[Sidenote: The governor's functions: 1. Advisor of legislature. 2. Commander of state militia. 3. Royal prerogative of pardon. 4. Veto power.] The ordinary functions of the governor are four in number. 1. He sends a message to the legislature, at the beginning of each session, recommending such measures as he would like to see embodied in legislation. 2. He is commander-in-chief of the state militia, and as such can assist the sheriff of a county in putting down a riot, or the President of the United States, in the event of a war. On such occasions the governor may become a personage of immense importance, as, for example, in our Civil War, when President Lincoln's demands for troops met with such prompt response from the men who will be known to history as the great "war governors." 3. The governor is invested with the royal prerogative of pardoning criminals, or commuting the sentences pronounced upon them by the courts. This power belongs to kings in accordance with the old feudal notion that the king was the source or fountain of justice. When properly used it affords an opportunity for rectifying some injustice for which the ordinary machinery of the law could not provide, or for making such allowances for extraordinary circumstances as the court could not properly consider. In our country it is too often improperly used to enable the worst criminals to escape due punishment, just because it is a disagreeable duty to hang them. Such misplaced clemency is pleasant for the murderers, but it makes life less secure for honest men and women, and in the less civilized regions of our country it encourages lynch law. 4. In all the states except Rhode Island, Delaware, Ohio, and North Carolina, the governor has a veto upon the acts of the legislature, as above explained; and in ordinary times this power, which is not executive but legislative, is probably the governor's most important and considerable power. In thirteen of the states the governor can veto particular items in a bill for the appropriation of public money, while at the same time he approves the rest of the bill. This is a most important safeguard against corruption, because where the governor does not have this power it is possible to make appropriations for unworthy or scandalous purposes along with appropriations for matters of absolute necessity, and then to lump them all together in the same bill, so that the governor must either accept the bad along with the good or reject the good along with the bad. It is a great gain when the governor can select the items and veto some while approving others. In such matters the governor is often more honest and discreet than the legislature, if for no other reason, because he is one man, and responsibility can be fixed upon him more clearly than upon two or three hundred.