California (redirected from Calif.)

CALIFORNIA. The name of one of the states of the United States. It was admitted into the Union, by an Act of Congress, passed the 9th September, 1850, entitled "An act for the admission of the state of California into the Union."
     Sec. 1. This section enacts and declares that the state of California shall be one of the United States, and admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original states, in all respects whatever.
     Sec. 2. Enacts that the state of California shall be entitled to two representatives, until the representatives in Congress shall be apportioned according to the actual enumeration of the inhabitants, of the United States.
     Sec. 3. By this section a condition is expressly imposed on the said state that the people thereof shall never interfere with the primary disposal of the public lands within its limits, nor pass any law, nor do any act, whereby the title of the United States to, and right to dispose of the same, shall be impaired or questioned. It also provides that they shall never lay any tax, or assessment of any description whatever, upon the public domain of the United States; and that in no case shall non-resident proprietors, who are citizens of the United States, be taxed higher than residents; that all navigable waters within the said state shall be common highways, forever free, as well to the inhabitants of said state, as to citizens of the United States, without any tax, impost or duty therefor; with this proviso, viz., that nothing contained in the act shall be construed as recognizing or rejecting the propositions tendered by the people of California, as articles of compact in the ordinance adopted by the convention which formed the constitution of that state.
     2. The principal features of the constitution, of California, are similar to those of most, of the recently formed state constitutions. It establishes an elective judiciary, and: confers on the executive a qualified veto. It prohibits the creation of a state debt exceeding $300,000. It provides for the protection of the homestead from execution, and secures the property of married females separate from that of their husbands. It makes a liberal provision for the support of schools, prohibits the legislature from granting divorces, authorizing lotteries, and creating corporations, except by general laws, and from establishing any bank's of issue or circulation. It provides also that every stockholder of a corporation or joint-stock association, shall be individually and personally liable for his proportion of all its, debts or liabilities. There is also a clause prohibiting slavery, which, it is said, was inserted by the unanimous vote of the delegates.