Excerpt from Public Documents of the Legislature of Connecticut: January Session, 1878 I welcome you to the Capital of the State and to the responsible duties with which you are charged as the representatives of the Commonwealth. The vital rights and liberties of the citizen depend, for the most part, under our system of government, upon State' legislation - very few upon national legislation. I hope I may not be thought unduly censorious if I venture to suggest that we have come, as law-makers, to concern ourselves too much with the dreary routine of party appointments, releases from State prison, restoration to forfeited rights, private acts of incorporation, and class legislation in its varied disguises, and too little with needed betterments in the system Of laws which govern us in the prompt administration of justice between man and man; in the economies of public expenditure; in the interests of popular education, in the reformation of suffrage; in the regulation of corporate franchises, and in the protection of the savings of the poor against fraud and embezzlement. If all of us, who have to do with the making of laws, would conscientiously give as much time and study to needed reforms in the body politic, as we give to partisan politics, or a tithe of that which the artisan or manufacturer gives to improvements in machinery and the economies of production, civil government would no longer be the very last Of all human institutions in the race Of progress. To some suggestions in some of the directions above indicated, I beg now to ask your attention. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.