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 01' T[:IE ONE HUNDRT'^D a -in TV 
 
 VEF:SARY OF TFl^: .^!^ ■-TiC 
 
 NATIONA:.- ^A^i::vi riT'lT 
 
 THE INT El- 
 
THE 
 
 American Constitution 
 
 A SPEECH DELIVERED BY 
 
 Hon. Samuel W. McCall 
 
 OF MASSACHUSETTS, AT 
 
 JAMESTOWN, ON SEPTEMBER 17, 1907, ON THE OCCASION 
 OF THE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTIETH ANNI- 
 VERSARY OF THE ADOPTION OF THE 
 NATIONAL CONSTITUTION BY 
 THE CONVENTION OF 
 1787. 
 
 REPRINTED FROM 
 
 THE INTER-NATION 
 
 BOSTON, MASS. 
 
 t^' 
 
&^j; i I92S 
 
 Copy- a» 
 
THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 
 
 BY HON. SAMUEL W. McCALL, 
 
 (Following is the full text of the speech which Congressman Mc- 
 Call delivered at Jamestown on September 17. 1907, on the occasion of 
 the one hundred and twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Na- 
 tional Constitution by the convention of 1787. Mr. McCall has kindly 
 furnished us the manuscript, which is entitled to rank as part of the 
 permanent political literature of the American people. We say this 
 advisably, for we can recall no discussion of the Constitution in recent 
 years which more perfectly conjoins the wisdom of the philosopher 
 with the experience of the man of affairs.— Editor of The Inter-Nar 
 tion.) 
 
 I have listened with deep interest to the eloquent speech of 
 my friend, the president of the Exposition,^ and to the learned 
 address of the distinguished jurist and statesman who has just 
 spoken.*^ It is most fitting that, in the celebration of the founding 
 of Virginia, a day should be set apart for doing honor to the 
 national constitution, in the formation of which she bore so large 
 a part. That great Virginian, that great i\.merican rather, George 
 "Washington, was chiefly responsible for the existence of the conven- 
 tion and presided over its deliberations. The "Virginia plan" 
 presented by Edmund Bandolph was made the basis of its work. 
 James Madison and the other delegates from this state performed 
 a part which history delights to recall, and the debt of the country 
 for Virginia's work in the great convention is beyond all calcula- 
 tion. What place is there in all America where the anniversary 
 of the final passage of the Constitution in the national convention 
 could more fittingly ba observed than upon the spot where Vir- 
 ginia was born, where the air is still vital and throbbing with the 
 eloquence of those great voices of another time? 
 
 Coming, as I do, from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 
 which for more than two centuries had a development parallel 
 with your own, which was closely associated with you in all the 
 glorious events of the revolution and which might indeed be fitting- 
 
 1 Hon. H. St. George Tucker. 
 
 2 Hon. Alton B. Parker. 
 
4 THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 
 
 ly called the twin sister of Virginia, it is with peculiar pleasure that 
 I take part on this occasion. The settlements at Jamestown and 
 at Plymouth Avere near each other in point of time, and their 
 influence, gradually radiating from each center through the sur- 
 rounding wilderness, at last blended together, and became the 
 most potent force in the establishment of civil government in 
 America, in achieving our independence, and in forming the 
 national Constitution. 
 
 Perhaps no other political document has received the degree 
 of attention that has been bestowed upon the Constitution. It 
 has been lauded by great orators, expounded by great lawyers, and 
 interpreted by authors almost without number. It has been au- 
 thoritatively construed by as august a Judicial body as has been 
 known in history. Whatever is new about it is apt to be doubtful. 
 On this occasion I shall not traverse the broad and well known 
 field, but I shall atteinpt to bring to your attention a few con- 
 siderations, well worn no doubt, which seem to me most timely, 
 in view of the special trend of the day. '^ 
 
 I know it is sometimes said that the Constitution is becoming 
 antiqi^ated and outgrown. It is doubtless true that since the 
 SpaniL-h war authoritative efforts have been made to free the 
 government from its limitations, in order that we might prosecute 
 a new and ambitious policy — a policy which, now that we have 
 embarked upon it, I think all thoughtful and patriotic citizens 
 wish we were well rid of. We have here and there, scattered over 
 the globe, little pro-consuls, governing despotically in the American 
 name. Ambitious statesmen chafe under its restraints, and enter- 
 prising people, desirous of embodying in the policies of the nation 
 every "ism" that may be floating upon the air, would have a style 
 of constitution which would change with every autumn and spring. 
 Nc doubt there are those who think it a fitting time for us today 
 to "come to bury Caesar, not to praise him." 
 
 But the principles of the Constitution were never more vital, 
 and its limitations never more necessary to real progress and lib- 
 erty than at this very hour. If its terms have been forgotten or 
 violated, the result has not been such as to tempt us to repetition. 
 It has endured the storm and stress of more than a century; 
 it has successfully met every crisis, and under it the nation has 
 had a growth beyond all parallel in history. It satisfied every 
 demand of our vigorous and growing youth, and as well responded 
 
THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 5 
 
 to every need of the splendid maturity of our people. It has stood 
 the strain of war. For more than a hundred years it permitted 
 us, without usurpation, to do everything that our national well- 
 heing required to be done. If it has thwarted some adventurous 
 designs and set at naught the crude and callow projects of inex- 
 perience, that was one of the things it was supremely designed to 
 do. We need not claim that it is perfect, but it is probably more 
 ne,arly perfect than any constitution we should adopt today. 
 Important amendments to it have been proposed, which were after- 
 wards shown to be useless. Seven years ago, for instance, a ma- 
 jority of the House of Eepresentatives voted for the so-called anti- 
 trust amendment, and yet the Sherman anti-trust statute has 
 been proven so drastic, that the attorney general has formally 
 recommended that it be made less strong, and drastic as it is^ it is 
 probable that it does not exhaust the constitutional powers of 
 Congress upon the subject. 
 
 But if amendments are desirable there is a way provided for 
 their adoption. And upon this day wliich is the anniversary of 
 the farewell address, as well as of the final action of the conven- 
 tion, we may well ponder upon those weighty words spoken by 
 that great soldier and statesman, to whom more than to any other 
 man we are indebted for our independence and our national gov- 
 ernment. "If in the opinion of the people," said George Wash- 
 ington one hundred and eleven years ago today, "the distribution 
 or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular 
 wrong, let it be corrected by amendment in the way the Consti- 
 tution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for, 
 though this in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the 
 customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The 
 precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any 
 partial or transient benefit which the use can at any time yield." 
 
 But it is proposed to expand the Constitution by "construc- 
 tion." So far as the rules of interpretation are concerned, they 
 should of course be applied, not with the technical narrowness 
 employed in construing penal statutes, but with the liberality 
 befitting the organic act of a governmient in which general terms 
 must necessarily be used. But if imder the pretence of exercising 
 a granted power a power not granted is put in force, then we 
 should have substantially that usurpation which would fall 
 under the denunciation of George Washington. It is pro- 
 posed, for instance, to construe the power to regulate 
 
6 THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 
 
 commerce between the States so as absolutely to prohibit it, and 
 thus to exercise jurisdiction over the processes of production 
 within the limits of a State. Control of every country road and 
 every city street over which a letter carrier may travel is to be 
 assumed under the power to establish post roads, while the taxing 
 power is to be invoked, not for the purpose of raising revenue for 
 the government, but for the purely social purpose of limiting the 
 size of fortunes. Other threatened infractions, if possible more 
 culpable, might also be mentioned. I am familiar with the tri- 
 umphant ad captandum, made for want of argument to serve as 
 a reply to such criticisms. Tt is that they are urged in favor of 
 corporations. But how does it happen that so far as governmental 
 favors are concerned, the corporations derive their peculiar juice 
 and fatness, not under State enactments, but under the subsidies 
 of national laws. And, unless it be for their interest to do so, 
 why is it also that many great corporations — common carriers and 
 insurance companies — have been pressing for national rather than 
 State control ? 
 
 What is the grand distinctive thing about the American Con- 
 stitution? Mr. Gladstone has said that it "is the most wonderful 
 work struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." 
 Making allowances for Mr. Gladstone's rhetorical way of putting 
 things, he probably did not mean that the framers enunciated for 
 the first time the principles of the Constitution, but that at a given 
 time many great principles were assembled together as the frame 
 of the Government of what was destined to be a great nation. In 
 that respect it was unique. The constitutions of other nations had 
 almost invariably been unwritten, had been gradually evolved from 
 history, and were the slow and ripened products of time. 
 But the important provisions of our Constitution were not 
 created when the Constitution was written. They were not novel 
 and untried, but had been worked out in the bitter struggle of cen- 
 turies between despotism and liberty. Many of them had been 
 fashioned in the history of other nations, and chiefly in the growth 
 of the British government. Some of them had existed in our 
 colonial charters, and in the constitutions adopted by the States 
 during the revolutionary period. But it was a wonderful work 
 performed at a given time when our Constitution makers collected 
 those immortal principles and wtote them together in a single 
 document as the basis of a nation. 
 
THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 7 
 
 I know it has been said that the founders of the Dutch Eepub- 
 lic did substantially the same thing when they established the 
 union of Utrecht by a written constitution. But that union was 
 a mere treaty between the Dutch states and, as an eminent critic 
 has pointed out, it formed no central authority at all, but only a 
 debating society. Its action was binding upon no state which did 
 not subsequently accept it. It had even less authority than the 
 confederation which preceded our Constitution. 
 
 To my mind the distinctive thing about the American Con- 
 stitution, which indelibly stamps its character, is that it embodied 
 an experiment before that time unknown, and , established a gov- 
 ernment upon the corner stone of the individual, making him for 
 certain essential purposes of freedom superior even to the Gov- 
 ernment itself. In the other nations, whatever liberty there was 
 had commonly appeared in the form of concessions and grants 
 from sovereigns to the people. The kings ruled by a claim of 
 divine right. Whatever of liberty the people enjoyed came by 
 gift from the king, and whatever authority was not granted by the 
 king remained vested in him. But the American Constitution 
 reversed all that. It proceeded from the people. The Govern- 
 ment which it established was one of limited powers. Every 
 power that it possessed was delegated by the people, and every 
 power not granted was expressly reserved to the people or to some 
 of the governmental organs which they had previously established^ 
 The original Constitution was framed upon this theory, but that 
 there might be no doubt about it, at least six of the States, and 
 among them Virginia and Massachusetts and New York, accom- 
 panied their ratification by resolutions making an express construc- 
 tion that all powers not granted were reserved ; and the first Con- 
 gress submitted among the amendments embodying the bill of 
 rights, the Tenth Amendment, declaring that "the powers not 
 delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited 
 by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to 
 the people.^^ This amendment was immediately ratified and 
 placed in the Constitution. It is there even more impressively 
 than if it had been made a part of the original instrument, and it 
 deals a death blow to the theory that our government has about 
 it any "divine right" or any "'inherent power," or any power that 
 is not contained in the express grant. To my mind therefore 
 the striking thing in the American Constitution, which differen- 
 tiates it from the previously formed constitutions of all other 
 
9 
 
 THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 
 
 nations, is the manner in which it imposed limitations upon gov- 
 ernment, recognizing that all power originally resided in the 
 people, and that no government had any species of authority over 
 th.em which they did not expressly grant. 
 
 Tlie fraraers of the Constitution knew or cared nothing 
 about the consciousness of a State or of a world. The only free- 
 dom that they had knowledge of was individual freedom, and to 
 that freedom they knew that government had often been the most 
 deadly foe. The problem that they attempted to solve was to 
 organize a State in which stability and order should be reconciled 
 with liberty. Their prime purpose was to secure the wellbeing of 
 the individual, which was the highest conscious unit they knew 
 anything about. They believed that it was for individual men 
 that States were founded, for those who were governed that gov- 
 ernments were ordained. History up to that time had been 
 chiefly made up of the doings of governments under which the 
 masses of mankind were permitted to stand afar off and see the 
 groat central figure perform, see him engorged with power, sur- 
 rounded by his creatures pandering to his whims, in order to 
 buy themselves new honors, while the toiling millions of men and 
 women were preyed upon and despoiled, with no right to liberty or 
 even life itself, except by the grace of the sovereign. The people 
 existed for the government and not the government for the people. 
 
 In the little island from which they came their fathers were 
 near enough to the throne to suspect at first, and then to know 
 that the king was a man like the rest of them, and by steady and 
 resistless struggles they were able to secure more and more of the 
 powers of the government in the people, until at last their sov- 
 ereign was reduced almost to a fiction and became a mere influence 
 rather than a power. But abstractly, the government of England 
 is without limitation. The powers granted to Parliament hedge 
 about and limit the king, but what limitation is there upon the 
 power of Parliament? More firmly even than the liberty of the 
 people of England did the Constitution establish the individual 
 freedom of our own people. It safeguarded the citizen in certain 
 great essentials against the republic itself and against the tyranny 
 of the majority, even when expressing itself through the agencies 
 of organized government. 
 
 Has it worked badly, this system of protecting the individual 
 of the million, this letting in the light of freedom to warm and 
 
THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 9 
 
 stimulate his faculties? Man is the greatest force we know of 
 upon Llie planet, and tlie genial influence of freedom has kindled 
 his powers into action, has brought the faculties of millions into 
 full play. It has not limited ambition to the few, but has made it 
 free to all. It has stimulated invention, industry, enterprise, and 
 is chiefly responsible for the astounding development the world 
 has seen since the establishment of the American Constitution. 
 
 I desire to speak to you at some greater length upon a sub- 
 ject to which I have alluded, upon the federated character of our 
 system, and the relation between the national and the local govern- 
 ments. Our somewhat complex system was the logical result of 
 the conditions existing after the Eevolution ; I say complex because 
 I do not know where to find such another double allegiance, if I 
 may call it such, where two governments divide between them 
 the exercise of sovereign powers over the same territory. There 
 are instances where one government delegates certain authority 
 over its soil to another, and where there may be an inferior and 
 subject government, the power of which is revocable by the im- 
 perial state, but such systems are not parallel with ours. 
 
 Our Constitution makers wished to escape the chaos and weak- 
 ness inevitable from having a great number of independent sov- 
 ereigns, such as existed here immediately after the revolution. 
 On the other hand, they wished to avoid a highly centralized gov- 
 ernment. James Wilson feared that the National Government 
 would be made so weak that it would be devoured by the States, 
 but neither he nor those associated with him desired it to be so 
 powerful that the States would be devoured by it. They aimed 
 to establish a safe balance which would equally protect both against 
 dis-union and a centralized autocracy. Critics of their work, who 
 delight to parade the usually safe wisdom, which lags a century 
 after the event, now point out that they might have drawn a 
 stronger Constitution and have averted the civil war. But this 
 is by no means clear even now. A Constitution with a stronger 
 central government would probably not have been ratified at all, 
 03', if ratified, would very likely not have delivered us from civil 
 war. Our ancestors could not legislate partisan passion out of 
 the human breast. Previous generations had entailed the black 
 heritage of slavery upon a great section of the country. It became 
 inevitably the occasion for a furious sectional strife. It is probable, 
 with such a deep-seated and irrepressible cause of irritation, that 
 
1 
 
 lo THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 
 
 there would have been war in any event. If such a cause had 
 not existed, it is altogether probable that the people would have 
 accepted as the more practical one, the theory put forth with im- 
 mortal eloquence by Webster, that the National Government within 
 the sphere of its constitutional powers was supreme. 
 
 The logic of Calhoun, transcendent though it was, led to a 
 barren conclusion from a practical standpoint, for if each State 
 were at liberty to withdraw from the Union at pleasure, the Union 
 as Webster expressed it, would have been but "a rope of sand." 
 So, I think the Civil War was due to another cause than the in- 
 completeness of the work of the Constitution makers. They 
 created an admirable poise, avoiding the weakness of disunion on 
 the one hand, and on the other the destruction of individual liberty, 
 certain to result from a highly centralized government, destined 
 some day to hold sway over hundreds of millions of people, inhabit- 
 ing vafet stretches of the earth's surface. This aspect of our con- 
 stitutional question is especially important at a time when it seems 
 not unlikely that the National Government may attempt to devour 
 the States. 
 
 We are all to be regulated in our business and modes of 
 living by gentlemen sent out from Washington, and the gentlemen 
 sent out from Washington are to be regulated by one man in the 
 White House. Would it be possible to conceive of a more ideal 
 centralized paternalistic government? To illustrate the extent to 
 which this national detective system has grown. Congress at its 
 last session appropriated about nine millions of dollars to inspect 
 various kinds of business, more than five times the amount ap- 
 propriated for similar purposes ten years ago, or probably a greater 
 sum than was required at that time for the pay and subsistence of 
 all the private soldiers in the army. Were we hopelessly wicked 
 and corrupt a decade ago, or has cur wickedness increased so 
 rapidly during that time that this vast army of Federal detectives 
 should be set upon the tracks of the people ? And, there are still 
 other proposals for increases of the system, and the end is not 
 yet. TTow much farther need we go in this direction before we 
 shall range ourselves by the side of Russia and every business man 
 will hqve a federal inspector at his elbow? 
 
 But, if this excessive governmental supervision of the citizen 
 is so necessary, why should it be conducted on so large a scale by 
 the National Government? Is an inspector who feeds at the na- 
 
THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION ii 
 
 tional crib, far from the master's eye, likely to be any better than 
 the one acting under local authority? And, by the master, I 
 do not mean the President; he is only a servant, for the people- 
 are supposed to be the masters of their government. If we study 
 our histor}^ we shall not find that the Federal inspectors are made 
 of any super-human material. They are made of precisely the 
 same clay as are the agents of local governments, and subject to 
 the same human frailties. Look at the swindles connected, 
 with federally inspected banks; at the astounding corrup- 
 tion attaching itself to almost the only railroad built under 
 national auspices; at the horrible disasters upon, the sea, due in_ 
 part to the failure of Federal inspectors to do their duty. I shall 
 not prolong the list. I only allude to these instances to show 
 the baselessness of the assumption that one who holds a Federal 
 commission is infallible, and of the further assumption that the 
 evils now existing in life will all disappear if we shall enter upoiL> 
 a Utopian world, where every breath we draw will be under the- 
 direction of some beneficent instrument of the Washington diety. 
 I take it that national office holders are no better and no worse than 
 are the officers of States, but as governmental functions are more 
 and more transferred to the national authority, the number of 
 agents subject to a single jurisdiction is increased amazingly, and 
 the authority exercised by the man at the head of this colossal 
 machine passes all bounds. 
 
 Tliere are of course certain great imperial powers that must 
 be exercised by the National Government, but the time-honored 
 functions of the States have as a whole been well administered, and 
 they should be permitted to remain with the States. The people 
 can exercise a closer scrutiny over the conduct of their local 
 agents, and the commission of acts of wrong doing will be more 
 apt to be detected and pimished, and hence more apt to be re- 
 strained. We have had painful instances of dishonesty in con-- 
 nection with the government of our cities, but it is significant 
 that they have usually been unearthed not by office holders, but by 
 the vigilance and public spirit of private citizens who can 
 get a near view. It was so a generation ago when Tilden 
 and his associates brought Tweed to justice in ISTew York. 
 It i? so at this moment when a body of men holding no 
 office are disclosing some startling things in connection 
 with the government of Boston. This most salutary force is^ 
 
12 THE AMEBIC AN CONSTITUTION 
 
 largely wanting when you set up your government upon a stage 
 one thousand miles from, those who are governed. Office holders 
 sometimes find each other out, or turn state's evidence, hut the 
 most potent agency to secure honest official conduct is the sleepless 
 vigilance of the people. 
 
 A great central government exerting its authority in all gov- 
 ernmental matter? over a vast and scattered population necessarily 
 takes on an autocratic character. The part of each individual in 
 such a government becomes so infinitesimal and diluted that it 
 vanishes almost entirely as an appreciable force. The wide range 
 of powers heretofore exercised under the Constitution by the States 
 gives an opportunity to the individual citizen to bear an appreci- 
 able part in actual government. The historian Freeman, in com- 
 paring small states with great ones, said that a "small republic 
 develops all the faculties of individual citizens to the highest pitch. 
 The average citizen of such a State is a superior being to the 
 average citizen of a large kingdom. He ranks not wdth its aver- 
 age subjects, but at the very least with its average legislators." I 
 have given the obvious reason. In a small community resting 
 upon suffrage, which is practically universal, the average citizen 
 takes part in the actual work of government, and is disciplined by 
 it, while in a very large nation he is practically a spectator. In 
 the one case participation in government will beget a facility for 
 it, and dealing with subjects at close .range, his practical sense 
 instead of his imagination will be brought into play. But where 
 he is a spectator looldng at transactions taking place upon a 
 distant stage, the thing that stages well is the thing that will com- 
 mand his attention. The rotund chest and swelling shoulders of 
 the hero may be only sawdust, but the effect upon the distant on- 
 looker will be the same. He is dealing with things which may or 
 may not be real. The opportunity for deception is great, the 
 chance of detection small. The ideal condition is that provided 
 by our system. We can have the protection, the security and the 
 sense of national pride attending a great nation, and we can at 
 the same time be free in conjunction with those in our immediate 
 neighborhoorls to manage our local affairs in our own way, without 
 the intermeddling of an autocrat. 
 
 Our vexed constitutional question was settled by the arbitra- 
 ment of war. What was called the lost cause was striken down 
 not by superior valor, for that has nowhere been seen among men, 
 
THE AMERICAN' CONSTITUTION 13. 
 
 but by the weight of heavier battalions. I think you will agree 
 with me that it was well for us, well for all mankind, that the 
 empire of this continent of ours should not be divided between 
 two great and possibly warring nations and that those who shall 
 hereafter live in the South and in the North shall be citizens of 
 one common country. But the civil war did not destroy the 
 autonomy of the States. After the war had ended the great Chief 
 Justice, himself a conspicuous actor in the struggle, declared from 
 the bench of the Supreme Court that "the Constitution in all its 
 provisions looks to an indestructible union composed of indestruc- 
 tible States." It is no more repugnant to our system for the 
 States to nullify the action of the National Government than for 
 the National Go^'ernment to usurp the powers of the States. If 
 we shaH be true to the system our forefathers believed so vital 
 to liberty, we will maintain the balance which they established 
 between the local and central governments. 
 
 The mortal disease of democracies is the demagogue. It is so 
 easy to make the most prosperous people think they are ill-treated 
 and badly off; it is so easy to use the property of a small class to 
 bribe the members of a large class, that unscrupulous politicians in 
 all ages have found a ready means to advance their fortunes under 
 democratic governments. The makers of our Constitution were 
 well aware of this danger, and they made careful provision against 
 the demagogue. They knew that often history condemned what 
 the crowd at the moment applauded. They safeguarded liberty 
 and property, imposed checks against hasty action, so that the 
 people might have time to think and form an opinion worthy of the 
 name, and they carefully distributed power among the three great 
 departments of government. The system has worked admirably. 
 
 That was an impressive dictum of Montesqueu, that "there is 
 no liberty if the judiciary be not separated from the legislative and 
 executive poM^ers." The independent judiciary o(f the United 
 States, standing apart and coldly scrutinizing in the light of the 
 Constitution the action of the other departments, has proven a most 
 effective guardian of liberty. 
 
 The House of Eepresentatives, fresh from the people, is sure 
 to voice the immediate popular demand. The Senate, differently 
 constituted, acts with more deliberate reserve, although its 
 efficiency would be increased and its conservatism in no degree 
 lessened if ibe democratic principle were not so grossly violated 
 
14 THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 
 
 in its composition. The Constitution so invested the President 
 with power at the same time that it decorated him with honor 
 that it satisfied his ambition and sobered him with the weight of 
 great responsibilities. And our Presidents have usually been a 
 great conservative force, and more than once they have not hesi- 
 tated to step into the cold light of unpopularity if they might 
 thereby advance their country's honor. Sailing before the wind 
 has not been a favorite pastime with American Presidents; their 
 great deeds often have been at the time unpopular. Washington 
 breathod the popular fury when he issued his proclamation of 
 neutrality, but he struck a mighty blow for the independence of 
 our foreign relations. Cleveland heroically braved a widespread 
 sentiment and sacrificed his popularity in order to preserve the 
 standard of value of our money. And when the printing presses 
 were to be set in motion and the national bondholders were to 
 be paid in paper Grant, the silent, inflexible soldier, who was 
 always a hero unless upon dress parade, interposed his veto against 
 inflation. The result of the workings of our institutions has been 
 seen in a progress which has conserved, and while we have made 
 haste slowly we have outstripped all other nations. 
 
 Thus the Constitution has safely carried us through the most 
 rapidly moving century the world has ever seen. It has shown 
 itself equal to this great era. How will it ride the tumbling 
 waters of the century that has just dawned? How will it be in 
 the far future when mayhap the Gaul shall insultingly leap upon 
 the ruins of the Capitol and "wasteful wars shall statues over- 
 turn"? Whether it shall then endure or be derided and trampled 
 under foot will depend not so much upon the virility of its powers, 
 .as upon the integi'ity and sense of Justice of the American people. 
 No constitution can save a nation from itself. To that riddle of 
 the future the wise and venerable Franklin in almost the last 
 words spoken to the convention, after the engrossed copy had been 
 read, gave perhaps the mo<5t illurainating answer that can be made. 
 It can, he said, speaking of the Constitution, "only end in des- 
 potism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall 
 become so corrupted as to need despotic government — being in- 
 capable of any other." 
 
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