The Bd. of Supervisors of Iroquois County v. Keady

• Decision Date: 30 April 1864
• Parties: THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF IROQUOIS COUNTY et al.v.WILLIAM F. KEADY et al.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

34 Ill. 293

1864 WL 2984 (Ill.)

THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF IROQUOIS COUNTY et al.

v.WILLIAM F. KEADY et al.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

April Term, 1864.

APPEAL from Circuit Court of Iroquois County.

Bill in equity filed by Wm. F. Keady, Cyrus B. Barnes and Louis Throup, citizens of Iroquois county, against the board of supervisors of said county, to restrain the removal of the county seat of said county in accordance with the result of an election resulting in favor thereof, held March 17, 1863.

The court below decreed that such removal be perpetually injoined.

Randall & Fuller, Leland & Blanchard, and Roff & Doyle, for appellants.

Chester Kinney and James Fletcher, for appellees.

BECKWITH, J.

The fifth section of article seven of the constitution provides that “no county seat shall be removed until the point to which it is proposed to be removed shall be fixed by law, and a majority of the voters of the county shall have voted in favor of its removal to such point.”

This provision of the constitution contemplates the passage of a law authorizing an election to be held, and prescribing the time when, and the place where it shall take place; the manner in which it shall be conducted and its results made known. Without such a law there would be no time for holding it, no places for receiving votes, no persons authorized to receive them, and no mode of making the result known; the proceedings would be those of an unauthorized assemblage.

Before the passage of the act of February 11, 1863,¹ there was no law authorizing such an election to be held by the voters of Iroquois county. An election was held on the 17th day of March, 1863, and if the act mentioned had not then become a law, it is eveident that no such vote has been given in favor of the removal of the county seat, as the constitution requires.

Section twenty-three of article three of the constitution declares, “and no public act of the general assembly shall take effect or be in force until the expiration of sixty days from the end of the session at which the same may be passed, unless in case of emergency the general assembly shall otherwise direct.” The session of the general assembly which passed the act referred to had not terminated when the election was held, and the act could not become a law until the expiration of sixty days from the end of the session, without an express direction of the legislature to that effect. Inasmuch as the act directs an election to be held on the 17th day of March, 1863, it is insisted that it must be deemed a direction of the legislature that the provision which authorizes an election should take effect on or before the time when the election was to be held. The same rule of construction would imply directions, that the provisions which require notice to be given should take effect at least twenty days before the time when the election was to be held; that the provisions which fix the place to which the removal was proposed to be made, should take effect before votes were cast in favor of the removal; that the provisions which prescribe the manner in which the votes shall be counted and the result made known should take effect immediately after the election; that the provisions which require the board of supervisors to procure or erect suitable public buildings for the public offices of the county, and for holding the county and circuit courts of the same, should take effect as...