ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. BY HAMPTON L. CARSON, OF PENNSYLVANIA. THE EVOLUTION OF REPRESENTATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. My theme is The Evolution of Representative Constitutional Government. Our system, though often written and spoken of as Democratic, is not and never has been a pure democracy. It is representative, responsible representative government. More than sixteen centuries have made it so, and so it will remain unless our children's children empty their veins of our blood, and blot out all traces of their institutional ancestry. A Rousseau might declare that "the happiest people in the world were a company of peasants sitting under the shade of an oak conducting public affairs with a degree of wisdom and equity that do honor to human nature"; a Tom Paine might write that "when the people of a community were ready for government some convenient tree will afford them a state house under the branches of which the whole colony may assemble to deliberate on public matters," and that in such a parliament "every man by natural right will have a seat," but a hard headed John Adams would ask: "Where is the plain large enough to hold them, and what are the means and how long would be the time necessary to assemble them together?" Even citizen A. would see that as the colony increased in size it would be necessary for the multitude in some form to agree to leave the management of the legislative part, to say nothing of executive and judicial functions, to men selected from the mass to transact the public business. Indeed the smallest town meeting will select a chairman and appoint committees. The unsurmountable difficulty is that it is inherently impracticable for the people collectively to discuss and determine matters of legislation, just as it is impossible for them in mass to execute the laws or to administer justice without organs, agents, representatives or servants-select the noun you please. The fundamental theory is that the people are sovereign, but ex necessitate their sovereignty must be exercised in the mode they have prescribed in their constitutions. Collective democracy has a musical sound, but rings from a hollow sham. Legislation, which is the supreme exercise of authority, can only be conducted through popular representatives, whose discretion cannot be delegated. Legislatures should not be converted into irresponsible cabals, too timid to assume the responsibility of law givers, but with cunning enough to devise subtle schemes of popular imposture. Nor should legislatures be reduced to mere committees on proposals. Common smiths in a common shop would mint base coin and call it the money of the people. Responsible agencies must be established, equipped with effective men. To give character as well as authority to public office there must be opportunity for reflection, discussion, deliberation and judgment as well as responsibility. To substitute for these the rule of the crowd is to introduce the dangers of ignorance, instability, uncertainty and passion. To submit all matters to popular vote is to sweep away all checks against improvident action. General policies may be determined and voted on in mass meetings, but the terms of a statute or of a constitution, being matters belonging to the science of legislative expression, cannot be advantageously discussed and arranged by a mob, even though orators, essayists and political stethoscopists, who specialize in the heart throbs of humanity, abound. It is not my purpose to display the merits of the representative system, nor to discuss the remedies for the patent serious evils of bureaucracy, boss rule, pickling committees, or the corrupt abuses of corporate and individual power. There are men ready with nostrums to remake the world, forgetful of history and contemptuous of the past. It is my purpose to trace in outline the evolution of our system in the light of its historic past, in the belief that the charts of our ancestors, and the beacons that they established on dangerous rocks and shoals, will enable us to navigate in greater safety the same old tempestuous seas. I have in my possession an original letter written in July, 1887, by the Right Honorable William E. Gladstone, then Prime Minister of Great Britain, expressing his regret that his public . duties would prevent his acceptance of an invitation to attend the celebration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Framing of the Constitution of the United States, in which he repeated what he had elsewhere said, that "The Constitution was the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." This splendid sentence has been widely quoted as the finest of tributes to the merits and genius of the Framers. It is an exalted appreciation of a marvelous achievement. DeTocqueville, too, has written of our federal system as based upon "a wholly novel theory which may be regarded as a great discovery in modern political science." And a recent able writer has declared "Invention is the proper term, and here, as always, necessity was the mother of invention, since a federal system was to be created out of an historical void." Colder minds have pointed out that these views are misleading, that the Constitution was not struck off at a given moment on a sudden impulse as a brilliant essay, nor was it an invention or a discovery detached from preceding efforts; that the proper view is to regard the Constitution as the offspring of a mighty political gestation which had lasted for centuries. While yielding, as the result of study, to the latter view, I cannot but declare that no man, after the most painstaking analysis of causes and events in tracing rudimentary institutions and their development under the quickening suns of centuries into the ripened fruit of time, can fail to glow with the ardor of astonishment at the perfection of the final result. Franklin, Washington, Marshall and Lincoln, scientifically studied, were undoubted products, but where in human history are their archetypes? What man would abate the fervor of his reverence because on analysis he found that their characters had been centuries in the making? It is my purpose to examine the genesis of the Constitution in this spirit, and to demonstrate that while it is the climax of evolution, and in no sense a creation, yet it is none the less an achievement so remarkable as to command our loyal adoration. All public documents, expressive of political ventures or embodying plans of government, have, of course, a history, and their grants as well as limitations of power, if explored, can be traced to sources more or less remote. Such documents have a biography and an ancestry. However striking their characteristic features may be, they are never strictly singular for the marks of their relationship are apparent. Moreover, if their objects be similar, and they follow each other at appreciable intervals, they display in their variations an enlargement of ideas and a progressive scale of thought. Those documents which have played a leading part in the establishment or development of our own institutions constitute interesting as well as instructive chapters in our history. To Americans none can be of more impressive importance than the Constitution of the United States. Behind the Constitution there stood the Thirteen Articles of Confederation, behind these the Constitutions of the original Thirteen States, behind these the Colonial Charters, behind these the Charters of English Trading Companies, behind these the Charters of English cities, towns and boroughs, and behind these the primitive institutions of the days of Alfred the Great. These taken in reverse order, constitute a great historic trilogy, with an overture. Without adverting to remote Teutonic customs, it is sufficient. to begin with the Anglo-Saxon system, with its division into townships, each with an organization of its own; with its clusters of townships into hundreds with their inhabitants united by the mutual responsibility of kindred; with its clusters of hundreds into shires, or counties, in which the shire moot was the most complete organization, where the freemen in person or by representation appeared; and finally with the union of shires into kingdoms. Such was the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. "The fabric was crowned by the King, the head of the race, the chosen representative of its identity, the leader of its enterprises, the president of its assemblies, created by it and answerable to his people. He was the national representative; he led the army; he was the supreme judge, but in each capacity his power was limited by a council of free advisers. He was bound by oath to his people to govern well, to maintain religion, peace and justice, they being bound in turn to him by a general oath of fidelity." The great English Constitutional historian Stubbs has drawn the picture for us, and adds: "The idea of representation was familiar in the minor courts, the hundred moot and the shire moot." The representative idea was fostered in the growth of towns, and in the days of the Normans proved to be a strong check upon |