On Power to Increase Supreme Court 103 the title to the office to which each has been appointed, or to participate in the hearing. This will place upon the other members of the court a grave responsibility, and unless they shall hold that the question cannot be raised in this manner, and can be presented and decided only in a case involving a direct attack, by quo warranto, to try the title to the office held by the appointed justices, this grave responsibility must be met. It is hoped that the controversy may be settled, and that the court will pass upon the constitutionality of the act in ques- tion, and put at rest, in the public interest, this important question. A brief review of the proceedings of the constitutional con- vention which convened on August 17, 1857, and of the debates in the convention, may be of interest. The committee on judicial department created by the constitutional convention which assembled August 17, 1857, which framed and sub- mitted the present constitution, was composed of Messrs. Wil- liams, Olney, Boise, Kelly, Grover, Logan and Prim, each of whom afterwards became a justice of the Supreme Court, excepting Grover, who became governor and United States senator, and Logan, who was a great trial lawyer in Oregon for a generation. These seven lawyers drafted that portion of the constitution creating the judicial department, and, it must be assumed, gave to the sections involved in this discussion careful consideration. As lawyers, they must have appreciated the rules and canons of construction applied to state constitu- tions — and particularly that cardinal rule that such constitu- tions are limitations upon and not grants of power — and that all power not limited or restrained by such constitutions remains in the people in their sovereign, legislative capacity. This is fundamental and was well understood by these dis- tinguished men. Why, then, if it was the intention to prevent further legislation increasing the number of justices consti- tuting the Supreme Court, did they not in apt and appropriate words so express that intention? That the number and the increase of the number of the supreme justices was plainly in
