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THE MARCH OF THE CONSTITUTION.

THE ANNUAL ADDRESS

BY

GEORGE R. PECK,

OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.

For something more than a hundred years the people of the United States have enjoyed-or have had the right to enjoythe protection of a written constitution. Its sanctions and its guaranties have been with them and over them so long that they often seem to be only natural and every-day rights, immemorially existing. But the Federal Constitution was a great creative work. It established a union of states and breathed into it the powers and attributes of nationality. It was a new departure; for, until then, though there had been various leagues and federations united by written covenants, and some small local constitutions, there had been no attempt, anywhere in the world, to make a written constitution on a large scale; one that should be the supreme organic law for a great nation. What is a constitution? The question is more difficult than it seems. In a general way, however, it may be said that it is the system or body of fundamental principles, written or unwritten, under which a nation, state or body politic is formed or governed.

Unwritten constitutions, like the British-that ancient fabric which our fathers knew and revered-are evolutionary, growing from year to year, from reign to reign, and from century to century. Bagehot, writing of the English Constitution, was oppressed with the difficulties of the subject, because of this very element of growth. "There is a great difficulty in the way of a writer," he says, "who attempts to sketch a living constitution-a constitution that is in actual

work and power; the difficulty is that the object is in constant change." An unwritten constitution is never completed; for, silently, with the growth of years, it is modified and enlarged to meet the exigencies of what Gladstone termed "progressive history." It is an old story; on one side successive demands, on the other successive refusals, until that which was stubbornly contested finally settles down and becomes incorporated in the great catalogue of indisputable rights.

No doubt the English constitution is well adapted to the English people, and they to it. They grew together; the people faster than the constitution, but waiting-generally, though not always, with patience-for the incorporation of ancient and incommunicable rights into the acknowledged fundamental law of the realm. Well did Tennyson describe the process by which the British constitution was evolved, when he wrote:

"A land of old and just renown

Where freedom broadens slowly down
From precedent to precedent."

It is, perhaps, not quite accurate to speak of the British constitution as an unwritten one, for its great features were written in black and white to the end that they should never be forgotten. Such was Magna Charta, of which Professor Stubbs says that the entire body of English constitutional history is but a commentary upon it. Such was the Petition of Rights; the Habeas Corpus Act of 1769; the Bill of Rights, and the Act of Settlement. These are parts of the British constitution, not because they are in writing, but because they are of such fundamental character that they are presumed to inhere in the common rights of British subjects.

But, gentlemen, it need not be said that the British constitution, however splendid its proportions, could not suffice when the American people proposed to embark upon a career of separate nationality. They had their local charters, constitutions and laws; they had the articles of confederation, and each had for itself the English common law. But all

these did not, and could not, make a nation; or if you like the term better, a national government. Surely never did men face a graver responsibility than did those who undertook to bring order out of the chaos which then enveloped them. They proposed to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity.

This lofty enumeration of their purposes was, in itself, a solemn judgment upon the Articles of Confederation, which, indeed, all men knew were entirely inadequate for gathering or holding the fruits of their struggle for independence. "The Confederation," in the language of that great lawyer, Horace Binney, "was no more than the limited representative of other governments, and not a government itself. It was a league of sovereigns, but not a sovereign." Indeed, it is not a just use of language to call that a government which had no executive, no coercive power, no power of energetic offense or defense, and no means of raising revenue beyond the voluntary contributions of the different states. Washington's genius was of that sane, clear-eyed quality which does not often indulge in figures of speech; but the man who never gave up hope when his armies were in the field against appalling odds said, in 1786:

"It is clear to me as A, B, C, that an extension of federal powers would make us one of the most happy, wealthy, respectable and powerful nations that ever inhabited the terrestrial globe. Without them, we shall soon be everything which is the direct reverse. I predict the worst consequences from a half-starved, limping government, always moving upon crutches, and tottering at every step."

The Father of His Country seldom suffered his mind to be moved from its serene equipose; and it was surely an alarming situation that could wring such language from him.

And so the Convention which framed the Federal Constitution was called. It is curious to note how little was said

by those who pressed upon the people and upon the State governments the necessity of a convention, about the paramount reason that was in their minds, which was that the country was rapidly drifting into anarchy. The governors and dignitaries who were working together to bring about a convention, the legislatures that passed resolutions in favor of it, and the great leaders who in private life were so influential in moulding public opinion, generally veiled the real meaning of the movement by talking about the necessity of a better understanding in respect to their commercial relations, a fair distribution of trade, the construction of canals and other such matters, which, though certainly important, were as nothing when compared with the immediate and imperative necessity. of transforming the confederation into a government of real national vigor, possessing not only the authority which belongs to a nation, but the power to vindicate it at home and abroad.

It is a hard thing to make a constitution-still harder to make a good one, or one which can be relied upon to stand the strain of actual use. Nevertheless, the delegates undertook the task, and began in a manner which augured well for the success of their efforts, when on May 25th, 1787, by a unanimous vote, they chose George Washington to preside over their deliberations. In a little less than four months the work of the convention was finished. The instrument they framed is known to all-at least its language and the general scope of its various provisions. Time has shown, and every year it becomes clearer, that Gladstone's oft-quoted panegyric was profoundly true, when he said: "The American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." The men who framed it were not mere visionaries. They were, almost without exception, calm, thoughtful men, who thoroughly apprehended the problem they had to solve, and knew that it could not be worked out by declamation, nor by passionate discussion of the abstract rights of Man, nor by mutual congratulations that they had wrested from the Mother Country an acknowl

edgment of their independence. They were called upon to constructor, rather, to reconstruct-and to that great task they bent their energies, patriotically, intelligently and triumphantly.

What order of men they were is shown in the light of a historical contrast which is full of dramatic interest. France was in trouble-a trouble more serious, more tragic, more frightful than any which ever before confronted an existing order of things. The Revolution was upon them. Poor Louis the Sixteenth was struggling in a blind way with the forces, political, social and intellectual, which were ultimately to bring his reign to an end and his head to the block. On the very day that George Washington was elected President of the Convention, the great assembly of the Notables-the first which had met since the days of Richelieu-adjourned. They had sat two months and utterly failed to do anything which could save France. Then came another meeting of the Notables and of the States General, the National Assembly, the Constituent Assembly, and that fruitless and utterly abortive. attempt to make a constitution which should save the King's crown and the people's rights Carlyle, in his saturnine way,

observes of this depressing effort:

* *

"A constitution can be built; constitutions enough, a la Sieyes, but the frightful difficulty is that of getting men to come and live in them. * The constitution, the set of laws or prescribed habit that men will live under, is the one which images their convictions-their faith as to this wondrous Universe; and what rights, duties, capabilities, they have there; which stands sanctioned, therefore, by Necessity itself; if not by a seen Deity, then by an unseen one. Other laws, whereof there are always enough ready-made, are usurpations which men do not obey, but rebel against and abolish at their earliest convenience."

This language may seem extravagant and not altogether. intelligible, but in it there is that essential grain of truth which is in all that Carlyle wrote. Their attempt at constitution

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