mination of this question calls for the exercise of the highest degree of deliberate wisdom and judgment. The fate of the nation hangs upon it. And yet we are confronted with the astounding proposition that this treaty-making power is not to be trusted, but is to be influenced and directed by some indefinable expression of popular will. In my judgment such a course would not be in accord with the philosophy or spirit of our Great Charter or with the wisdom and courage of its founders. An unconstitutional plebiscite might command some degree of wisdom and deliberation in popular expression, but the course proposed would tend to substitute public clamor, mere voices of the air, for the intelligent consideration and deliberate wisdom and judgment of our highest representative body under the Constitution.

There never was a time in the life of the Republic when the interests of this great people and of civilization required such deliberate and reverential observance of the spirit of our Great Charter of liberty and self-government as in this critical hour of our national destiny. Socialism, anarchy, initiative, referendum, judicial recall, government ownership, are but phases of democracy, dangerous experiments which imperil the very foundations of the Republic. They are each and all unAmerican. When one great President seeks by a process of emasculation to sap the authority, strength, and virility of our constitutional courts by subjecting their decisions to the approval of a majority vote, and subject legislation to popular direction and approval, and another great President

and a national Congress are coerced by the threat of a railroad strike to enact a law at the behest of a special interest, arbitrarily fixing hours of labor and rates of wages, the fundamental principles of sound constitutional government are imperiled. When constitutional amendments foreign to our theory of individual freedom and constitutional rights are made, not with adequate reflection and consideration, but by hasty popular will, constitutional government is imperiled. When ponderous volumes of law are initiated by general petition and enacted by popular vote, constitutional government is weakened and in danger. When nonpartisan leagues seek to abrogate constitutional protection, eliminate the primary courts of justice, and nominate and elect judges pledged to construe the law and the constitution of a state as political conventions desire, making judges of the courts of law mere political delegates, a pistol is aimed at the very heart of our representative government. When an American lawyer, giving counsel to a great organization of American labor, admonishes his clients that "one of the gravest fundamental questions with which we have to deal is the preservation of a truly democratic government against what has often been called the 'aristocracy of the robe,' of the robe,'" a note of alarm has been sounded. When the saving limitations of the federal Constitution upon the tyranny and excesses of the majority of voters are removed, representative government is destroyed and unrestrained democracy established. When the legislative, executive, and judicial departments of our government are

sbject to the unlimited, unrestrained, direct action of temporary majorities of voters, American Bolshevism takes the place of constituted government. When all these things take place, there is established the tyranny of majorities, a tyranny which may be as ruthless as that of military autocracy.

There is no legitimate place in this Republic for the autocracy of capital or the autocracy of the proletariat. Both must be subject to the restraints of constitutional limitations upon arbitrary power and to the supreme majesty of the law of the land. It was for the protection of civil liberty and equal rights that constitutional limitations were imposed upon the exercise of power. This overlegislated, overregulated, overcommissioned, overgoverned people has drifted far from the moorings and the charted course of our constitutional form of self-government. The rapidly growing tendency in this government to do through direct will and action of changing majorities those things which majorities cannot safely and rightly do is subversive of the principles of constitutional self-government and destructive of all government. The average citizen knows little of the problems and duties of the courts of justice, and less of the purpose and necessity of a constitution and the means of enforcing it. They have the ballot practically without qualifications, and unrestrained by legal limitations of power can do anything they choose, and the danger arising from popular inexperience, passion, and prejudice is very great. In the past four years men have laid down their lives that government by law and

not by might shall prevail. Yet here at home men assert the doctrine that there is no such thing as an established constitution or government by law which any temporary majority need respect, and people are being systematically taught that American principles of government are wrong and are to be opposed and resisted and the vagaries of alien agitators substituted.

The present age of the Republic may appropriately be designated as the age of the demagogue. The demagogue is the natural product, indigenous to the soil, of democracy. The demagogue is the advance agent of the mob. He is essentially destructive rather than constructive. Posing as the friend of the people, he makes an insidious appeal to popular ignorance, prejudice, and passion, and weakens public faith in the fundamental principles of our government and in its wisdom and justice. The cynical Carlyle must have had this species in mind when he likened democracy to a box of vipers, each trying to get to the top. But every demagogue has his day. His influence will diminish with the increasing wisdom, virtue, common sense, common honesty, and patriotism of the American people. He has no legitimate place in the philosophy of our constitutional government.

I have abiding faith in our Republic. I believe it will pass safely through this most critical period. The ship of state will survive the test of storm and Self-government under our Great Charter will endure and become safe for this people and for the world. The spirit of the great founders, that vigilant Americanism, will prevail over

wave.

all the elements of disintegration and destruction. There will be periods of unrest, recession, and retrogression, but the nation will not be permanently diverted from its charted course. The philosophy of our Constitution will guide aright. The permanent maintenance of the Republic will be the greatest performance of history, the supreme test of the ability and endurance of a free people. The future of mankind hangs upon the results of our experiment. The greatest service the American people can perform for mankind is to complete their divinely appointed task, to establish a government of law and order that will endure forever. America is shaping human destiny. I have long believed that the legitimate period of our splendid isolation is over. When this Republic became a recognized world power, it necessarily assumed the responsibility of such a power among the nations. God never made a nation great without great responsibility. This nation must do its part and exert its influence under Divine Providence in shaping the destiny of mankind. But first of all, its chief duty is to establish, maintain, and develop its own nationality, its own strength and character, to carry out the great experiment of history, to build a republic upon the foundation of our Constitution, strong and secure for the maintenance of individual liberty and equality of conditions. That republic will be the proudest heritage of the future and our greatest contribution to civilization and mankind.

The war has taught Americans the greatest lessons of citizenship that may save the Republic and the world, name

ly, the spirit of service and sacrifice, the inalienable duties, as well as the inalienable rights, of mankind. The spirit of service in the faithful performance of those duties will solve the problems of democracy, will direct this government of free people upon its charted course for permanent democracy for the world. The spirit of service and recognition of inalienable rights and duties. of men will subordinate to or associate self-interest with the common good, will solve the crucial problems of capital and labor, and other conflicting interests that imperil social order.

During the past year we have endeavored to arouse among the members of this Association a sense of the power and necessity of American education and American propaganda, and of the benefits of self-government under our constitutional plan. As we have pointed out through our literature, the propaganda we most need is the right and vital teaching of true Americanism. We must Americanize the alien, instruct primitive folk in the first principles of citizenship, bring them to understand that democracy is, first, the government of self. We must teach the American public the essentials of our republican faith, teach the populace how to rule themselves, teach them that true democracy is based not upon the rights but upon the duties of man, to place the common good above our own good, and finally, that democracy means responsibility and the service of citizens.

"The authority Americans have intrusted to members of the legal profession and the influence these individuals exercise in their government is the

most powerful existing security against the excesses and dangers of democracy." This was written by the great Frenchman, De Tocqueville, in his philosophical exposition of the fundamental principles of democracy in America three-quarters of a century ago. And again he said: "Lawyers are attached to public order beyond every other consideration, and the best security of public order is authority. It must not be forgotten that if they prize the free institutions of their country much, they nevertheless value the legality of those institutions more. I question whether democratic institutions could long be maintained, and I cannot believe that a republic could subsist at the present time, if the influence of lawyers in public business

did not increase in proportion to the power of the people." Lawyers know the charted course of the supremacy of our federal Constitution and the majesty of the law of the land, and know the meaning of the greatest experiment in democracy that the world has ever tried. They know that the republic has as yet hardly been tried. May they appreciate their responsibility and power as sovereign rulers of the Republic, to the end that America, in the language of Mr. James M. Beck, in addressing the last American Bar Association, "may point the way to that 'far-off, divine event toward which the whole creation moves,' when the rules of justice, as formulated by the common conscience of mankind, shall have complete sway throughout the world."

The Constitution of the United of the United States has three distinct and operative divisions. First, it declares in effect that the people of the United States constitute a sovereign power back of and independent of the government. Second, it organizes a government as a continuing agency of the people and charged with the duty of executing the will of their sovereign power in national affairs. Third, it declares certain fundamental principles of individual immunity and inherent rights against which the governmental power cannot be invoked. The purpose of the Constitution in so organizing the

government was to make it supreme within its granted powers and so to direct its course that it would avoid despotism on the one hand and anarchy on the other. The Constitution was the product of two revolutions. The first was directed against the despotic rule of the English government and was expressed in the Declaration of Independence. The second was directed against anarchy in the states in national affairs, arising out of the weakness of the government under the Articles of Confederation.

I am stating nothing new. The declaration is involved in an old contro

versy with respect to which the greatest constitutional lawyers and judges this country has ever produced have given their best thought in vigorous political discussions. Concretely stated, the question was whether the Constitution established a federation of States or a nation of sovereign people. To establish the first, it was necessary that the Constitution should be the legal and legitimate successor of the Articles of Confederation. To establish the second, it was only necessary to recognize that the Constitution was an original independent document adopted by the people in their sovereign capacity for their own peace and welfare. What did they do? The Articles of Confederation provided that they should become binding when ratified by all the states. They were so ratified March 1, 1781.

The Articles further provided that they should "be inviolably observed by every state" and the union should be "perpetual," and to make it absolutely certain that the union should be perpetual under the Articles of Confederation, it was still further provided: "Nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States and be afterwards confirmed by the legislature of every state."

Was this done? Let us see; and for that purpose we will commence with the procedings of the Congress of the confederation calling the convention under the terms of the Articles of Confederation. These proceedings were had on February 21, 1787. On motion of the delegates for Massachusetts, the following preamble and reso

lution was adopted: "Whereas, there is provision in the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union for making alterations therein, by the assent of a Congress of the United States and of the legislatures of the several states; and whereas experience hath evidenced that there are defects in the present confederation, as a means to remedy which several of the states, and particularly the state of New York, by express instructions to their delegates in Congress, have suggested a convention for the purposes expressed in the following resolution, and such convention appearing to be the most probable means of establishing in these states a firm national government; Resolved, that in the opinion of Congress it is expedient that, on the second Monday in May next, a convention of delegates who shall have been appointed by the several states be held at Philadelphia, for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as shall, when agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the states, render the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of government and the preservation of the Union." (Elliot's Debates on the Federal Constitution, vol. 1, p. 120.)

The convention had been called to establish “a firm national government,” but its authority was limited to "the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures such alterations." The convention did not alter or revise the Articles of Confederation; it did not