law, for fixing the per diem or salary of all of said employes.

Section 250. It shall be the duty of the General Assembly to enact such laws as shall be necessary and proper to decide differences by arbitrators, the arbitrators to be appointed by the parties who may choose that summary mode of adjustment.

Section 251. No action shall be maintained for possession of any lands lying within this State, where it is necessary for the claimant to rely for his recovery on any grant or patent issued by the Commonwealth of Virginia, or by the Commonwealth of Kentucky prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and twenty, against any person claiming such lands by possession to a well-defined boundary, under a title of record, unless such action shall be instituted within five years after this Constitution shall go into effect, or within five years after the occupant may take possession; but nothing herein shall be construed to affect any right, title or interest in lands acquired by virtue of adverse possession under the laws of this commonwealth.

Section 252. It shall be the duty of the General Assembly to provide by law, as soon as practicable, for the establishment and maintenance of an institution or institutions for the detention, correction, instruction and reformation of all persons under the age of eighteen years, convicted of such felonies and such misdemeanors as may be designated by law. Said institution shall be known as the "House of Reform."

Section 253. Persons convicted of felony and sentenced to confinement in the penitentiary shall be confined at labor within the walls of the penitentiary; and the General Assembly shall not have the power to authorize employment of convicts elsewhere, except upon the public works of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, or when, during pestilence or in case of the destruction of the prison buildings, they cannot be confined in the penitentiary.

Section 254. The Commonwealth shall maintain control of the discipline, and provide for all supplies, and for the sanitary condition of the convicts, and the labor only of convicts may be leased.

Section 255. The seat of government shall continue in the city of Frankfort, unless removed by a vote of two-thirds of each House of the first General Assembly which convenes after the adoption of this Constitution.

MODE OF REVISION.

Section 256. Amendments to this Constitution may be proposed in either House of the General Assembly at a regular session, and if such amend

ment or amendments shall be agreed to by threefifths of all the members elected to each House, such proposed amendment or amendments, with the yeas and nays of the members of each House taken thereon, shall be entered in full in their respective journals. Then such proposed amendment or amendments shall be submitted to the voters of the State for their ratification or rejection at the next general election for members of the House of Representatives, the vote to be taken thereon in such manner as the General Assembly may provide, and to be certified by the officers of election to the Secretary of State in such manner as shall be provided by law, which vote shall be compared and certified by the same board authorized by law to compare the polls and give certificates of election to officers for the State at large. If it shall appear that a majority of the votes cast for and against an amendment at said election was for the amendment, then the same shall become a part of the Constitution of this Commonwealth, and shall be so proclaimed by the Governot, and published in such manner as the General Assembly may direct. Said amendments shall not be submitted at an election which occurs less than ninety days from the final passage of such proposed amendment or amendments. Not more than two amendments shall be voted upon at any one time. Nor shall the same amendment be again submitted within five years after submission. Said amendments shall be so submitted as to allow a separate vote on each, and no amendment shall relate to more than one subject. But no amendment shall be proposed by the first General Assembly which convenes after the adoption of this Constitution. The approval of the Governor shall not be necessary to any bill, order, resolution or vote of the General Assembly, proposing an amendment or amendments to this Constitution.

Section 257. Before an amendment shall be submitted to a vote, the Secretary of State shall cause such proposed amendment, and the time that the same is to be voted upon, to be published at least ninety days before the vote is to be taken thereon in such manner as may be prescribed by law.

Section 258. When a majority of all the members elected to each House of the General Assembly shall concur, by a yea and nay vote, to be entered upon their respective journals, in enacting a law to take the sense of the people of the State as to the necessity and expediency of calling a convention for the purpose of revising or amending this Constitution, and such amendments as may have been made to the same, such law shall be spread upon their respective journals. If the next General Assembly

shall, in like manner, concur in such law, it shall provide for having a poll opened in each voting precinct in this State by the officers provided by law for holding general elections at the next ensuing regular election to be held for State officers or members of the House of Representatives, which does not occur within ninety days from the final passage of such law, at which time and places the votes of the qualified voters shall be taken for and against calling the Convention, in the same manner provided by law for taking votes in other State elections. The vote for and against said proposition shall be certified to the Secretary of State by the same officers and in the same manner as in State elections. If it shall appear that a majority voting on the proposition was for calling a Convention, and if the total number of votes cast for the calling of the Convention is equal to one-fourth of the number of qualified voters who voted at the last preceding general election in this State, the Secretary of State shall certify the same to the General Assembly at its next regular session, at which session a law shall be enacted calling a Convention to readopt, revise or amend this Constitution, and such amendments as may have been made thereto.

Section 259. The Convention shall consist of as many delegates as there are members of the House of Representatives; and the delegates shall have the same qualifications and be elected from the same districts as said Representatives.

Section 260. Delegates to such convention shall be elected at the next general State election after the passage of the act calling the convention, which does not occur within less than ninety days; and they shall meet within ninety days after their election at the Capital of the State, and continue in session until their work is completed.

Section 261. The General Assembly, in the act calling the convention, shall provide for comparing the polls and giving certificates of election to the delegates elected, and provide for their compensation.

Section 262. The convention, when assembled, shall be the judge of the election and qualification of its members, and shall determine contested elections. But the General Assembly shall, in the act calling the convention, provide for taking testimony in such cases, and for issuing a writ of election in case of a tie.

Section 263. Before a vote is taken upon the question of calling a convention, the Secretary of State shall cause notice of the election to be published in such manner as may be provided by the act directing said vote to be taken.

SCHEDULE.

That no inconvenience may arise from the alterations and amendments made in this Constitution, and in order to carry the same into complete operation, it is hereby declared and ordained: ·

First: That all laws of this Commonwealth in force at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, not inconsistent therewith, shall remain in full force until altered or repealed by the General Assembly; and all rights, actions, prosecutions, claims and contracts of the State, counties, individuals or bodies corporate, not inconsistent therewith, shall continue as valid as if this Constitution had not been adopted. The provisions of all laws which are inconsistent with this Constitution shall cease upon its adoption, except that all laws which are inconsistent with such provisions as require legislation to enforce them shall remain in force until such legislation is had, but not longer than six years after the adoption of this Constitution, unless sooner amended or repealed by the General Assembly.

Second: That all recognizances, obligations and all other instruments entered into or executed before the adoption of this Constitution, to the State, or to any city, town, county or subdivision thereof, and all fines, taxes, penalties and forfeitures due or owing to this State, or to any city, town, county or subdivision thereof; and all writs, prosecutions, actions and causes of action, except as otherwise herein provided, shall continue and remain unaffected by the adoption of this Constitution. And all indictments which shall have been found, or may hereafter be found, for any crime or offense committed before this Constitution takes effect, may be prosecuted as if no change had taken place, except as otherwise provided in this Constitution.

Third: All circuit, chancery, criminal, law and equity, law, and Common Pleas Courts, as now constituted and organized by law, shall continue with their respective jurisdictions until the Judges of the Circuit Courts provided for in this Constitution shall have been elected and qualified, and shall then cease and determine; and the causes, actions and proceedings then pending in said first named courts, which are discontinued by this Constitution, shall be transferred to, and tried by, the Circuit Courts in the counties, respectively, in which said causes, actions and proceedings are pending.

Fourth: The Treasurer, Attorney-General, Auditor of Public Accounts, Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Register of the Land Office, elected in eighteen hundred and ninety-one, shall hold their offices until the first Monday in January, eighteen

hundred and ninety-six, and until the election and qualification of their successors. The Governor and Lieutenant-Governor elected in eighteen hundred and ninety-one shall hold their offices until the sixth Tuesday after the first Monday in November, eighteen hundred and ninety-five, and until their successors are elected and qualified. The Governor and Treasurer elected in eighteen hundred and ninetyone shall be ineligible to the succeeding term. The Governor elected in eighteen hundred and ninetyone may appoint a Secretary of State and a Commissioner of Agriculture, Labor and Statistics, as now provided, who shall hold their offices until their successors are elected and qualified, unless sooner removed by the Governor. The official bond of the present Treasurer shall be renewed at the expiration of two years from the time of his qualification.

Fifth: All officers who may be in office at the adoption of this Constitution, or who may be elected before the election of their successors, as provided in this Constitution, shall hold their respective offices until their successors are elected or appointed and qualified as provided in this Constitution.

Sixth: The quarterly courts created by this Constitution shall be the successors of the present statutory Quarterly Courts in the several counties of this State; and all suits, proceedings, prosecutions, records and judgments now pending or being in said last named courts shall, after the adoption of this Constitution, be transferred to the Quarterly Courts created by this Constitution, and shall proceed as though the same had been therein instituted.

ORDINANCE.

We, the representatives of the people of Kentucky, in Convention assembled, in their name and by their authority and in virtue of the power vested in us as Delegates from the counties and districts respectively affixed to our names, do ordain and proclaim the foregoing to be the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Kentucky from and after this

date.

Done at Frankfort this twenty-eighth day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and ninety-one, and in the one hundredth year of the Commonwealth.

The new Constitution of Kentucky given in the preceding chapter has proven, in the main, acceptable to the people, but there is an exception which has been the subject of much discussion-the system of taxation which has been characterized by high authority as "one of the crudest and most defective systems" in all the States. The system under which Kentucky labors known as the "general property tax" or "uniform advalorem tax" provides that every species of property visible or invisible, real or personal, must pay an annual tax at the same rate to the state, to the county, and to the city, based on its cash value. This is without regard to the income which it produces, or to the benefits which it derives from public improvements made out of the revenue raised by taxation and without deduction for debts owed upon any property or for any personal indebtedness of the taxpayer. It is, in brief, a tax on the gross assets and not on what the taxpayer actually owns in his own right. The result is that it paralyzes effort and is doubly hard on the poor man whose property, as a rule, is in such form that it cannot escape taxation, whereas the invisible and intangible property of the richer man does escape taxation.

The system is inequitable and unfair. So high an authority as the supreme court of the United States has condemned the system as "destructive of the principle of uniformity and equality in taxation," stating with emphasis: "This court has repeatedly laid down this doctrine."

A State Revenue Revision Revision committee through its chairman, Judge Cammack, in 1896, made this report: "After gathering together the revenue laws of nearly every state and territory we were astonished to learn that Kentucky possessed one of the crudest and most defective revenue systems of them all. Our laws relating to the assessment of property and the collection of taxes are abominThe Taxation Revision committee, in 1909, pointed out, with great clearness and force, the injury the system is working to the commonwealth, and the absolute need of a change, indicating the method by which it could be effected. The report of the commission was approved by the governor, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, the president of the State Farmer's Institute, by the leading business men of the state, and by the most prominent lawyers, one of whom had been a member of the constitutional convention which had inaugurated the system. The state senate acted upon the suggestions of the commission and, by a unanimous vote, adopted an amendment to the 171st section of the constitution, with a view to changing the system of taxation to one which should give equal and exact justice to the taxpayers, rich and poor alike. The senate also adopted a resolution providing for the appointment of a tax commission of eleven members, six from the house and five from the senate, with the president of the latter body and the speaker of the house, as ex officio members, whose duty it