A nеw township called Washington having been erected out of the old township of Bethel, by commissioners appointed by the Court of Quarter Sessions of Lebanon county, the legislature, by the 13th section of the aсt of 8th March, 1847 (Pamph. Laws, 257), directed an election to be held within the tоwnships of Bethel and Washington by the qualified voters, in order to determine by ballot, whether the new township should be continued or annulled. This question was tо be determined by a majority of the votes polled. An election wаs accordingly held, and a majority of votes cast against the continuance of the new tbwnship. This result was duly returned to, and filed among the reсords of the court. The relator, Henry Phillippi, who was afterwards informally elected constable by the people residing within the territory оf the proposed new township, claims that the act of 1847 is within the prinсiple settled in Parker v. The Commonwealth, 6 Barr, 507, and therefore unconstitutional and void. But this position is founded in an entire misapprehension of the doctrine of that case. It settled nothing more than that the General Assembly of the commonwealth cannot delegate to the рeople a power to enact laws by the exercise of the ballot, affecting the property and binding the political and social rights of the citizens. But the erection of a township or the creation of a new district for merely municipal purposes, or convenience in the transaction of the public business, is in no degree similar to the exercise of law-making power. The one is an exerсise of sovereignty, the other, in its very nature, a subordinate function. The latter, like the laying out of a public road or highway, or the erection of a bridge, may require the exercise of judgment and skill, but there is nothing eithеr in the positive provisions of our constitution, or the genius of our institutions, which prohibits the action of other than the legislative bodies. Accоrdingly, at a very early day, the power of laying out roads and directing the building of county bridges was conferred upon the several Courts of Quartеr Sessions, though still occasionally exercised by the legislature itself. So, too, by the act of 1834, the courts, acting through commissioners, are vested with the right to
The statute which authorized the division by vote being thus shown to be constitutiоnal, the refusal of the court below to swear the relator as constable of a township having no legal existence, was correct.
Peremptory mandamus refused.