We  think  this  proceeding  one  of  the  most  discreditable  of  the  many
discreditable  acts  which  have  brought  the  convention  into  popular
contempt  at  home  and  abroad.  It  was  tantamount  to  saying  to  the
people,  ""We  have  submitted  this  question  of  free  suffrage  to  you  in
the  hope  of  thereby  disarming  the  opposition  of  those  who  think  that
the  color  of  a  man's  skin  should  not  any  more  than  the  plage  of  his
birth  or  the  amount  of  his  property  determine  his  right  to  vote;
but  at  the  same  time  we  mean  to  place  such  a  brand  upon  it  as  shall
mark  our  hostility  to  the  very  article  which  a  majority  of  us  have
adopted!**

PRACTICE  VERSUS  PRECEPT
[December  23,  1S46]

We  have  had  frequent  occasion  to  show  up  the  glaring  incon-
sistencies of  which  our  late  convention  was  guilty,  but  their  last  act
was  the  most  impudently  inconsistent  of  all.    It  will  be  remembered


POPULAR  PROCEEDINGS  AND  DEBATE  517

by  those  who  have  glanced  over  the  articles  as  successively  adopted
by  the  convention  that  at  the  close  of  the  one  relating  to  the  duties,
tenure,  and  compensation  of  the  different  state  officers  is  the  follow-
ing stringent  provision  against  extra  allowances:  * 'Section  4.  The
legislature  shall  not  grant  or  allow  to  any  officers  named  in  this
article  any  extra  compensation  under  any  pretence  or  in  any  form
whatever."

This  provision,  intended  to  guard  against  an  abuse  which  has  be-
come sufficiently  flagrant  in  some  of  the  older  states,  received  a  prac-
tical commentary  from  the  convention  which  renders  it  a  fair  ques-
tion whether  when  they  adopted  it  they  were  in  jest  or  in  earnest.
