the whole were afflicted with that same want of ability to comprehend the duties which called this Convention together.

The gentleman from Allegheny (Mr. J. W. F. White) has said that he has about made up his mind that it is safest to vote against most things, and I say that it is safe to vote against most things that are proposed in this body. We have been laboring and living under the delusive and delightful belief that we were living under a Constitution, and an organic law, favorable to the welfare of the people; favorable to the interests of the great State of Pennsylvania; and that, therefore, in only a few of the things in which the instrument was defective did we need to have amendments. Perhaps I may be asked whether I assert that there are not things in the organization or management of railroad corporations which ought to be checked and prohibited. I do say that there are, most emphatically, and I say that the very circumstances alluded to by the gentleman who last addressed this committee, from Allegheny, (Mr. S. A. Purviance,) of the necessity for the manufacturers of that city to ship their goods eighty or ninety miles west in order to get a cheaper fare to Philadelphia, is infamous upon the part of the railroad corporation which required it; but when I say that, I declare at the same time that we should approach this subject in such a way as to do the least harm and the greatest good to the public.

Wherever we have power, we have, in a corresponding degree, the rights and liberties of the people infringed upon and curtailed; and it does not matter whether that power is in a corporation, a large firm, or an individual, and it does not matter whether it is in material wealth or in intellectual strength. The man who is great by his wealth, or by his intellectual force, overshadows those who are around him, and curtails and infringes upon their freedom to a certain extent. The people who live in a city are less free than those who live in the country; the people who live in a State are less free than those who live in a Territory, and the people who live outside of organized society are freer than those who are circumscribed by the iron

straight forward, squarely denouncing everything in general, and the Railroad Committee in particular, that had been assigned them-or whether it comes in any other way. I do not mean to say, and I am not willing to say, that they are competent for the discharge of their duties. The handling of this question certainly was a very difficult and a very important matter, and any committee could have been excused if they failed to fully grasp its broad scope. But we have had the opinion of some gentlemen, nearly as intelligent as the member from Bucks, that the work of the Committee on Railroads and Canals had been remarkably well done, considering the importance of the subject, considering the objects that were covered by it, considering the fact of the immense amount of property involved in this subject, and the immense interests dependent thereon. It is a fact that, although hundreds of millions of dollars are invested in the subject matter of which this report treats, yet the subject itself is hardly twenty-five years old in its history. This Committee on Railroads and Canals had very little in other Constitutions; they had very little in law to guide them in the work that they were to perforin. They were compelled, in looking to corporate rights, and in looking to the rights of the public, to be guided by the practical workings of the railroad system itself; and in providing, as they have done, some eighteen or nineteen sections for the consideration of the convention, they were compelled to consider what has been the practice heretofore in regard to railway legislation. They knew the evils of the system, and were bound to consider them, and they could not escape the consideration of the question of the place in which to deposit the power that should in the future control these organizations.

I picked up, yesterday, a resolution offered by a very intelligent member of this Convention, (Mr. J. N. Purviance,) who thought he could condense the whole matter that should be contained in the railroad report into one section. I took up the section, and in the first two lines struck out twelve words, and it reads much better now than it did with those twelve words in, and expresses all that the gentleman intended to be expressed. Yet I have no doubt that this gentleman believes he could have done the work of the Committee on Railroads and Canals far better than the committee itself. A

workman, we always say, should be judged by his chips. It is a homely saying, but expressive. Now, when a man finds fault with a particular work, if he means himself to do what is fair and right, let him come forward and show wherein it could have been better. Merely denouncing and mere declamation is not the thing in a body of this kind, and is not the proper matter to be addressed to intelligent men. When a man denounces the railroad report, let him point out the specific objection that he has to it. Let him state the particular section. Let him state the particular clause, and let him state his particular improvement that he means to suggest, and then let him ask the committee of the whole to adopt it. That is the fair way to treat the subject, in addressing an intelligent body of men, which I believe we are. If you were addressing some political crowd, gathered upon the street corners in some of the cities of this Commonwealth, perhaps this bombastes furioso kind of a speech would be the best kind to address to such an audience. But we have gathered here for the purpose of doing a special and particular work. It is expected that we will reduce our measures and propositions to writing. Then we are expected to print them, to put them down in the English language, and get them into such a shape that they can be understood by the people; and when gentlemen consider that they are in a position to denounce others for being incompetent to perform a certain work, they should demonstrate that they themselves are competent to do that work. When they undertake to point out a failure, they should come prepared to show wherein they have failed, and to show how the thing can be bettered.

The delegate from Bucks has flattered, very highly, my colleague from the county of Allegheny, (Mr. J. W. F. White,) and says that he is glad to find a gentleman here who has the modesty to announce publicly that he does not consider himself at all competent to frame an entire Constitution. Perhaps the gentleman from Bucks was not aware that my friend, the delegate from Allegheny, was the only person, perhaps, in all this body-and I say it with all respect of him, because I think he is entitled to credit for the work he has done in this Convention-who did prepare an entire Constitution and had it submitted to the members of this body. [Laughter.] Perhaps that may be the trouble with my friend and colleague