It is quite true that a state constitution should deal only with permanent and fundamental provisions and should not attempt to regulate matters of detail which can be adequately dealt with by ordinary legislation and which are in their nature and operation readily changeable. I am in full accord in this, as in other respects, with the state platform adopted by the Republican party last year and on which the Republican delegates to the Constitutional Convention were elected. Subordinate and non-essential matters of mere regulation and detail ought not to be embodied in constitutions. But I venture to assert that in reason and sound policy there can be no more important, permanent, or fundamental constitutional provision than one relating to the manner of selecting the highest state officers in whom all the executive and administrative powers of our state government are to be vested. This is a subject eminently fit and proper for a constitution to regulate. If this convention cannot solve the problem of establishing a sound system of nomination for elective state offices, at least in outline and cardinal features, no legislature can be expected to do so. In any event, the new Constitution should emphatically declare that the right peaceably to assemble in a political convention composed of duly elected delegates or representatives for the purpose of nominating candidates for public office, state or local, should not be abridged, as it is abridged by the present Election Law. I further venture to assert that the question of nominating candidates by delegate conventions involves in its essence the perpetuation of the fundamental principles of representative government and of the republican form of government which the founders intended to establish and to guarantee to each state of the Union.