In the New York constitution of 1894 an effort was made to guard against the abuse of special legislation. The cities of the state were by the constitution itself divided into three classes according to population, and any law which did not apply to all the cities of a class was declared to be a special act. Special legislation was not prohibited; but when any act of this kind was passed by the legislature it was required to be submitted to the authorities of the city or cities in question, and if disapproved of by them after a public hearing, it could become law only by being passed again in the regular manner. This merely afforded to the cities affected by the proposed special legislation an opportunity to protest against its enactment, the legislature having full power to pass it in the face of local disapproval. That this is not an adequate remedy for the evils of special legislation is shown by the fact that the two charters of New York City enacted since this constitution went into effect, have both been framed by a state-appointed commission and passed over the veto of the mayor. The constitutional changes which have been mentioned must not be understood as implying any repudiation of the doctrine that a municipal corporation is a creature of the general government of the state. These provisions merely secured, or rather sought to secure, to cities some benefits of a negative character--immunity from certain recognized abuses of legislative authority. They are the expression of an effort to find a remedy for the evils of municipal government by restricting the authority of the legislature rather than by giving cities the power to act independently in local matters. They have diminished somewhat the evils of state interference, but they failed to remove the cause by giving the cities the constitutional right to control their own affairs. The failure of all these measures to accomplish what was expected of them finally brought the advocates of municipal reform to a realization of the fact that the American system made no provision for real local self-government, and that our refusal to recognize this principle was the chief cause of the prevalent corruption and misrule of our cities and the insuperable obstacle to all effective and thoroughgoing reform. As soon as attention was directed to this feature of the problem it was seen that no system could be devised that would be better adapted to the purpose of defeating the end of good city government, since those who would be directly benefited by the reforms in municipal government were powerless to bring them about except with the co-operation of the legislature. Moreover the consent of the legislature, though once given, was liable at any time to be withdrawn at the instigation of private or partisan interests, since this body was not directly interested in establishing and maintaining good municipal government nor responsible to those who were.