to open the case again, as they were, as they said, prepared to prove demand by the witness who had already testified, and that his failure to so testify had been through their own oversight. This Mr. Hardin strenuously resisted, insisting that W had shown a willingness to recklessly testify to anything for the plaintiff, and should not be heard again. While plaintiff's counsel prolonged the debate, the witness himself unconsciously manifested his interest in the result by hanging over the bar, with fixed gaze and gaping mouth, an attentive listener to all that transpired. Mr. Hardin, from his seat within the bar, discovering this, turned his eyes to the witness and gazed at him with such intentness as to excite general attention. The eyes of the witness finally met those of Mr. Hardin, and for a few moments it seemed a contest as to which should look most searchingly at the other. An amused feeling began to steal over the spectators, when suddenly Mr. Hardin's eyes took on an idiotic expression that seemed more than ever to puzzle his competitor. At this point, Mr. Hardin sprang to his feet, and offering his hand to the astonished witness still more astonished him, and at the same time convulsed the spectators, by the cordiality of his greeting-"Good morning, Mr. W—!” The non suit was granted.

CHAPTER XXX.

Τ

THE COEUR DE LION OF REFORM.

HE first Constitution of Kentucky was framed in 1792, the year she was received into the sisterhood of States. It was soon discovered to be decidedly defective, and to contain provisions exceedingly obnoxious to public sentiment. Among other things, it allowed free negroes to vote, which of itself was sufficient, according to the opinion of that day and long afterward, to warrant a new one. But other defects existed of a more substantial character. In 1799, after an exciting struggle, a convention was called and the second Constitution adopted. It continued the fundamental law for fifty years. It had not been long in force, however, before reformers proposed another or a revision of the one existing. As early as 1803 a member of the Legislature moved the subject of calling a constitutional convention, but the motion met with no favor, and did not even receive a second.

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"I was myself," said Mr. Hardin in a public speech in 1850 at Frankfort, one of your representatives in one house or the other during a period commencing in 1810 and ending in 1833. I have no doubt that during that whole period I voted every year against a bill to take the sense of the people on the proposition to call a convention." The efforts for a convention did not cease after 1833. In 1838 the Legislature, at length, submitted the question to a vote. There is no doubt that the result of the Old and New Court contest in 1825 had imparted fresh vigor to the constitutional reformers of that period. If a Legislature was impotent to remove obnoxious members of a court, not so (it was argued) was the strong arm of a constitutional convention. "Sir," said Charles A. Wickliffe in a speech in 1837, opposing this proposition, "this convention project, disguise it as you may, is the warfare commenced in 1824 against the independence of the judiciary."

Indeed, the chief argument for constitutional change in 1838 was to deprive the judges of their irresponsible life tenure by making them elective by the people. Objections were made to the county court system; to the life tenure of sheriffs, clerks, etc.; to the uncertainty

of succession, if the governor and lieutenant-governor both died in office; the location of the seat of government at Frankfort-but, after all, the chief grievance was the "irresponsible" judiciary. The result of the vote in 1838 was overwhelmingly against the convention. The New Court party before that time had become the Democratic party. The Democratic party in turn had become the party of constitutional reform. From 1838 to 1847 the State was divided into two great parties-Whig and Democratic. The former maintained its uninterrupted ascendancy in State affairs. It regularly elected the governor and maintained a working majority in both houses of the Legislature. Under the Constitution of 1799 nearly all offices of honor and profit in the State were appointive, either by the governor, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, or by those whom the governor appointed. These appointments fell exclusively on the faithful. The Whig was the office-holding party of the State, and undoubtedly came to regard itself as having prescriptive rights, which it was little less than audacious for a Democrat to contest.

But the Democratic party did not despair. Despite local defeat, yet in national elections it was more fortunate. Federal patronage was some solace for State proscription. It was in the minority, but a reliable and respectable minority. It was diligent, well-disciplined, compact, strong in its convictions, and moved with the unfaltering courage of a Roman legion. Defeated, routed, and overwhelmed at the polls, each individual Democrat came to the next election just as surely as the polls were opened. The Whigs blundered, as the strong always will, and the Democrats meekly made all the profit possible out of the blunders. The long proscription of Democrats as to State offices at length worked like a leaven. In some communities the only eminently qualified persons for important offices were Democrats. But these were always passed by for incompetent Whigs.

Mr. Hardin, prophetically foreseeing the end, besought Governor Owsley to bestow offices only for meritorious qualifications. Hardin was the civil service reformer of his time, but his warnings were unheeded. All the while down to 1847, the Democratic party had held fast to its theory of constitutional reform-to the principle that all offices, legislative, executive, ministerial, and judicial, should be elective by the people-that power ought to rest in each local community to choose the rulers who managed its affairs, and that officers were the servants of the people and should be immediately responsible as such. In 1847, the constitution of 1799 was neither better nor

worse than it had been. It still kept the Whigs in power and the Democrats out. The governor, William Owsley, a man of integrity and long experience in affairs, was conducting government on the plan of his predecessors. How long this auspicious condition of things might have continued it is difficult to conjecture. But an event occurred in this year (the breach between Governor Owsley and Mr. Hardin, his secretary of State, narrated in a previous chapter) that was pregnant with results. It was suddenly developed that the governor was unpopular-that he had used his office for the benefit of his family that too much power was centered in his hands, and thus one more argument for constitutional reform was evolved. All other reasons had been rejected as inadequate. This final one proved to be the missing quantity sought, which, added to the others, completed the demonstration. But more important than all this, the event referred to developed a leader of constitutional reform, without whom its success had still been uncertain. That leader was Mr. Hardin. Whether he acted from motives of pique and revenge, as was charged, or from a desire to crown the labors of his life by furnishing his State with a better form of government, as he often and earnestly asserted, matters not to posterity. In his Owsley speech (delivered January, 1847) he, for the first time, perhaps, publicly announced his alliance. with the reform party.

He sends winds and tides

"I now tell Governor Owsley, beware how you portion your children and your connections with the offices that belong to the people. They will not tamely submit; they will rouse up in their majesty and assert their power. In monarchies, oppressions on the people when they can bear them no longer are resisted, and revolutions follow, as the history of most of the governments of Europe proves. In republics, the remedy is a resort to first principles to purify the government when inordinate abuses creep in. Power is always stealing from the many to the few. The Almighty has told us what to do in such a case by His own example. to purify the waters of the sea; He sends winds, rains, and thunderstorms to purify the air. So a convention will purify the foul political atmosphere in Kentucky. That is the remedy, and nothing but this will do. We, gentlemen, who are for a convention, ought to rouse up, when we look at the extravagant claims and pretensions of Governor Owsley, and when we see the public offices taken from more deserving men and given in marriage portions to the governor's daughter, grandson, and others of the connection. I am tired of treading these ways. A remedy-and that quickly-must be applied."

He was heralded by the convention party as the Cœur de Lion of reform. He recognized his position and accepted its responsibility. While the more discerning opponents of the convention and its labors freely acknowledged his leadership and its effect, others denied that theory of accounting for events. The partisan Whig anxiously sought some other reason for the convention scheme than the true one, as that was an implied condemnation both of the form of the government and the mode of its administration. The following from the pen of a contemporaneous writer is a specimen of the views of the class alluded to:

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The plain history of the call of the convention is this: The party in the minority (the Democrats) originated the call in order to gain strength thereby. Having nothing to lose and everything to gain by a revolution, it was a measure of party tactics not without its merits. The majority party (the Whigs) fearing to lose strength by making the issue, though really in the main content with things as they were—and adverse to the project, were compelled, as they supposed, to apparently patronize the new movement or lose ground with the people. Thus a rivalry of zeal between the two contending parties for popular favor, rushed the movement through the two votings for a call of a convention. The minority then finding themselves out-hurrahed on the question, had to cast about for some other issue on which to stake themselves.

"It so happened that in the various projects for reform, a small party (the Emancipationists) inconsiderable in numbers, but attracting notice by their zeal, learning, and respectability, had mooted the question of a provision in the Constitution for limiting the existence of slavery in the Commonwealth. And it so happened, furthermore, that this party was supposed to have their political sympathy with the majority party. And it so happened, finally, that at this very juncture, this same question of slavery had forced itself up as a party issue in national affairs, and was likely to become a matter of intense sectional excitement between the North and the South. The opportunity for manufacturing capital was too favorable to be lost. Forthwith the minority magnified the little Emancipation party into an immense host, threatening danger to the Commonwealth, and threw themselves forward as the peculiar champions of the slaveholding interest, calling upon all who regarded the welfare of the State to lay aside all party predilections and unite against the common foe. The majority, again afraid to give their adversary this advantageous position in the popular eye, once more unwillingly entered the race for Buncombe,' and by one of those singular delusions which sometimes overtake parties, actually rushed into a league with their adversary, though having everything to lose, in order to make this sham fight. with the imaginary common enemy. All the maneuvers of a militia training day were gone through with in due form, and a victory for the mighty allies