Despite the lessons of history showing the need of specified limitations upon the legislative power to ensure personal liberty and justice, it is still urged by the impatient that this check upon legislative action should be removed, or at least that the legislature should itself be the judge of the constitutionality of its acts, and that the legislatures as the representatives of the people may be trusted to observe constitutional requirements and limitations. From the beginning, however, the people of this country have not fully trusted their legislatures. They have not only set bounds to legislative power, but within those bounds they have imposed in most instances the check of an executive veto. They have also complained of their legislatures far more loudly than they have of their courts, and latterly have subjected them to the initiative and referendum and in some instances to the recall. Perhaps the judgment of those urging that the legislature should be trusted not to trespass on the constitutional rights of the people may be enlightened by recalling some instances of legislative action upon constitutional questions left to its decision by the constitution itself. It is hardly necessary to cite instances of the abuse of this power in the matter of determining who are entitled to seats in the legislature. It is common knowledge that, in the past at least, both law and fact have often been over-ridden for partisan advantage. As an illustration of how far a legislature will sometimes go in this direction I may cite a recent instance in Maine. The constitution of that state provides (Art. IV, Pt. 3, Sec. 11) that "no person holding any office under the United States (post officers excepted) shall have a seat in either house of the legislature during his continuing in such office." This provision was in the original constitution of 1821, and until the legislative session of 1913 the exception of "post officers" was understood to refer to officers in the postal service and such officers often held seats in the legislature without question. In 1913, however, the House of Representatives held for awhile that the exception referred only to military officers of the United States stationed at military posts within the state, though no such officer had ever held a seat in the legislature.