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Engraved for the Tremoratu Reien.

mterotype in the National Minutture Galler & York or Anthony, Edwards & Culton

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IT will be twenty-one years on the first day of the approaching new year, since the present Constitution of the State of New York went into full operation, and became the fundamental law of the State. It was devised by a Convention, called for the purpose, as a substitute for the Constitution of 1777, and to embody the political science of the people for whom it was designed. A single generation of men has scarcely passed away, and already the necessity of numerous and comprehensive alterations is being seriously agitated. Several of the most influential presses in the State, irrespective of party connections, have opened their columns to its discussion -writers, both profound and eloquent, have engaged with devotion in its advocacy and the cause has already taken formidable shape and energy from associations constituted solely with a view to favor its agitation, and to ensure its success.

Although the matter has so recently come into public discussion, yet we believe it has been almost universally conceded that several important alterations in, and additions to, the present Constitution of this State, are indispensable. Public opinion, however, is divided both upon the extent to which these changes should be carried, and

the means by which they should be effected. While the amendments contemplated by one class are, in their opinion, so various and so comprehensive as to merit the undivided consideration of a special Convention, another class maintain that the State Legislature is fully competent, in the ordinary exercise of its constitutional powers, to shape and initiate all the alterations that may be required. This diversity of opinion gives rise to two important inquiries:

First-What is the formula of progression according to which Constitutions are to be perfected? And secondly-What are the safest and most effective means of practically favoring this progression?

The comprehensiveness of these inquiries, and the breadth of interests which they cover, will make it sufficiently apparent, that in opening our pages to their discussion, we are not departing from that policy to which we have hitherto uniformly adhered, of entertaining no articles of a political nature, which concern merely local and temporary interests.

The modern science of government recognizes two orders of legislationthe one organic, or constitutional, and the other statutory. It is the function of the former to establish and to define

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