STATE SPEECHES.

INAUGURAL ADDRESS

TO THE LEGISLATURE OF MASSACHUSETTS, JAN. 8, 1891.

GENTLEMEN OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

ENT

NTRUSTED by the people of the Commonwealth with the management of her affairs for the current year, we meet to-day to begin this responsible and honorable duty.

A usage long established requires me at this time to submit to the two branches of the Legislature suggestions and recommendations that seem to need their consideration and action. It has been usual in such a message briefly to consider the finances of the Commonwealth, the condition of the various departments, their wishes and needs. Necessarily this information is gathered from official reports, all of which are submitted to your consideration. As I can have but little trustworthy knowledge outside of these reports, it seems to me useless and perfunctory to anticipate your careful review of them by stating briefly what they state at length, or by repeating their recommendations. Especially is this true when other matters quite as important, and much more fundamental, demand your attention. I therefore depart from this usage, with full confidence that you will give to the reports and recommendations of the departments the careful consideration to which they are entitled, as the best thought of expe

rienced officials upon subjects with which they are familiar. As experience gives me a more full and accurate knowledge of the work and condition of the departments, I may hereafter call your attention to changes and reforms that may be advisable.

The Constitution of Massachusetts declares: "Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people, and not for the profit or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men: Therefore the people alone have an incontestable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it."

This declared purpose of government and power over it guaranteed to the people make it the imperative duty of their chosen representatives, as their trusted servants, to keep it ever true to their interests, to watch for the expression of their will, and when ascertained, implicitly to obey it. Rarely is such expression directly made in an election or with a partisan voice. Yet by petitions, public meetings, the public Press, and other signs, there is unerring evidence of their will as to the policy of their government. A political revolution may then give emphasis to their discontent, weight to their criticism, and be their mandate, not for partisan legislation, but for heed to their wish. Massachusetts, with her sturdy, intelligent, patriotic people, jealous of their rights and courageous in defending them, has many a time been the fruitful field of agitations meant to be the forerunner of law, and successful in their purpose. This has justly made her a leader in the sisterhood of States. Here have been great agitations for human rights, for upholding the nation in important crises, for reforms that insure purity and independence

in elections, efficiency and unselfishness in administration, for retrenchment and economy in State expenditure, for wise and progressive labor legislation, and for other objects, where the voice of the people was heard as distinctly and followed as faithfully as if they had directly passed upon these questions. There was no need of a poll to know the popular will.

Judged by such signs of the people's thought and wish as have controlled in the past, I ask you to consider whether there is not within our Commonwealth and throughout the country a profound and just feeling that there is a growing tendency to divert legislation and government from their true purpose, and to surrender their control to selfish interests for selfish objects, rather than to use them "for the common good; whether there is not also with this feeling an earnest demand for some changes and reforms, within your power to grant, which will check this tendency, and keep their government well within the control of the people, to the end that all law may be the free and full expression of the people's will, and its administration just, pure, and honest.

With a strong conviction that such demand exists, that it is just and should be heeded, I submit to your consideration suggestions for legislation in this direction. They are based upon a firm belief that the people can safely be trusted with political power; that legislation should be for their interest, and never controlled against their interest; and that their government, as far as possible, should be made directly and immediately responsible to them. Many of these suggestions deal with matters that have been considered without partisan bias by your predecessors and by the people generally. They are submitted in no partisan spirit, and will be considered by you, I am confident, with the single purpose of faithfully serving the public interests.

THE SUFFRAGE.

As a first and fundamental change necessary to accomplish the reforms suggested, I call your attention to a restriction upon the suffrage, which is based upon a mistrust of the people, is unjust in principle, injurious and corrupting in practice, and which leaves this great primal right of freemen without proper constitutional guaranty, and subject to be controlled, obstructed, and possibly defeated, by legislative action. Massachusetts, almost alone of the States of the Union, requires the payment of a tax as a qualification for voting. Besides certain conditions as to age, sex, residence, and education, our Constitution also prescribes, to qualify a voter in any election, the payment of "any State or County tax which shall within two years next preceding such election have been asssessed upon him in any town or district in this Commonwealth." There is excepted from this provision "every citizen who shall be by law exempted from taxation." Whether or not there shall be any State or County tax, and upon what such tax shall be laid, whether upon polls or property, are matters within the control of the Legislature. When laid, the assessment of the tax upon the citizen requires the action of the local Board of Assessors. The failure of either body to act means the disfranchisement of voters. Thus the suffrage, the very foundation of republican institutions, instead of being protected by constitutional guaranty, is left to the discretion of the Legislature, and is dependent upon its annual action. There have been years in the past when no State tax was required or laid. It may be that other sources of revenue will make it unnecessary at some time in the future to lay either a State or County tax. It is possible that in such a case there would be a wholesale disfranchisement.

Judicial interpretation has declared: "It [the Constitution] confines the power, therefore, in terms to those who shall have paid some tax assessed within a short period preceding the election, and for the sake of exactness fixes that period at two years. If, therefore, the persons in question have been exempted for two entire years, either by being omitted in the assessment or by the abatement of the tax by the assessors, such persons are excluded by the plain terms and manifest intent of the Constitution." By statute law, within the powerof any Legislature to change or repeal, a portion of the State and County tax is assessed upon polls; otherwise all except the owners of taxable property would be disfranchised. By statute, too, the person assessed may have the State and County tax separated from the town tax; otherwise he must pay more than the Constitution requires, or be disfranchised. By statute, too, no poll tax can be abated within the year in which it is assessed;: otherwise the power to disfranchise every person who pays only a poll tax rests absolutely with a local board, and abating taxes would be a convenient way of abating voters. So it has become necessary by statutes to lay a tax, to separate the tax on polls from the tax on property, to forbid its abatement, that the sacred right of suffrage may be preserved to the freemen of Massachusetts. To repeal any of these statutes in any year puts in jeopardy this right. By a simple change in them, the Legislature may raise the most stringent and odious property qualification, and disfranchise a large majority of the voters in the State. If, for example, a statute was passed abolishing the poll tax, or exempting all polls from any State or County tax, or providing that those taxes should be laid wholly on real estate, at once by legislative act there is raised a new qualification, severe, repulsive, intolerable, and from one-half to