Lapas attēli
PDF
ePub
[graphic][merged small][merged small]
[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

COPYRIGHT, 1903,

BY

CALLAGHAN AND COMPANY.

Rec. Dec. 24, 1903.

STATE JOURNAL PRINTING COMPANY,

PRINTERS AND STEREOTYPERS,

MADISON, WIS.

PREFACE.

An eminent philosophic historian and statesman, whose lamented death occurred while this volume was passing through the press, has the following pregnant observations which are distinctly applicable to our Constitution, to our national experience, and to the permanent and increasing value of Chief Justice Marshall's constitutional labors. "An appetite for organic change," says Lecky,' "is one of the worst diseases that can affect a nation. All real progress, all sound national development, must grow out of a stable, persistent national character, deeply influenced by custom and precedent and old traditional reverence, habitually aiming at the removal of practical evils and the attainment of practical advantages, rather than speculative change. Institutions, like trees, can never attain their maturity or produce their proper fruits if their roots are perpetually tampered with. In no single point is the American Constitution more incontestably superior to our own than in the provisions by which it has so effectually barred the path of organic change that the appetite for such change has almost passed away."

1 Democracy and Liberty, I, 153, 154.

« iepriekšējāTurpināt »