that, by a 'supplemental bill' 'it is competent for this
Legislature to alter and amend the details of the bill, incorporating
the subscribers to the Mississippi Union Bank, passed at the last
session of the Legislature of this State.' (Senate Journal, 103.)

The report of the Committee to the House was as follows: 'The said
Committee are of the opinion, that it is within the province of the
Legislature to amend or change the details of the said Mississippi Union
Bank Charter,' &c. (House Journal, p. 117.) Such was the opinion of the
joint Committee of both Houses of the Legislature, which reported this
supplemental act, which act was passed by the vote of 22 to 3 in the
Senate (Journal, 320), and 55 to 22 in the House. (Journal, 329-30.) It
would appear, then, that in the opinion of an overwhelming majority of
both branches of the Legislature of Mississippi, the supplemental act
was constitutional; and the act was approved by A. G. McNutt, the
Governor of the State, and thus became a law on the 15th of February,
1838. Indeed, the idea that a subsequent Legislature could change none
of the details of a bank charter, because there was embodied in the act
a separate and distinct section authorizing a loan of money by the
State, seemed to me never to rise to the dignity of a question. Such, we
have seen, was the view of the Legislatures of 1838, 1839, and 1841, and
such was the unanimous decision, hereafter quoted, of the Chancellor and
Circuit Judge of Mississippi, and of the supreme judicial tribunal, the
High Court of Errors and Appeals of the State, in two decisions, on this
very point, and in favor of the constitutionality of this law. One of
these decisions was made in January, 1842, and the other in April, 1853.
These decisions were conclusive against the State, and binding upon the
Legislature, the Governor, and the people, for the following reasons.
The Constitution of the State of Mississippi contains the following
clause:

'ARTICLE II. _Distribution of Powers._

'Sec. 1. The powers of the Government of the State of
Mississippi shall be divided into three distinct departments,
and each of them confided to a separate body of magistracy; to
wit, those which are legislative to one, those which are
judicial to another, and those which are executive to another.

'Sec. 2. No person or collection of persons, being of one of
these departments, shall exercise any power properly