THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES-ITS FRIENDS AND FOES.

Somebody has said:

Doubtless God might have made a better berry than the strawberry, but doubtless God never did.

So the seasoned judgment of mankind is: Doubtless man might have made a better constitution than ours, but doubtless man never did.

Gladstone said of it:

The Constitution of the United States is the greatest political instrument ever struck off on a single occasion by the minds of men.

Of it De Tocqueville declared:

It enables the Union to combine the power of a great empire with the security of a small State.

Impressed with its priceless excellence, Caleb Cushing characterized it as

The best inheritance transmitted to us by our fathers, the monument of their wisdom and their virtue. under whose shelter we live and flourish as a people.

Encomiums might be multiplied, but the foregoing epitomizes the verdict of impartial minds in all lands.

Under the mantle of its protection our Republic for a century and a quarter has survived the shock of foreign and internal wars, as well as the exactions of peace, and despite detraction and opposition and "false lights on the shore," our Government of the people, by the people, and for the people still stands upon the foundations of the fathers.

How secure it is still rests with the American people.

Of late a change seems to have come over a goodly portion of our citizenship-a portentous change-and instead of reverence for the Constitution and pride in its provisions, the air is full of missiles aimed at this great instrument.

A variable epidemic of Constitution criticizing, Constitution changing, and, I sometimes fear, Constitution wrecking has broken out everywhere.

To assail the organic law and condemn its provisions as outgrown and inadequate for present purposes, seems to be both the fashion and the passion of the hour.

The citizen who has not yielded to this malady is branded as a reactionary or worse.

Samuel Smiles says:

It takes a strong man to swim against the stream; any dead fish can float with it.

To such lengths has caustic criticism of the Constitution been carried that it is a popular pastime to blame the National Charter for nearly every form of misfortune that vexes the citizen.

Statesmen not in sympathy with this revolutionary program are retired to private life, while political adventurers, prating of reform, strut across the political stage, deriding the clauses of the Constitution, framed with so much care and prayer, and promising to modernize it to suit the clamor of the hour.

The voice of history has sunk into a whisper, and hysteria rules in its stead.

The situation presented is unprecedented. That it is big with bane to the Republic unless checked or circumvented is obvious. Its gravity can hardly be exaggerated.

Speaking of paramount issues before the people, the preservation or destruction of the Government of the United States is an issue which towers above all others even as Mount Shasta looms above the surrounding foothills.

The saying, "There is nothing new under the sun" applies to the history of the Government as well as in other fields.

The only exceptions of note to its world-wide application are the American experiment of representative government based on the will of the people as expressed in a written constitution, and the British. parliamentary system backed by an unwritten constitution-both of which systems have shown to the world that liberty regulated by law is the only practical scheme of self-government known to the human family.

But the battle cry is now raised: "Back to the people." This twentieth-century slogan for bringing the Government into closer touch with the people is of ancient origin.

Greece and Rome and Venice passed through every period of travail that we have known, and then some-indeed ran the whole gamut of government from depotism to anarchy, and back to despotism again.

If the lessons of the past are worth a fig to the people of the present, they teach, with tragic emphasis, that government describes the arc of a circle, swinging around from despotism to democracy, and from democracy to anarchy, and from anarchy back to despotism once more, each stepping on the heels of the other.

I am aware that thousands are crying in derisive tones, "Talk not to us of the past; tell us of the future."

To those who have not parted with the balance wheel of judgment, the answer is sufficient when we say that the future will be as the past has been, if we do not profit by its teachings.

"What do precedents amount to anyway to an unprecedented people like ourselves?" say the doctrinaires to their dupes.

Shall we not tuck ourselves under the quilt of our own smug selfcomplacency and sing ourselves to sleep with the lullaby (a la Mother Goose):

I am too big to be afraid,

No harm can come to Uncle Sam.

"Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make mad," applies not only to individuals, but to nations also, for a nation is but a composite of individuals.

A big man is quite as likely to get hurt as a Lilliput when he walks into a pit; more there's more of him; he falls faster and hits harder, and the remains are more difficult for the coroner to assemble.

The greater the nation the greater the fall thereof. The mighty Titanic, under full head of steam, laughed to scorn all thought of peril, boasting that she was unsinkable. The impact of the Titanic when she struck the iceberg in midocean was multiplied a thousandfold over that of a smaller vessel going at moderate pace.

So of the unsinkable craft we call our Government. The principles of navigation and the rules of safety call for even greater vigilance on shipboard when the largest ship afloat is plowing the evertreacherous seas.

The truth is, there is on foot at the present moment a deliberate and determined effort to convert our representative Republic into a socialistic democracy.

That this cause should be championed by so many men of prominence and influence, as well as by the proletarians, is startling in its significance.

Whether its promoters have counted the cost of their crusade or not, the movement which they have inaugurated, in its last analysis, means the uprooting of the mighty oak of representative government which the fathers planted and their sons have heretofore guarded with faithfulness, and the propagating in its place of a puffball, fit neither for food nor shelter.

This crusade is based upon the assumption that the people are incapable of choosing representatives who will really represent them, but on the other hand are capable of being their own representatives and handling every public problem themselves without the aid of courts or Congress.

In the presence of and the consideration of this question there should be neither sectionalism nor partisanship, but a mighty rallying of all the citizenship of the country who believe that ours is a government of law, not of men; of constitution, not of clamor.

THE CONSTITUTION-WHAT IS IT?

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land, on whose broad base rests the entire fabric of our Government. It is not a set of rules, but a set of principles. Hamilton spoke of it as "a bill of rights" of the Union, "in which we must place confidence; must give power."

James Wilson characterized the Constitution as "the charter of the people's nationality."

John Marshall defined it as "our ordinance of national life." Its central, its dominating note is, "We, the people."

While it proceeds directly from them and its powers are exercised for their benefit, nevertheless it is more than influence, it is more than sentiment, for neither influence nor sentiment are government. Valuable as Jefferson's services were to the Government, he never knew that sentiment is not government.

How fortunate for the American Commonwealth that the ideas of Hamilton prevailed both at Philadelphia and at Appomattox.

ITS AUTHORS.

All wisdom or virtue did not die with the fathers; nevertheless if our Government should survive for a thousand years it is question

able if it will look upon a finer body of men than those who sat in Philadelphia in 1787 to frame the Constitution.

In acumen and equipment Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, Madison, Wilson, Mason, Wythe, the two Morrises, the two Pinckneys, and the rest will not suffer by comparison with any aggregation of illustrious men of any land or any age.

Modern statesmen and lawmakers have been borrowing from the product of their intellects ever since they wrought for us-yea, are borrowing to-day in our land and in other lands.

Does not wisdom and sound discretion suggest that before we attempt to overhaul the machinery of government, which has heretofore been equal to every emergency, we do not bungle the job?

Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,

Is hanging breathless on thy fate.

FROM WHAT TO WHAT?

Young as it is, it is the oldest of written constitutions.

It has stood the test of time and served as a model for other nations in quest of a framework of government strong, symmetrical, and just. It transformed our country from chaos into cosmos. Only the pen of a Dante and the brush of a Dore could possibly portray the hateful conditions which prevailed in the 13 liberated States, so called, at the close of the Revolutionary struggle and up to the adoption of the Federal Constitution.

Of that situation Dr. John Lord says:

We were a league of emancipated colonies drifting into anarchy. Our condition at the end of the War of the Rebellion, when we had a debt of three thousand millions and general demoralization, was an Elysium compared with that of our fathers at the close of the Revolutionary War-no central power, no constitution, no government, with poverty, agricultural distress, and uncertainty, and the prostration of all business; no national éclat-a mass of rude, unconnected, and anarchic forces threatening to engulf us in worse evils than those from which we had fled.

WHAT ITS AUTHORS HAD IN MIND.

The framers of the Constitution did not seek to circumvent the popular will. They did seek, however-and fortunate it is for the Republic that they succeeded-to prevent sudden gusts of popular passion from working the overthrow or impairment of its provisions. The makers of the Constitution believed in the supremacy of the popular will, but wisely safeguarded the instrument so that its clauses could only be changed or corrected upon the maturest reflection and not in the white heat of passion.

They built with consummate care and skill a compact and complete system of representative government, with two Houses of Congress, whose Members should be elected for different terms and in different manner-one a step farther removed from popular clamor than the other, but both resting on the popular will.

They provided for an Executive with large powers and placed the veto in his hands.

They also established a Federal judiciary as the last link, and in many respects the strongest, in the interlocking chain. In so doing

they made provision for the ultimate solution of the more perplexing governmental problems.

This august tribunal, from the first hour of its existence to the present moment, has been true to the great trust reposed in it, and stands to-day as the defender of the Constitution and the protector of the rights of the people.

Early guided by the prescience of John Marshall, it invoked the spirit of the instrument, and, applying the principles of reasonable interpretation, made it flexible enough to meet new problems and changing conditions.

The Supreme Court has been characterized as "the living voice of the Constitution."

Of it the Marquis de Marbois said:

It is a power which has no guards, no palaces, no treasures, no armies, but truth and wisdom-its splendor consists in justice and the publicity of its judgments.

William Wirt's encomium is worthy of remembrance:

If truth, and faith, and honor, and justice have fled from every other part of our country, we shall find them here.

A GOVERNMENT MAKER.

The statesman who probably had more to do in shaping the character of our institutions and starting the ship of state upon a steady keel than any other, was Alexander Hamilton.

Of him Guizot declares:

There is not in the Constitution of the United States an element of order, of force, of duration, which he has not powerfully contributed to introduce into it and cause to predominate.

His work remains, growing with the growth of the Nation and constantly making for governmental security.

Hamilton clearly described the iceberg in the track of our Titanic, and strove to save her from colliding with it.

Never was man's judgment more accurate than his, when he said: Too much power leads to despotism, too little to anarchy, and both in the end to the ruin of the people.

He has been falsely accused of being in favor of a monarchy.
Upon this subject he said:

The idea of introducing a monarchy or aristocracy into this country is one of those visionary things that none but madmen could mediate

but

if we incline too much to democracy we shall soon shoot into monarchy The fabric of the American Empire ought to rest on the solid basis of the consent of the people.

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A GREAT MAN, BUT NOT A GREAT AMERICAN?"

A distinguished American, President Elect Wilson, recently pronounced Hamilton to be "a great man," but, in his judgment, "not a great American," following this by the statement that" Hamilton believed that the only people who could understand the Government, and therefore the only people who were qualified to conduct it, were the men who had the biggest financial stake in the commercial and industrial enterprises of the country."