¶1delivered the opinion of the court.
¶2As the result of colliding with an automobile driven by defendant, plaintiff brings this action to recover $35,000 damages for a personal injury. The accident occurred shortly after midnight .on November 19, 1911, at the intersection of Williams Avenue and Russell Street, in Portland. During the trial of the case, plaintiff offered in evidence certified copies of certain ordinances purposed to regulate the speed of motor vehicles within the limits of the municipality, but upon' the objection of counsel for defendant, the court refused to allow the ordinances to be introduced into the case, upon the ground that the ordinances had been superseded by an-act of the legislative assembly of the State of Oregon, known as the “Oregon Motor Vehicle Law,” General Laws of 1911, pages 265-278. The result of the trial was a verdict in favor of defendant, whereupon plaintiff prosecutes this appeal.
¶3*561The ordinances, being three in number, were adopted by the city during the years 1904 and 1906, and, considered as one specie of legislation, forbid any person to drive or operate an automobile at any point on the streets of the city at a greater speed than 15 miles per hour, or at a speed of more than 10 miles per hour within the fire limits, or at a speed greater than a walk upon any street where street-cars turn. This local municipal legislation was enacted agreeably to the powers vested in the city by a charter granted by the state legislature in 1903: Laws 1903, pp, 3-172. The portion of the charter appropriate to the subject under consideration follows:
“Sec. 72. The council shall have and exercise exclusively all legislative powers and authority of the City of Portland, and no legislative powers or authority, either expressed or implied, shall be exercised by any other person or persons, board or boards, other than the council. The council shall have full power and authority, except as herein otherwise provided, to exercise all powers conferred upon the city by this charter and the Constitution and laws of the State of Oregon. ’ ’
“Sec. 73. The council has power and authority, subject to the provisions, limitations and restrictions in this charter contained—
“(1) To exercise within the limits of the City of Portland all the powers, commonly known as the police powers, to the same extent as the State of Oregon has or could exercise said power within said limits; …
“ (60) Except as otherwise provided in this charter, or in the Constitution or laws of the State of Oregon, to regulate and control, for any and every purpose, the use of the streets, highways, alleys, sidewalks, public thoroughfares, public places, and parks of the city; to regulate the use of streets, roads, highways, and public places for foot passengers, animals, bicycles, automobiles and vehicles of all descriptions; # *
*562“(63) To control and limit traffic on the streets, avenues and elsewhere.”
¶4So far as is necessary to an understanding of the matter here involved, the Oregon motor vehicle law, provides:
“An act providing for regulating the use, registration, license, identification, conduct and operation of vehicles operated upon the public roads, streets and highways of the State of Oregon; to regulate and license the persons who drive the same; to prescribe penalties for violations hereof and to prohibit the unauthorized possession or use of a vehicle and to provide penalty therefor; to license and identify all motor vehicles; to limit the authority of cities and towns on like subjects concerned with said vehicles, and to repeal all acts and parts of acts either in conformity or in conflict herewith. … ”
Sec. 2,'subdivision 17: “The rate of speed on all streets, roads and highways of this state shall be a reasonable speed, up to and not exceeding twenty-five miles an hour, but any speed in excess of twenty-five miles an hour upon any road or highway of this state shall be an unreasonable speed and is prohibited by this act; provided, however, that no motor vehicle shall be driven at a rate faster than eight miles an hour upon the country roads or highways of this state when within one hundred yards of any vehicle drawn by horse or horses.”
Sec. 25: “Local authorities shall have no power to pass, enforce or maintain any ordinance, rule or regulation (1) requiring of any owner or operator of a vehicle any license fee or permit to use the public highways, or excluding or prohibiting any vehicle whose owner has complied with this act from the free use of streets, roads or highways of this state, except such driveway, speedway or road as has been or may be expressly set apart by law for the exclusive use of horses and light carriages, or except as herein provided; (2) affecting the registration or numbering of vehicles or *563prescribing a slower rate of speed than herein specified at which snch vehicle may be operated, or the nse of the streets, roads and highways of this state, contrary or inconsistent with the provisions of this act; and all such ordinances, rules of regulations now in force are hereby declared to be of no validity or effect; provided, however, that the local authorities may limit by ordinance, rule or regulation hereafter adopted, the speed of vehicles on the streets within their respective corporate limits, on condition that such ordinance, rule or regulation shall also fix the same speed limitation for all vehicles, not to be in any case less than one mile in six minutes and on further condition that local authorities shall also have placed conspicuously on each main street, road and highway of this state where the boundary of such local authority crosses the same and on every main street where the rate of speed changes, signs of sufficient size to be easily readable by persons using the same, bearing the words ‘Slow down to -miles’ (the rate being inserted) and with an arrow pointing in the direction where the speed is to be reduced or changed; and provided further, that said ordinance, rule or regulation shall fix the penalties for violation thereof similar to and no greater than those prescribed by this act for violation of speed limitation by any vehicles; and provided further, that nothing in this act contained shall be construed as limiting the power of local authorities to make, enforce and maintain further ordinances, rules or regulations affecting vehicles which are used to carry the public for hire.”
¶5Admitted by all, is the proposition, that but a single problem is here involved, namely, since the amendment of Article XI, Section 2, of the state Constitution, effective December 3, 1910, can the legislature enact a statute, general in its application, calculated to repeal certain ordinances of the City of Portland theretofore enacted pursuant to the powers granted to the city in its charter? A consideration of this question impels a brief review of the organic and *564statutory laws applicable thereto. Article XI, Section 2, of the Constitution reads:
“Corporations may be formed under general laws, but shall not be created by the legislative assembly by special laws. The legislative assembly shall not enact, amend or repeal any charter or act of incorporation for any municipality, city or town. The legal voters of every city and town are hereby granted power to enact and amend their municipal charter, subject to the Constitution and criminal laws of the State of Oregon. ’ ’
¶6
“It does not operate as an amendment of city charters ; but charters may be amended to take advantage of powers granted.”
¶7
“The legislative assembly shall not enact, amend or repeal any charter or act of incorporation for any municipality, city or town.”
¶8This language admits of no other interpretation than that the people purposed to curtail the power of the legislature in all matters of legislation pertaining to the creation of a municipal charter, its amendment or nullification. To yield to the thought that the constitutional enactment must be construed to inhibit the legislature from committing a direct assault upon the charter of a particular city, yet, permitting that very object to be obtained by making the law apply generally to all municipalities in the state, is to close the eyes to a full reading of the provision, and to license the legislature to do that by indirection which it is expressly forbidden to do directly. The argument that the constitutional provision means that the legislature may, by general enactment, regulate the internal affairs of the cities and towns of the state, but are prohibited from passing a similar law having refer*566ence to a particular municipality, is giving life to the character of the act rather than to the substance of the Constitution, and is equivalent to saying that the legislature may do with the Constitution as it pleases so long as it selects a general conveyance rather than a particular vehicle.
¶9In adding this constitutional mandate, there was no design to emancipate any city from general legislation by the legislative assembly affecting the body of the people of the state in those matters wholly involving state-wide policies and activities, or to prevent appropriate action by the lawmakers upon any of the topics regarding which the Constitution sanctions legislation, but only in respect to those phases of purely municipal government properly regulated by charters and embracing matters of internal municipal regulation. The wisdom of the body politic in conceiving and adopting this addition to the fundamental law of the state is grounded on the proposition that each municipality is best suited to govern its own affairs. What might be the proper height of a building in one city, the distance the dwellings should be located from the street line in some populous district as a protection from the ravages of fire, and the speed automobiles should travel on the congested thoroughfares of a metropolis, are considerations properly of a municipal concern, differing as widely as the cities differ from the hamlets and wholly beyond the domain of legislative understanding.
¶10Eeturning to the constitutional provision, this language will be observed:
“Corporations may be formed under general laws, but shall not be created by the legislative assembly by special laws.”
¶11*567The formation of incorporations by general laws alone is permitted. The next sentence contains this inhibition:
“The legislative assembly shall not enact, amend or repeal any charter or act of incorporation for any municipality, city or town.”
¶12The formation of corporations by general laws, that is, providing through general legislation, the implements by which a community may initiate its existence and form and mold its shape is permitted, but from the legislature the people of the state have withdrawn its former prerogative to enact, amend or repeal any municipal charter by such a specie of legislation. Had the electors of the state desired municipal legislation by general laws, the first sentence of the Constitution would have read:
“Corporations may be formed and the charters of municipal corporations enacted, amended or repealed under general laws. ’ ’
¶13By the force of Article XI, Section 2, of the Constitution, the electors of municipalities are, subject to the Constitution and criminal laws and such general laws as may be enacted by the legislature affecting the relation of the state to the locality, made the legislative assembly to enact the laws germane to the general purpose and object of the municipality, free from legislative molestation, which autonomy in a sense constitutes a sovereign city, subject at all times, however, to the supreme will of the state, reserved by the people of the state through the initiative and referendum provision of the fundamental law.
¶14Counsel for respondent finds much comfort in the case of Straw v. Harris, 54 Or. 424 (103 Pac. 777), and offers the conclusion of that opinion as decisive of the *568case under consideration. The legislature in its biennial session in 1909 passed an act designed to provide a method for the incorporation, under general laws, of ports in communities bordering upon bays or rivers navigable from the sea. Several cities of Southwestern Oregon found this act a suitable conveyance for their amalgamation as a port. Litigation resulted, and in consequence thereof, this court, in a well-considered opinion written by Mr. Justice King, said, among other things:
“The act under consideration by permitting the incorporation of ports does not thereby directly attempt to amend the charter of any city or town within the boundaries thereof. Under any view, it may only affect the charters and ordinances of such cities and towns to the extent that they may be in conflict or inconsistent with the general object and purpose for which the port may be organized. This the Constitution clearly intended to permit; that is to say, a general law thereunder is provided whereby the people within the municipality created-under it may take such steps in support thereof as may be necessary, even though its success may require, on the part of the included municipalities, a surrender of some of the rights or privileges previously granted to or acquired by them. Incorporated cities and towns may change or amend their charters at any time in the manner provided by the Constitution. The power to do so, however, is derived from the people of the state, and is necessarily limited to the exercise of such powers, rights and privileges as may not be inconsistent with the maintenance and perpetuity of the state, of which public corporations are but the mere instrumentalities of government. In other words, the powers thus acquired do not rise higher than their source.”
¶15The act of the law-making body receiving the thoughtful consideration of the court was one sanctioned by the constitutional provision in its first sen*569tence, which reads, “Corporations may be formed under general laws.” This enactment had solely for its purpose a plan of procedure for the formation of ports, and therefore did not purport to amend or annul the charter1 of any city, and, further, such legislation was general in its application, and outside of the province of charter regulation. It is true that the court in that decision said, in substance, “that the state cannot surrender its sovereignty to the municipalities.” This the state has not done by circumscribing the power of the legislature over municipal charters, as the sovereignty in this state resides in the people. They have retained unto themselves, under the initiative and referendum provision of the Constitution, power to create, amend, or annul a municipal charter, though denying that privilege to their representatives through which they commonly speak. While there may be certain statements contained in Straw v. Harrisindicative of a different conclusion than here announced they fall in the category of gratuitous observations unnecessary of consideration in a decision of the points involved. Nor do we flunk the decisions of this court subsequent, yet following in the wake of Straw v. Harris, conflict with the doctrine of this case.
¶16Prom these principles we conclude the lower court erred in refusing to admit the ordinances in evidence, and that the Oregon motor vehicle law (Laws 1911, pp. 265-278) is unconstitutional so far as it attempts to regulate the speed of automobiles in the City of Portland. Reversed. Rehearing Granted.
¶17*570Former opinion sustained December 21, 1914.
¶18On Behearing.
¶19(145 Pae. 22.)
¶20In Banc. Mr. Justice McNary delivered the opinion of the court.
¶21In the original opinion of this case, reported in 142 Pac. 594, the majority of the court composing department No. 1 decided that Article XI, Section 2 of the Constitution withheld the legislature from amending or repealing the charter of any city, or the ordinances enacted pursuant thereto in respect to those matters peculiar to municipal regulation, though reserving that power to the sovereignty through the initiative and referendum provision of the fundamental law. At a rehearing of the case, counsel for defendant presented argument for a reversal, which is clearly embodied in the scholarly dissenting opinions of Mr. Chief Justice McBride and Mr. Justice Burnett, to which our attention will now be briefly given. Owing to the importance of the questions suggested and their grave bearing upon future legislation, we think it not amiss succinctly to state our position anew. Looking backward over the path of our state legislation, we observe that the organic law primarily contained the following clause:
“Corporations may be formed under general laws, but shall not be created by special laws, except for municipal purposes. All laws passed pursuant to this section may be altered, amended, or repealed, but not so as to impair or destroy any vested corporate rights”: Article XI, Section 2, of the Constitution.
¶22
“Corporations may be formed under general laws, but shall not be created by the legislative assembly by special laws. The legislative assembly shall not enact, amend or repeal any charter or act of incorporation for any municipality, city or town. The legal voters of every city and town are hereby granted power to enact and amend their municipal charter, subject to the Constitution and criminal laws of the state of Oregon”: Article XI, Section 2, as amended.
¶23A comparison of the two provisions of the fundamental law will at once reveal the intention of the voters and the evil they purposed to correct. The original section of the Constitution permitted the legislature to create municipal life by special law, and to clothe it with a charter which could be altered or repealed at any legislative session, when either the municipal welfare or political exigencies required.
¶24Over the municipality the legislature had exclusive and unrestrained control, and, having the power to create, so it had the power to modify or destroy. In fact, the ultimate sovereign power of the state over its cities and towns was unquestioned. To remedy the many ills flowing from the absolute dependency of cities upon the autocratic will of the legislature and its oft-repeated interference in matters of local concern, the people conceived the idea of city sovereignty as a separate attribute of state sovereignty; consequently • we have, by the adoption of the constitutional provision under consideration, vested our cities with more political power than they heretofore possessed since the formation of our state government. The electors *572now are, subject to the Constitution and the criminal laws not affecting local regulation, made the legisla- ' tive assembly to enact and amend the local laws which should regulate their municipal affairs. In the former opinion, this court said:
“By the force of Article XI, Section 2, of the Constitution, the electors of municipalities are, subject to the Constitution and criminal laws and such general laws as may be enacted by the legislature affecting the relation of the state to the locality, made the legislative assembly to enact the laws germane to the general purpose and object of the municipality, free from legislative molestation, which autonomy in a sense constitutes a sovereign city, subject at all times, however, to the supreme will of the state, reserved by the people of the state through the initiative and referendum provision of the fundamental law.”
¶25In the studiously considered case of Branch v. Albee, 71 Or. 188 (142 Pac. 598), a majority of this court reaffirmed the same construction, saying through Mr. Justice Ramsey.
“Said section, as amended, first withdraws from the legislative assembly all power that it previously had to enact, amend and repeal charters, and then confers upon the legal voters of every city and town power to enact and amend their charters, and this power, thus conferred upon cities and towns, is made subject to the Constitution and the criminal laws of the state. It is not made subject to the civil laws of the state. The conclusion seems to be irresistible that the people, by the adoption of said amendment, intended to withdraw from the legislative assembly all power that it previously possessed to enact, amend or repeal charters or acts incorporating cities or towns, and to confer upon the legal voters of cities and towns all of said power, except the power to repeal charters. If effect is given to the language of this amendment, no other conclusion appears to be tenable”: 71 Or. 188 (142 Pac. 600).
¶26*573'Referring to the same provision of the Constitution in the case of Thurber v. McMinnville, 63 Or. 410 (128 Pac. 43), Mr. Chief Justice McBride said:
“We are of the opinion that the true intent of the amendment above quoted was to give to cities and towns the authority to enact and amend charters affecting property and other rights within the boundaries of such cities and towns, and that, so far as legislation outside of these boundaries is concerned, they must find it elsewhere than in this amendment. Inside their boundaries, and in relation to matters purely local, they are, as regards regulation by the state legislature, supreme; beyond these boundaries they are invested with no power except that which the legislature may see fit to grant them in common with all other cities, and under like circumstances.”
¶27At this juncture, we deem it prudent carefully to consider the case of City of Portland v. Nottingham, 58 Or. 1“ (113 Pac. 28), on account of its similitude to the one in hand. The point we desire to develop is that this ease is an authority for the doctrine enunciated in the original opinion in Kalich v. Knapp, ante, p. 558 (142 Pac. 594), namely, that the legislature is inhibited by the Constitution from amending the charter of the municipality either by special or general legislation in those matters of local and municipal concern. In January, 1903, the charter of the City of Portland provided, • among other things, that a property owner who was displeased at the assessment levied upon his property for a street improvement could appeal to the Circuit Court, but that the verdict of the jury should be a conclusive determination of the questions giving birth to his grievance. A dispute having arisen between the city and Mr. Nottingham regarding the reassessment of the property of the latter, the remedy provided by the charter provision *574was invoked, resulting in a verdict for the city, which was set aside by the court and a new trial granted. The city prosecuted an appeal to this court upon the assumption that the legislature did, at its biennial session in 1907 (Laws 1907, c. 162, p. 311), adopt an act whereby an appeal was allowable. Considering the vital question whether the legislature could, by general enactment, amend a charter provision, this court, in a forceful opinion written by Mr. Justice Burnett, said:
“This provision of the Constitution (Article XI, Section 2), was adopted by the people at the June election of 1906, and went into effect upon the proclamation of the Governor, June 25th of that year. Its effect is to take from the legislative assembly the right to amend the charter of the City of Portland, although enacted by the legislative assembly itself in January, 1903.”
¶28Further, Article IV, Section 1 (a), of the Constitution, provides that:
“ ‘The initiative and referendum powers reserved to the people by this Constitution are hereby further reserved to the legal voters of every municipality and district, as to all local, special and municipal legislation, of every character, in or for their respective municipalities and districts.’ These constitutional provisions confer ample and exclusive power upon the people of every municipal corporation to regulate their own affairs respecting municipal legislation and procedure. The legislative assembly cannot pass laws to repeal or amend municipal charters, even by implication, respecting such matters.”
¶29After extracting from the Motor Act the criminal element therein contained, we cannot discern any appreciable difference in the principle propounded in these two cases, viz., that the Constitution as it is now built withholds the legislature from amending any *575municipal charter by legislation, be it direct or indirect, general or special, which is properly and purely the subject of municipal concern and regulation.
¶30As additional evidence of their political intention to preserve the ancient right of local self-government of municipalities, the people of the state in June, 1906, ingrafted on the Constitution (Article IV, Section 1(a), which provides:
“The initiative and referendum powers reserved to the people by this Constitution are hereby further reserved to the legal voters of every municipality and district, as to all local, special, and municipal legislation, of every character, in or for their respective municipalities and districts.”
¶31This provision of the Constitution like Article XI, Section 2, was designed to insnre to each incorporated community a full measure of home rule and to place beyond the capacity of the legislature the power to make any .change in the system of government of any municipality by legislation other than that authority reserved to the legislature in Article XI, Section 2. Since the adoption of these constitutional provisions this court has given thought to their intendments and limitations, and has, we think, generally, arrived at the conclusions reached in this case: Farrell v. Port of Portland, 52 Or. 582 (98 Pac. 145); Haines v. City of Forest Grove, 54 Or. 443 (103 Pac. 775); City of McMinnville v. Howenstien, 56 Or. 451 (109 Pac. 81); City of Portland v. Nottingham, 58 Or. 1 (113 Pac. 28); State v. Schluer, 59 Or. 18 (115 Pac. 1057); State v. Hearn, 59 Or. 227 (115 Pac. 1066, 117 Pac. 412); McKeon v. City of Portland, 61 Or. 385 (122 Pac. 291); State v. Port of Tillamook, 62 Or. 332 (124 Pac. 637, Ann. Cas. 1914C, 483) ; Thurber v. McMinnville, 63 Or. 410 (128 Pac. 43); Riggs v. Grants Pass, *57666 Or. 266 (134 Pac. 776); Kalich v. Knapp, ante, p. 558 (142 Pac. 594); Branch v. Albee, 71 Or. 188 (142 Pac. 598). True, in such cases as Straw v. Harris, 54 Or. 424 (103 Pac. 777), Kiernan v. Portland, 57 Or. 454 (111 Pac. 379, 112 Pac. 402, 37 L. R. A. (N. S.) 339), and Churchill v. Grants Pass, 70 Or. 283 (141 Pac. 164), the court seems to have announced the rule that the amendments adverted to are competent to restrain the legislature in the enactment of special but not general laws affecting the municipalities.
¶32With vigor the argument is pressed upon us that on account of the Motor Act (Laws 1911, p. 275), containing a clause providing a penalty for its violation, that the act is a criminal law, and therefore without the competency of municipal legislation, citing Baxter v. State, 49 Or. 353 (88 Pac. 677, 89 Pac. 369), and State v. Schluer, 59 Or. 18 (115 Pac. 1057). In these cases the question arose as to whether a city could amend its charter under Article XI, Section 2, of the Organic Act so as to be legal proof against the operation of the local option law: Laws 1905, p. 47. After a careful review of the provision of the Constitution, this court held that the local option law was general 'in its scope and criminal in its character, and therefore within the power of legislative expression. Without doubt these cases were correctly decided, for the subject matter of the local option law involves either the sale or prohibition of intoxicating liquors, and for that reason was the proper subject for legislative action. Treated as either a moral or an economic question, the state has, in the interest of better citizenship, abundant authority to regulate the sale of alcoholic liquors and to provide a punishment for disobedience to the law, whether we consider the prohibitory legislation from the standpoint of a criminal law or an enactment in*577volving the state in its sovereign capacity. Problems of this kind lie too deep for municipal solution and far beyond the limits of purely municipal concern.
¶33The concept that the Motor Act is a criminal law finds its mainspring in the last sentence of Article XI, Section 2, of the Constitution:
“The legal voters of every city and town are hereby granted power to enact and amend their municipal charter, subject to the Constitution and criminal laws of the State of Oregon.”
¶34Recurring to Section 23 of the Motor Act, it will be observed that a punishment is provided for the infractors of the law which it is argued brings the act within the power of the legislature to adopt. Considered by itself, the constitutional provision last quoted might supply the legislature with sufficient excuse for this legislation, even though it had the legal effect of amending or superseding a city charter or ordinance. But this section cannot be construed alone, as at the same election an amendment to Article IV was adopted, but inserted after Section 1, designated as Section 1(a), supra. Particularly do we desire to accentuate this sentence:
“The initiative and referendum powers reserved to the people by this Constitution are hereby further reserved to the legal voters of every municipality and district, as to all local, special, and municipal legislation, of every character, in and for their respective municipalities and districts.”
¶35These two amendments, referring as they do to the same subject matter, must be considered together, and be so interpreted as to carry out the intent of the framers and the people who have adopted them. In reading the excerpt from Article IV, Section 1(a), it will be noticed that the powers created by Article XI, *578Section 2, were enlarged and made applicable “to all local, special and municipal legislation of every character.”
¶36In considering the two sections of the Constitution for the purpose of welding an harmonious construction, we think it was the clear intention of the electors of the state to restrain the legislature from legislating in criminal matters affecting those subjects that are purely local and municipal in character. But in those public matters which concern the people of the state at large, in common with the inhabitants of the chartered communities, the legislature has undoubted power to define those acts which shall constitute a crime and provide a penalty for their infraction. This must be so, else we shall have dissipated the greatest power for the preservation of order, and without which the government of the state would be incomplete, and utterly fail to attain one of its great ends, the protection and security of person and property in organized cities, as well as throughout its entire territory. Certainly the necessity of enlarging municipal powers in both civil and criminal matters, wholly local is thoroughly appreciated, even by the casual observer of the conditions in thé crowded modern centers of population, yet, even so, the constitutional amendments only grant unto the cities the exclusive right to exercise such powers, civil or criminal, as legitimately belong to their local and internal affairs, and beyond this the legislative assembly and the people of the state, speaking through the initiative, occupy a field of action exclusively their own.
¶37The City of Portland received its charter from the hands of the legislature at the session of 1903: Sp. Laws of 1903, pp. 3-172. By that franchise it was ordained that the common council should have full *579power and authority to exercise all powers conferred by the charter and the Constitution and laws of the state. To the council was given, coextensive with the state, the right to exercise within the limits of the city, all the powers commonly known as the police power, and to regulate and control the use of its streets and the traffic thereon, except as otherwise provided in the Constitution and laws of the State of Oregon: Sections 72 and 73. By these provisions of the charter, the legislature vested the city with the same authority over its streets as the state itself possessed. As an expression of this potentiality, the ordinances were enacted in 1904 and 1906; hence at the time of their enactment the City of Portland had, within its corporate limits, concurrent power with the state to pass laws relative to the regulation and control of traffic over the streets of the city. The constitutional provisions forming the meat of this discussion were adopted by the people of the state in 1906, and had for their effect the removal of legislative authority over the subject of municipal traffic; consequently, at the time of the passage of the Motor Act through the legislature in 1911, that department of government was impotent to nullify or amend the charter or ordinances of the City of Portland in a matter of acknowledged local concern such as the regulation of traffic over the streets of the metropolis.
¶38Prom what has been said it must follow “as night the day” that the Motor Act, if valid expressly amends every charter of every municipality in the state by divesting such cities of the power to pass or enforce ordinances in conflict with the statute. To assert that the adoption of the act is not an amendment but a suppression by paramount authority is but a hollow statement that must fall for the want of a distinguish*580ing prop. The desideratum is to discover the intended effect of the legislation rather than the particular choice of words that may be used to express that effect. If the statute nullifies the charter or ordinances of the incorporated communities, it supersedes them either by suppression by paramount authority or by amendment. The resultant effect is the same. And from what has been said this cannot be done. In the title of the Motor Act we are confronted with this declaration: “To limit the authority of cities and towns on like subjects concerned with … vehicles.” In Section 25 of the act, we find an express statement that local authorities shall have no power to prescribe a lower rate of speed than in the enactment provided. Without doubt, the legislative act embraces the same subject matter as the ordinances and is in direct conflict therewith, and if the statute is constitutional, then it expressly repeals the ordinances. In aid of our deductions that this language works an amendment of the charter, we adduce State v. Wright, 14 Or. 365 (12 Pac. 708); Warren v. Crosby, 24 Or. 558 (34 Pac. 661).
¶39
“The legislative authority of the state shall be vested in the legislative assembly, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives”: Article IV, Section 1, Constitution.
¶40Thus did the people of the state so hew and shape the body of their fundamental law as to constitute *581the legislature the only instrument through which the people could express their choice on legislative matters. As a result of political expansion, the people amended this section of the Constitution by imposing an indirect limitation on the legislature compelling that institution to share its powers of legislation with that of the people publicly expressed through the initiative. For we read that:
“The legislative authority of the state shall be vested in a legislative assembly, consisting of a Senate and House of Eepresentatives, but the people reserve to themselves power to propose laws and amendments to the Constitution and to enact or reject the same at the polls, independent of the legislative assembly, and also reserve power at their own option to approve or reject at the polls any act of the legislative assembly”: Article IV, Section 1, as amended in June, 1902.
¶41Here, it will be seen that the people did not shorten the powers of the legislature in matters of legislation only, they did declare that the legislature was no longer to be their exclusive agency of expression. Experimentation of this character having proved popular, the electorate set about further to curtail the legislature as an organ of legislative expression. This they succeeded in accomplishing in the adoption of Article XI, Section 1, and Article IV, Section 1(a), of the Constitution, when they forbade the legislature from voicing their sentiments in matters of purely municipal concern.
¶42We are liable to confuse the discussion of the subject if we fail to discern between sovereignty itself and that force which stands as the representative of sovereign power. The source — the abiding place of sovereignty —is in the people. Government is merely an agency by which it is exercised. The legislative body is but a *582component of that agency — a contrivance'by which the people crystallize their ideas into the form of legislation. Therefore, in the enactment of organic legislation having for its function the abridgment of legislative power, the people of the state are not parting with any of their sovereignty, rather they are exercising their right to express this sovereign power directly. In time the people may strip the legislature of every power it once enjoyed, leaving it but a place in memory, and themselves exercise directly within the state all of the powers formerly committed to the legislature. No further need we seek to disclose the authority of this statement than to quote Article I, Section 1, of the Constitution:
“We declare that all men, when they form a social compact, are equal in right; that all power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and happiness; and they have at all times a right to alter, reform, or abolish the government in such manner as they may think proper. ’ ’
¶43Surely, then, in checking the legislature from further interference in municipal affairs does not constitute the surrender of any sovereignty. Nor does the city on that account become a miniature state, for at all times and under all forms of government sovereignty remains in the people of the state who, speaking through the initiative, may legislate on all matters unless restrained by the federal or the state Constitutions.
¶44
“All of those public matters which concern the people of the state at large in common with the people of the particular locality, as the administration of justice, and the authority of the state generally,-through and by legislative enactments administered by state officers or by virtue of the power of the central government, in the preservation of the public peace and affairs of like general character, although some of which may be in the hands of the local or municipal authorities, are matters of state or central jurisdiction. On the other hand, all of those public affairs which concern the inhabitants of the locality as an organized community, apart from the people of the state at large, as supplying purely local needs, conveniences, and comforts like water, light, and gas, the establishment of sewers, fire protection, and the enforcement of by-laws or ordinances touching the interests of the local corporation alone are essential matters of local concern.”
¶45From the general principles of law herein discussed, we conclude that the judgment of the trial court is erroneous and therefore must be reversed.
¶46Beversed. Former Opinion Sustained on Behearing.