human mind after social happiness have been carried to a great extent; the treasures of knowledge acquired by the labors of philosophers, sages, and legislators, through a long succession of years, are laid open to us, and their collected wisdom may be happily applied in the establishment of our forms of government. At this auspicious period the United States came into existence as a nation, and if their citizens should not be completely free and happy, the fault will be entirely their own."

In his "Defense of the Constitutions," written three years later, John Adams enumerates the principal "discoveries in the constitution of a free government since the institutions of Lycurgus." He then draws the following moral: "The people of America have now the best opportunity and the greatest trust in their hands that Providence ever committed to so small a number since the transgression of the first pair; if they betray their trust their fault will merit even greater punishment than other nations have suffered, and the indignation of Heaven."

The first efforts of the "fathers" at constitution making were, however, greatly hampered by the interruptions of war, and their work speedily disclosed many defects. But the outcome, far from weakening confidence in "political science," rather strengthened it, since it was precisely the failure to heed the lessons of "political science" that accounted for these defects.* Furthermore, the breakdown

*In this connection, see the very instructive "Address to the People of the United States" by Dr. Benjamin Rush, in Niles' "Principles and Acts of the Revolution," p .234.

of "the political system of the United States," as Madison named it, before 1787 enhanced tremendously what I have called the sense of mission of the framers of the Constitution, since it was felt that, if adequate remedies. could not be devised for the shortcomings of the existing system, not only the unity of America but republican government itself must disappear from the earth. "It was more than probable," Madison on the floor of the convention declared, "we were now digesting a plan which in its operation would decide forever the fate of republican government," an observation in which Hamilton and others heartily concurred. The Convention felt indeed that it had not only the future of America in its hands but of all mankind. "When he considered," said Wilson, "the influence the government we are to form will have, not only on the present generation of our people and their multiplied posterity, but on the whole globe, he was lost in the magnitude of the subject." "Something must be done," added Gerry, "or we shall disappoint not only America, but the whole world." And Gouverneur Morris spoke to like effect: "He came here as a representative of America: he flattered himself he came in some degree as a representative of the whole human race; for the whole human race will be affected by the proceedings of this Convention."

Nor did the Convention forget its "political science." Hamilton wrote in the "Federalist": "The science of politics, like most other sciences, has received great improvement. The efficacy of various principles is now

well understood, which were either not known at all or imperfectly known to the Ancients, the regular distribution of power into distinct departments; the introduction of legislative balances and checks; the institution of courts composed of judges holding their offices during good behavior; representation of the people in the legislature by deputies of their own election; these are wholly new discoveries, or have made their principal progress towards perfection in modern times. They are means, and powerful means, by which the excellencies of republican government may be retained and its imperfections lessened or avoided. To this catalogue of circumstances that tend to the amelioration of popular systems of civil government, I shall add one more; I mean the enlargement of the orbit within which such systems are to revolve." He then quotes Montesquieu's words: "It is very probable that mankind would have been obliged at length to live constantly under the government of a single person, had they not contrived a kind of constitution that has all the internal advantages of a republican, together with the external force of a monarchical, government. I mean a confederate republic."

In like spirit Madison, also writing in the "Federalist," defended the Constitution against the criticism of novelty: "Had no important step," he declares, "been taken by the leaders of the Revolution for which a precedent could not be discovered,

the

people of the United States might at that moment have been numbered among the melancholy victims of misguided councils, and must at best have

been laboring under the weight of some of those forms which had crushed the liberties of the rest of mankind. Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society. They reared the fabrics of governments which have no model on the face of the globe."

But not only was the Constitution a work of original political construstion; it was an act of free will, wherein again it stood out against the past. Said James Wilson in the Pennsylvania ratifying Convention: "The science of government seems yet to be almost in its state of infancy. Governments in general have been the result of force, of fraud, and accident. After a period of six thousand years has elapsed since the creation, the United States exhibits to the world the first instance of a nation assembling voluntarily, deliberating fully, and deciding calmly concerning that system of government under which they would wish they and their posterity should live." In the same spirit the act of ratification of the Massachusetts Convention thanked "the Supreme Ruler of the Universe" for "affording the people of the United States" the opportunity "deliberately and peaceably, without fraud or surprise, of entering into an explicit and solemn compact with each other, by assenting to and ratifying a new constitution."

It is, however, in the words of a foreign observer that the breach which the Constitution was thought contemporaneously to effect with the entire

history of government in the past is brought out most strikingly. "All governments that now exist in the world," wrote the celebrated Dr. MacIntosh in his "Defense of the French Revolution," "have been fortuitously formed. They are the produce of chance, not the work of art. They have been altered, impaired, improved, and destroyed by accidental circumstances beyond the foresight or control of wisdom. Their parts, thrown up against present emergencies, formed no systematic whole." From this uncomplimentary description MacIntosh explicitly excepts "the United States of America."

By its framers and by the generation which received it, the Constitution was regarded as marking the climax of a great though brief period of original political creation. And what, moreover, are the facts? In the words of Lord Acton, the Constitution of 1787 "resembled no other constitution, for it was contained in half a dozen intelligible articles"; indeed, outside of America, written constitutions did not yet exist. The idea of putting legal restraints upon government in the interest of private rights, though of respectable antiquity, had never before received institutional embodiment. The principle of the separation of powers was, even in America before the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 mere. literary theory, but it furnishes the constructive principle of the Constitution of 1787. So, too, the derivative notion of checks and balances had hitherto failed as against legislative power; for only in Massachusetts and New Hampshire did the executive veto exist even in form, and though judicial re

view had been asserted in three or four dicta and one or two decisions, it was still, when the Federal Convention assembled, the rawest sort of raw idea. More noteworthy still, however, was the work of the Convention in adjusting the relations of the states and the nation. There had been confederacies before-history was strewn with the wrecks of them-but no earlier confederacy had possessed a central government which operated directly upon individuals rather than indirectly through the governments of its corporate members, and yet without sacrifice of the principle of local autonomy. Lastly, the method by which the Constitution was adopted employed the principle of popular sovereignty on an unparalleled scale; for the first time did the right of revolution appear as the more positive right of the citizens of a great national national community, acting through bodies chosen for the specific purpose, to remodel their political institutions.

Gladstone's dictum is amply vindicated; yet it is altogether evident that the sentiment which it expresses is one today rarely encountered. The worship of the Constitution is at an end! That reverence for the very document which, for instance, is displayed in the following passage from an early decision today seems quaint enough: "The most wonderful instrument ever drawn by the hand of man," wherein "is a comprehension and precision that is unparalleled," wherein "after a lifetime of study" we may "still daily find some new excellence."* Very different is

*Justice Wm. Johnson in Elkison v. Deliesseline, 8 Federal Cases, 493, decided in 1823.

conditions among men. It has covered but a short distance of its long and uncertain voyage. It has encountered storms and perils and grave crises. Its charted course is the last, best hope of earth. Thomas Paine stopped the publication of "The Crisis" when he heard the news of the treaty of 1783, with the remark: "The times that tried men's souls are over." But John Fiske on this observes that the next five years were to be the most critical period of all, and in turn said that "the most critical period of our country's history was the period between 1783 and the adoption of the Constitution in 1788, the finest specimen of constructive statemanship that the world has ever seen," embodying the saving principle of representation in self-government. This principle marked the distinction between "democracy" and "republicanism," that is, between direct legislative action and representative government. The founders were substantially united upon this principle. History afforded no example of so large an act of constructive statesmanship as the adoption of the American Constitution. That Constitution saved the American people from anarchy.

Samuel Adams "wanted the whole world to realize that the rule of a republic is a rule of law and order, and that liberty does not mean license." And Washington, in his brief but immortal speech at the federal convention said: "Let us raise the standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the event is in the hand of God." The government to be established had for its basis the republican principle, the sovereignty of the individual citi

zen. To make a federal government immediately operative upon individual citizens, the federal courts were organized to pass judgment in all cases in which individual citizens were amenable to the national law. These courts were charged with the interpretation according to the general principles of the common law of the Constitution itself. This is the most noble, as it is the most distinctive, feature in the government of the United States. This feature is the saving power of our great charter of self-government. The practical working of that Constitution during the first thirty years of the nineteenth century was directed by the luminous decisions of John Marshall and the other great jurists foremost among the founders of the Union.

One crisis had passed, but the framers of this great chart of government glided into the deepening shadow of impending civil war. Then another great storm was weathered, another great crisis safely overcome. This was succeeded by a period of half a century of unprecedented growth in population, native and foreign born, of the development of complex political, social, and industrial conditions beyond all conceptions of the founders of the Republic. These conditions now involve the application of the principles of constitutional self-government to a new social order without precedent or parallel in all the annals of democracy a new crisis, which will subject our form of government to the final supreme test of the strength and the efficacy of democracy among men. The most conspicuous and dominant figure emerging from the throes of the