Senate is one, and now assembled under executive convocation as the Legislature of the State of Mississippi, be or not the Legislature recognized and established by the Constitution and

laws of the land.

"In looking into the said report, the attention of the undersigned was strikingly called to the readiness of the said committee to vindicate the constitutional organization of the Senate, and thereby their own qualifications. This was within the admitted constitutional province of the Senate; and had that body contented itself with its own organization, the important legislation required by the country could have proceeded harmoniously to its legitimate consummation. But in the proceedings aforesaid the Senate has not only eulogized its own organization, but has usurped the province of declaring the organization of the House. of Representatives, the co-ordinate branch of the Legislature,' obnoxious to the Constitution. The right of the Senate to assume such an attitude is not to be found in any article of the Constitution, is a violation of the common rules and courtesy necessary in all legislation, is altogether unprecedented, and is without all legitimate principle. The only articles in the Constitution which bear at all on this branch of the subject contain the following language: Each House shall judge of the qualifications and elections of its own members.' Each House may determine the rules of its own proceedings,' etc. The undersigned is therefore compelled to pronounce that the Senate, in taking jurisdiction of the subject at all, hath assumed a superintending and appellate control over the exclusive province of the House of Representatives, denied to the Senate by the first principles of the Constitution. It is impossible to read the Constitution of this State without being impressed with the fact that the convention, in making the distribution of the powers of government, assigned them to three distinct departments : those which are legislative to one, those which are judicial to another, and those which are executive to another, and as much right had the Senate to usurp the executive and judicial authority of the State, as the exclusive legitimate province of the House of Representatives.

"The distinctive character of the representative principle of

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our government is, that the people in the distribution of the powers have kept them separate, and declared that no person or collection of persons being of one of the departments shall exercise any power properly belonging to either of the others.' They have alike reposed confidence in each, have required of each the same moral sanctions, and made each responsible to them for the faithful discharge of public duty. The House of Representatives, by admitting the members from the new counties to qualify and take their seats, acted within its exclusive jurisdiction. The Senate hath therefore assumed an unwarrantable interference with matters which the Constitution has wisely allotted to the determination of others.

"The evidences of the constitutional organization of the House of Representatives and of the Senate were at the commencement of this session reciprocally communicated to each other and they united in the passage of a joint resolution appointing a joint committee to inform the Governor of their readiness to proceed to business. This committee performed its duty, and both Houses duly received the Governor's message. The undersigned had hoped that these proceedings were indicative of the disposition of the Legislature to enter upon the discharge of its duties; but this hope, he soon found, was illusory, and the proceedings of the Senate hath resulted in the senatorial declaration that there is no House of Representatives, and thus concluded this session of the Legislature."

Mr. Cocke then proceeded to argue that apportionments were to be made by the Legislature at stated periods, and not oftener than once in four years; whereas new counties might be created at every session, and that as the liability of taxation followed immediately upon the erection of a new county, the right to representation was a substantive, independent, and immediate right, recognized and provided for by the constitutional clause declaring that every county should have at least one representative; and that consequently it was impossible for the Constitution to contemplate the existence of a new county for four or more years, bearing all the burdens of government with no voice in its legislation. This was the sum and substance of his arguinent, which he did not, however, express in very elegant or

forcible language, but with sufficient clearness for easy comprehension.

The position taken by Mr. Cocke was also maintained by Governor Runnells, who, in a communication made to the Senate in answer to a notification of its intention to adjourn that day, declared that "The right of a bare majority of the Senate, or indeed the entire number of that body, to adjudge of the constitutionality of the House of Representatives is denied in the broad and unquestionable language of the Constitution." Upon the reception of the message containing this clause the Senate immediately adjourned sine die.

The House then, refusing to acknowledge the adjournment of the Senate for a longer space than three days, appointed a committee to apprise the Governor that the two Houses of the Legislature had disagreed as to the time of adjournment, whereupon his Excellency issued his proclamation proroguing the Legislature until the next regular session, and it accordingly stood adjourned.

In 1845 Mr. Cocke was elected Chancellor of the State. This office he held for the full term of six years. He was not popular as chancellor, and acquired no distinctive eminence on the bench. His elevation was, no doubt, due in a great measure to his popularity in the Legislature, and to his efforts in behalf of the new counties.

His decisions manifest neither a high degree of legal acumen nor lucidness of style, but by patient and laborious application he succeeded in keeping the beaten track of his more eminent predecessors, and availed himself closely of precedents.