AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN
disasters but as opportunities. It is at such times that much may be accomplished by wise legislators to enhance the public weal. The unfortunate failure of the Greater Pittsburgh legislation through the finding of the Supreme Court that the act was unconstitutional, and the failure of a bank, incorporated and supervised by the national government, holding at the time a large amount of State funds, have given the legal occasion for the calling of the legislature together in extraordinary session under Article IV, Section 12, of the constitution. I have besides been unwilling that the present popular disturbances should subside without securing more permanent results than the substitution of one contractor for another, the removal of incumbents from office, the overthrow of one political party or faction and the elevation of their opponents, and the suppression of one private ambition in order that another may be fostered and gratified. . . . The opportunity to help the commonwealth in these respects has come to you rather than to your predecessors or successors. The responsibility rests with you.
With respect to apportionment, I presented to the legislature this view:
The time has come when a reapportionment of the state into senatorial and representative districts in compliance with the command of the constitution must be made. It is enough to say that you are required by the fundamental law, your oaths of office and your consciences to make this reapportionment, but, were anything more needed, it is manifest that the present division of the state is a misfit which grows into greater disproportion with each day and is fraught with great injustice. Some men are deprived of their right and others are loaded with what does not belong to them. The difficulties in the way must be overcome. It is unnecessary to repeat here what was fully presented in my last message, to which you are referred, but the constitution itself offers almost insuperable obstacles and cannot in all of its details of method be followed. It must, therefore, yield in what is of least importance to such an extent as to permit an apportionment to be made. In construing the instrument we must draw a distinction between the mandate to divide the state into districts, which is absolute and must be obeyed, and the method provided which is directory only and is not of the same fundamental importance. This method ought to be followed as closely as possible,
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