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Finally, in June 1912, a Democratic House and a Republican Senate passed the eight-hour bill supported by the American Federation of Labor with some amendments, which the Federation did not find seriously objectionable; and President Taft signed it.
He wished amendments to the constitution, and had received, in common with many others, an impression that the powers of the federal government, unless more distinctly defined, would be so exercised as to divest the states of every attribute of sovereignty, and that on their ruins ultimately there would be erected a splendid national instead of a federal government.
The people are capable of passing upon the general principle embodied in a proposed law; but they cannot be expected to decide with any certainty of judgment about amendments or details, which involve for their intelligent consideration technical and special knowledge.
The example of Massachusetts, however, seems to have been decisive, and on the 25th of June, four days later than New Hampshire, the Virginia convention voted to ratify, "under the conviction that whatsoever imperfections may exist in the Constitution ought rather to be examined in the mode prescribed therein, than to bring the Union into danger by delay, with a hope of obtaining amendments previous to the ratification."
We have inserted a great number of amendments, proposed by those who are represented as the most anxious guardians of the privileges of the people; and it is not, surely, to no purpose that the great council of the nation has so long and so studiously laboured.
I can hardly conceive that it should seriously be made a question. If the first question, whether we will receive it as it stands, be negatived, as it undoubtedly ought to be, while the conviction remains that amendments are necessary; the next question will be, what amendments shall be made?
It may, they said, be very proper that Commissioners should be appointed by Act of Parliament to take account of the forfeited property in Ireland. But they should be appointed by a separate Act. Then we should be able to make amendments, to ask for conferences, to give and receive explanations. The Land Tax Bill we cannot amend.
An amendment may be originated in the legislature, where it must secure more than a mere majority perhaps a three fifths or two thirds vote in order to pass; in some states it must be adopted by two successive legislatures, perhaps by two thirds of one and three fourths of the next; in some states not more than one amendment can be brought before the same legislature; in some it is provided that amendments must not be submitted to the people oftener than once in five years; and so on.
This was the more readily accepted because it was believed that ratification by the legislatures would result in the formation of a treaty rather than in a working instrument of government. The next step was to prevent the work of the Convention from meeting the fate of all previous amendments to the Articles of Confederation, which had required the consent of every State in the Union.
Space is given to this report because it is a fair illustration of the conditions under which woman suffrage amendments were defeated again and again in different States.
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