number of members of the house of representatives, and the prohibition of the sale of intoxicating liquors. None of these amendments, save the one last mentioned, has indicated a desire to further restrict legislative power, and the history of subsequent legislation in the State would lead to the conclusion that the prohibitory amendment, which did not go into effect on account of irregularities in the method of proposing it for adoption, would have been an unwise measure, in view of the impossibility of enforcing any law, even though embodied in the Constitution, unless supported by adequate legislation. The vote each ten years in favor of calling a constitutional convention has been so trifling as to indicate a want of any popular discontent with the Constitution as adopted.

The permanence of the Constitution of 1857 in all its substantial features is due, therefore, not to the difficulty of amendment, as in some States (i. e. Indiana and Nebraska) where a proposed amendment must receive a majority of the votes of those voting at the election at which it is submitted, nor to the inability of the people to indicate their wishes as to a change in the Constitution (as in Rhode Island) which they could do in this State by voting for a convention, but to an indifference which must be attributed to reason

able satisfaction with the instrument as it has been in force.

In fact, the Constitution of Iowa belongs to a group of Constitutions adopted from 1845 to 1857 inclusive, nearly all of which have remained unchanged to the present time. This group includes the Constitutions of the northern States from New York to the Missouri River, in each of which a Constitution was adopted, though of course not in each case the first Constitution for the State, within that period of thirteen years. And of that group only two, New York and Illinois, have found it necessary to adopt new Constitutions or substantially change the constitutional system. This group of Constitutions represents, therefore, the fully matured constitutional system, without any large incorporation of legislation which requires frequent amendment. Iowa is, indeed, in one sense an exception to this rule, for its first Constitution was adopted in 1846, but the popular demand for a new Constitution was based, on the one hand, on objections to undue restrictions of the power of the legislature to provide banking facilities, and on the other, on the desire for more specific provisions relating to the incorporation, regulation, and promoting of railroad enterprises. These extraordinary emergencies occasioned agitation for constitutional revision, without perhaps any very

definite purpose as to what the change should be, and the Constitution of 1846 was substantially retained, although many changes were made, as to some of which however there was no popular demand for a change which, standing alone, would have occasioned constitutional revision.

The political history of the times apparently had little to do with the agitation for the revision of the Constitution of 1846. The intervening years had been years of intense political activity throughout the country. The agitation as to restriction of slavery, and the entire reorganization of all previously existing political parties indicated that the spirit of political revolution was in the air. The State had been in the control of the old Democratic party, as opposed to the Whigs, from the time of its admission into the Union until the success of the Whigs with the aid of the Free Soil Democrats in electing Grimes as Governor and a majority of the General Assembly at the general election in 1854. But while the debates in the convention indicate as to some subjects great intensity of political feeling between the adherents of the new Republican party and the supporters of Democratic political principles, it is impossible to say that political considerations dictated the result on any question determined by the convention. The supposed needs of the people of a State rapidly growing in

population and wealth was the controlling consideration in determining the action of the legislature and the people in voting for a convention to revise the Constitution of 1846.

The personnel of the convention itself was in some ways significant. Of the thirty-six members (selected from senatorial districts) twentyone were Republicans and fifteen were Democrats, as against a proportion of fifty-one Democrats to twenty-one Whigs in the convention of 1844, and twenty-two Democrats to ten Whigs in the convention of 1846. The representation of the States as to the nativity of the various members is also interesting, six having been born in the New England States, eleven in the Middle States, nine in the Middle West, and ten in the South; while in the convention of 1846, of the thirty-two members, fifteen were born in the South, eight in New England, four in the Middle States, and five in Ohio; and in the convention of 1844, of the seventy-two members, twenty-six were born in the South, ten in New England, twenty-three in the Middle States, and ten in the States of the Old Northwest, while three were of foreign birth. These figures throw some light on the sources of immigration to Iowa at different stages in its early history, and corroborate

the conclusion drawn from other sources1 that during the earliest settlement of the Territory, when the easiest means of transportation for reaching its limits was by way of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, a very considerable proportion of the settlers came from south of the Ohio; while later, when railroads had covered a portion of the distance from the eastern and middle States toward the Mississippi, the immigration was in a much larger proportion from those States. A similar inference is to be drawn from the fact that of the members of the convention of 1857, who were under the average age, the proportion who had been born in the South was smaller than of those above the average age. The southern portion of the State, settled largely from the territory bordering on the Ohio River, was by far the most populous, and counties were organized to its western limits and represented in the convention, while there were no members whose residences were north and west of the center of the State.

The average age of the members in the three conventions was substantially the same. In none of the three did it exceed forty years. As to occupation, it is noteworthy that in the convention of 1844 there were forty-six farmers and

See article by Professor F. I. Herriott in Annals of Iowa for April, 1906, Vol. VII, p. 367.