309
PAPERS OF l\IIRABEAU BuoNAPARTE LAMAR
force; and that including one Supreme Court excl'IJ;des the idea of two annually under our Constitution. And here it may be necessary, for the further illustration of this point, to bring forward a contemporaneous construction put upon a similar clause of the Constitution of the U. States. There, the very same words are used in that instrument that are in ours with regard to tbe number of the courts, and yet that govern- ment has existed more than half a century and some of the greatest men have been reared up and died there, who ever lived in the tide of times without having discovered that Congress possessed the Constitu- tional authority to branch the Court, altho' many of them have lived more than a thousand miles from the seat of Government-the place where the Supreme Court of that country has been uniformly, annually holden. This, although a construction by implication, speaks volumes; for, we all know that that people are tenacious of their rights 1 and that none understand them better. And if such power ever existed it would long since have been asserted. This contemporaneuous construction of the constitution of our mother country, on precisely the same clause, although drawn by implication, is entitled to great consideration, as the maxim "contempora,nw expositio est forticima in lege" is applicable. I. Kents com. 464. It is believed however, in this case, that there is no necessity for drawing to our aid any other authority on the subject of construction than what naturally flows from the plain unsophisticated words of the Constitution, by their evident signification and import. The 4h Article Sh section of our Constitution says "the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction only which shall be conclusive within the Republic and shall hold its sessions annually." This term annually evidently by the rules of construction before laid down means yearly and not half yearly or simi-ann'IJ;ally as. the Bill before us contemplates. The words sessions, places and times, have been seized upon by the opposing constructionists, as terms to show that the meaning of the Constitution is that the Court should be held at more places than one and more frequently than annually. Let us examine these words in the Constitu- tion and see if we cannot put a reasonable and sensible construction upon them; so that they may stand in unison with the word annually. It shall hold its sessions for instance the first mondays of January, 1840, 1841 & 1842. These or more numbers will constitute annual sessions. They. shall be held op the first monday of January or the first monday of June July or any other· period which Congress may designate. This carries out the idea of plurality as to time. They may be held in the City of Austin this year in the City of Galveston next year, the City of Houston the year after and so on on till all the Cities in the vast Republic shall have been greeted by the Supreme Court, and this would carry out the idea qf plurality in regard to places. The object of the Convention which framed our constitution, obviously intended to have annual sessions only of the Court and Congress was at liberty to locate them. The time and place are brought in as auxiliaries to the numbers of the Court annually; and the rule of "ut res magis valwt q'IJ;am pereat" is applicable. One part of a law or stat- ute must be so construed by another that the whole may stand and neither be rendered inoperative. Exclude this rule of Construction in the investigation of the case before us and in effect, you expunge from the statute book the word annually.
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