DETROIT MILLIS, GRIFFIN, SEELY & STREETER 1401-1408 FORD BUILDING REFERENCES: Any Bank or Trust Co. Attorneys and Counsellors at Law General Civil Practice in all Courts Specialize in Corporation, Commercial and Bankruptcy Law DEPOSITIONS-Commissioners for Ontario and the leading States, as well as Notaries in office Undermining The Constitution By LOREN E. SOUERS, LL. B., of the Canton, Ohio, Bar A great English statesman of the last century once said of the Constitution of the United States that it was the "greatest piece of work ever struck off at any one time by the brain and purpose of man." He was wrong; not as to the just rank of this great charter of American liberties among human documents; but utterly wrong as to its mode of origin. The American Constitution never was "struck off at any one time;" it is no such superficial product of any one period, nor of the wisdom and experience of any single generation of statesmen. Had it been so produced it might be more justly subjected to the attacks constantly launched against it in recent years by little, shallow-minded men who never had a first gleam of understanding either of the principles underlying the Constitution or of the process of evolution by which free men attained to this highest expression of sane liberty embodied in free, yet sound, government. Let me at once disclaim any fantastic obsession to the effect that American government during its one hundred and thirty years of existence has been perfect; far from it; but it is not going too far to say that none of the really important evils of American government has been in any measure due to defects in the Constitution, but instead to the wilful disregard, by both the people and political leaders, of the real spirit of the Constitution. It may as well be added, also, aside from those amendments which have enfranchised classes of citizens who had been disfranchised by the states, and one or two designed to force upon certain states great reforms which they would not themselves adopt, no attempt to improve the Constitution as it stood at the beginning of the nineteenth century has, in the writer's opinion, bettered that great instrument. Even those amendments which have accomplished good of themselves were usually of a character-police power legislation-which ought not fundamentally to be in the Federal Constitution at all. It ought never to have been necessary to write them there, because they are not essentially of a constitutional subject-matter. The Constitution of the United States, worked out though it was, as a formal scheme of government, by the body of distinguished Americans who composed the Constitutional Convention, was nevertheless merely the finished product of a long process of constitutional evolution in England and America. The germs of the great principles underlying the Constitution sprung to life in the hearts of the freedom-loving Anglo-Saxons before the day of the Confessor; they survived and triumpher over the feudalism of the Norman Conquest, making England unique as the only conquered nation which ever swallowed up her conquerors, resisting innovations and retaining stubbornly her own language, ideals and institutions. Those same principles were given formal expression at Runnywede in the Magna Carta of English liberties, and unwilling assent to that charter was wrung by force from many an English sovereign by the determined nobles and commoners of the realm. Disregard of those principles sent the first Charles to the block and the second James into exile. The steadfast will of the commons to rule themselves through their chosen representatives by degrees stripped first the crown and then the nobles of the last vestige of real political authority; until it came to pass that Queen Anne was the last sovereign to exercise the veto on legislation, and a minister nearly fell several years ago because the king had not been prevented from expressing a public opinion upon a question of national policv; while the House of Lords has been so devitalized that Parliament has become really a unicameral government. It was this ancient and deep-seated spirit of Anglo-Saon democracy that inspired the Pilgrims and the later colonists to establish their colonial governments by elected representatives, and led them to resist invariably every encroachment of royal governors upon their self-established rights. ABBOTT & EDWARDS Federal Reserve Bank Building, 418 Pine Street, ST. LOUIS They were the rights of free Englishmen that were catalogued in the Declaration of Independence as those which a non-English king had violated. And when the Constiution of the national republic was formed it was made a charter of English principles of right, secured and buttressed by institutions of government and law chosen carefully from the English constitutionthe word "constitution" is used altogether advisedly, and not, of course, as referring even remotely to Magna Carta or any other document. Every material feature of the Constitution-that is the structure-of the English government was carefully stripped of its sham and tinsel and transplanted in substance into the more formal "Constitution" of the American States, except the single feature of a ministry or executive responsible to the legislature. The bi-cameral legislature, the common law of England, the independent courts, the parallel judicial systems of law and chancery, the very statutes of Parliament in many instances, were, directly or indirectly, adopted by the "Constitution" as parts of the "constitution" of the United States. It was by no chance, nor without a struggle, that the political institutions of nominally royal but actually republican England were selected to be the political institutions of republican America. The red democracy of France was then as flagrant, and making as insidious appeals to popularity among the ignorant, as the red pseudodemocracy of Russia now, and had a far more respectable following. Some of the most brilliant and popular leaders of the day-Jefferson, Henry, Gerry, and even Samuel Adams-were utterly opposed to the Anglicizing of the new government and were all for adopting the standards of the Commune for America, in substance if not in form, so mad were they with French revolutionary philosophy and with hatred of everything English. It was in the face of such powerful opposition, far abler than any that has raised its head against the Constitution since, and in the face of a most natural popular affection for France and dislike for England, that the sound and inspired wisdom of Washington, Hamilton, Marshall, Adams, Franklin, Madison, Pinckney and others only less great,comprising by all odds the greatest single group of masters of statesmanship America at any time ever possessed, prevailed in their efforts to lay the lines of America's political structure within those established, through centuries of struggle and experiment, by the republican democracy of England. The writer has dwelt thus long upon the origin of the Constitution merely to recall to mind the fact that the great men who chose for America the system of government embodied in the Constitution were not venturing at random upon uncharted seas of rash experiment, influenced only by a superficial view of the seeming needs of their own day! but on the contrary were deliberately and cautiously, checked and guided by close criticism, applying the experience of centuries to the task of devising a scheme of government which, intelligently used, would achieve the best results in the maintenance of a sound civilization in any succeeding period. That they provided a means of amending the Constitution was due party to the necessity of quieting their critics, and partly to their desire to complete their work by making it possible by orderly means to provide in the future for extraordinary contingencies not then possible to foresee. That they deemed that such situations as might warrant amendment of the Constitution should be extraordinary indeed is made patent by their deliberate choice of a very difficult mode of amendment. It was not the purpose of the fathers of the Republic that the great political structure of America should be easily torn down or disfigured to suit the whim of every theorist who might for a day or decade hold the ear of the unthinking crowd. Yet so little is the inherent nature of a written "Constitution" such as ours understood or cared for by many that we see every special interest or self-interested group in America which wishes to obtain for itself some special favor, clamoring for an amendment of this basic law, with but one thought in mind-to obtain permanency for their own special schemes, at the risk of the permanency of the whole Constitution. If they do not succeed in getting their pet notions written into the Constitution they inconsistently decry that great charter because it is so difficult of amendment, when the very reason they desire their proposals embodied in the Constitution is to make them difficult of repeal. In this way most of our State constitutions have been denatured until they are no longer in any true sense "constitutions" at all, but prolix codes of general legislation, relating to everything from labor unions to land titles. It is now proposed to open the way to make of the Constitution of the United States just as unstable and undignified a charter of government as are the Constitutions of the states. Thinking Americans should be arousing themselves to the peril before us, our American representative government will be destroyed before our eyes ere we realize the disaster, and with representative government will pass the Republic; America will have become a Red Democ Wolcott, Wolcott, Lankford & Kear General Practice. Collections. Depositions before S. I. MAUCK Notary Public ATTORNEYS AND COUNSELLORS SEABOARD NAT'L BANK BLDG. Norfolk, Va. racy, and the work of the fathers will have been undone. The greatest such danger lies now in the demand, becoming increasingly clamorous, to write the "initiative and referendum" into the Federal Constitution, so as to apply it, not only to Congressional legislation, but even to the amendment of the Constitution itself. The clamor for this revolutionary change comes from two powerful special interests-one, the organized labor movement, and the other a peculiarly selfish interest, which for the present purpose need not be named, but which hides its own activity, in this instance, behind the skirts of organized labor. To men whose native instincts and education make them jealous of the security of government it is needless to suggest what results would ensue if national legislation is to be made subject to the whim of the radical labor element just now in the ascendancy, or of any other interest which uses labor as its tool to defeat a great reform which it fears. It is useless now to condemn the initiative and referendum as a method of STATE legislation. For whatever of good it may accomplish-and there has been some-or whatever abuses it may threaten-and there are many, it is nevertheless an established and probably a permanent fact, to be accepted as such. Neither is it of any avail now to find fault with already adopted amendments of the Federal Constitution. Most of them have been good in, themselves, even those great police-power laws, such as the amendments prohibiting slavery and the liquor traffic, which it ought never to have been necessary to put into the Constitution at all, because they are not of a germane subject-matter. The writer himself supported one of those amendments; had he lived a generation earlier he would have supported the other; thus practical necessity overcome theory. Even the income tax amendment, though its now manifest tendency to cripple industry by curtailing incentive to production casts doubts upon it, and the amendment providing for direct election of Senators, though it has assuredly not improved the caliber of the Senate, have not essentially impaired the fundamental structure of the government, and are not vitally bad. Their greatest danger has been, coming within a brief period, in encouraging the idea that the Constitution may easily be amended. But the proposal to inject the initiative and referendum into the Constitution is altogether different; it is wholly vicious. It is not amendment of the existing constitution of the Renubile; it is revolution, wiping ou the Republic and substituting a Democracy-a thing which, save perhaps in certain very small states, has never yet succeeded in maintaining sound and stable civilization. A Federal initiative and referendum would obliterate the state lines entirely. It would utterly destroy the distribution of influence upon legislation among the various sections of this great country so carefully preserved by the Constitution through equal representation of States in the Senate. For le it be remembered that when a proposed law or amendment to the Constitution is submitted to popular vote there would he no equality of voting by the States, as now, but a few populous States in a single small section of the country, by rolling up immense majorities, genuine or fraudulent, may overturn contrary majorities in all the other states and thus force upon a great majority of the states, laws, perhaps of a revolutionary character, desired nowhere except in that single section. No better means of setting sections against each other, fomenting civil war, and finally destroying the Union, could be devised. It is surely needless to point out also the utter unfitness of ordinary voters on the Atlantic seaboard, with no opportunity of conference and debate such as is had in Congress, to form an intelligent opinion upon legislation affecting seriously the people of the Pacific states, even if they can judge intelligently of most laws affecting their own section, which is much to be doubted. It is to be suspected that few, even of our most intelligent citizens, without long study which they are unlikely to devote to the subject, could vote intelligently upon the contents of most of the schedules of any tariff law. But such a weapon as this in the hands of any powerful, wide-spread, well organized special interest, offering some insidious appeal to the ignorant and thoughtless, would be unthinkable. It would not be mere political revolution; it would mean red revolution. Yet just that is willingly invited by the two powerful interests to which I have alluded, ready to sacrifice anything to the gaining of their own selfish ends. Of like nature and only less dangerous than the initiative and referendum, is the often agitated scheme to abolish the electoral college and elect the president by direct vote. Almost every objection which obtains against the initiative and referendum domination, perhaps by fraudulent sectional majorities, as in the south; the danger of a demagogue sweeping with him the ignorant vote of a populous section against all the rest of the country; these and other reasons point out that the electoral college is not the empty form that most people imagine, but a most valuable check to preserve a balance of influence between the sections of the country. Once more the fathers of the Constitution knew what they were about far better than their shallow critics of latter days. In such times as these, therefore, when unrest and discontent are not only nation-wide but world-wide, when selfish men are readier than ever to destroy the work of others in order to gain profit to themselves, and no institutions. however proved their usefulness, are safe if they stand in the way of the gaining by such men of their ends, it behooves every true American to watch closely the insidious movements which are now on foot to undermine the Constitution. By vote and influence, in every possible way, Americans who love their country, should strive against every scheme to promote resistance to law or the subversion of stable representative government. The work by which the great makers of the Constitution crowned the efforts of many generations of Englishmen and Americans, justified as that work has been by a century and a quarter of actual test in the most trying periods of history, is too vital to the future of America and the world to be overthrown or weakened now to suit the passing desires of any mere class of men, to the peril of the whole country's welfare. NEW & FINAL! Guide to over a MILLION DOLLARS worth of Annotations for only six dollars ON THE DESKS of thousands of good lawyers to-day, you will find a new and final volume (no other edition will be necessary) that places in their grasp the master guide to over a million dollars worth of legal annotations, published during a third of a century in one hundred forty-six volumes. for quick search can be made yours by the investment of a sum so small that no lawyer will let this opportunity go by. This book was published A. subscriber to secure at more especially for the L.R. the low price of six dollars. But your order will be welcomed. Use the coupon. Right Here Now To the Lawyers Co-op. Publishing Co. N These men - and you know who many of them are-are fortified to begin their search for the law in the place to get results in ered only $6.00 the shortest time. Their indexing facilities Send me the L. R. A. Desk Book which I understand to be the new and final INDEX TO ALL THE LAW IN L. R. A. NOTES-1889 to 1919-1400 pages, price deliv I'll watch the coming mails for it-and use it in my searching with pride and pleasure. Name Address L.R.A. DESK BOOK |