CHAP. II. USELESSNESS OF THE STATE CONVENTION.

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tion of States," answers Jefferson, "must be called to ascribe the doubtful power to that department which they may think best." But the remedy was beyond the reach of the people at the very moment they needed it. In a period of excitement and agitation some quick and ready mode of arbitration is indispensable, if peace is to be preserved. Now it is a tardy and cumbrous process to call a Convention of the States; and if at any time the question in dispute is one which affects large classes variously, the Convention even when called would never be found to agree. This can be proved by an arithmetical statement. The concurrence of three-fourths of the States is necessary to carry out a change in the Constitution. In the differences between the North and the South it is evident that three-fourths of the States never could at any time have been brought to agree upon a single point. In 1861 there were thirty-three States in the Union, of which eleven demanded the right to live in a separate Confederation. At least five or six other States were divided in opinion with respect to this claim, some of their inhabitants approving and some opposing it. The remainder refused to listen to it for a moment. How, then, was it possible to bring three-fourths of the whole number into accordance? Compromise had been tried until the very mention of farther compromise was almost sufficient to stir up a revolution. The eleven States then said, "We will fight to obtain our liberty;" and the majority, seeing that they must fight or yield, and

knowing well that they could not yield without losing all, and seeing moreover that the constitutional provision for settling disputes had completely broken down, accepted the challenge and went into the field. What else could be done? The nineteen States would not yield a point; the fourteen were equally inflexible. Thus the Constitution practically furnished no other instrument for the settlement of national differences but the sword.

The peace of the country will be jeopardised in precisely the same manner whenever a question arises which a proportion of the States exceeding one-fourth are anxious to carry. They will be strong enough to resist constitutional amendments. A convention of the States can settle nothing. War must then be the only arbitrator between the disputants. The amendments to the Constitution made since 1861 have been effected, with one exception-that abolishing slavery-by excluding the eleven insurgent States from voting. States which had never committed the folly of withdrawing their representatives from Congress could not be so treated, and it is doubtful whether the precedent of altering the Constitution by the device of forcibly suppressing the minority will receive the sanction of coming generations. A settlement of this kind can never be deemed permanent. As the disorganised minority become stronger they will be more strenuous in their demands for the restoration of their prerogatives. The only means by which their ultimate success could be

CHAP. II.

THE POWER OF AMENDMENT.

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prevented would be by keeping them in perpetual subjection. Slavery was abolished by the vote of the Slave States, but negro suffrage and the disfranchisement of white citizens was forced upon them against their will, and in undoubted contravention of the express guarantee of the Constitution that each State shall be allowed to choose its own form of suffrage. The right of conquest was urged as the justification for this and many similar measures, but it is one of the arguments of the victors which are only cogent while cannon may be brought up to enforce them.

It is not without envy that Americans compare their own Constitution, as concerns the emendatory power, with that of Great Britain. They see that Parliament can and does readily carry out such reforms as may be called for by the progress and increase of the people. There is open and fair discussion, and the right of decision is not placed in an impossible majority. The American method of Reform, as it is described by an American writer, "is so difficult that it can rarely be resorted to at all, and so dangerous that to use it would be only something better than civil war, for it would be likely to provoke one. It implies more intelligence, and more dispassionate calmness of deliberation, than is or can be possessed by any people." This, then, is one detail of government in which the Constitution has not answered to the necessities or expectations of the

15 The Trial of the Constitution.' By Sidney George Fisher. (Philadelphia, 1862.)

D

people. When it was framed the country was distracted by feuds which it was intended to remove. It helped to increase them. It was based upon the assumption that local differences would die out. They have been exasperated and embittered by violent discussions, by the conviction that they are irremediable, and by the memory of a thousand wrongs, real or fancied, on both sides. John Quincy Adams was one of the statesmen who dreaded this loosening of what has been called, with a touch of irony as it might almost seem, "the fraternal tie." "Far better will it be," said he in 1839, "for the people of the disunited States to part in friendship from each other than to be held together by constraint." His remark shows how little he understood his own country. It is too ambitious to permit itself to be cut into fragments. A partition of the Union is not possible without a war, unless there should ever be a majority for secession. Then the minority could no more hold the discontented fast than the minority could escape from the grasp of the majority in 1861. "One flag, one people" is the formula which expresses the modern theory of American Republicanism. The Union before everything— before States, before the Constitution, before even liberty itself. For that idea the American people have submitted to be taxed as few nations have ever been taxed before, and for it they would willingly endure afresh the burdens which the bloody contest of four years visited upon them.

CHAP. III.

THE EXECUTIVE.

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CHAPTER III.

THE EXECUTIVE.

IT has been often represented that the Executive Department of the United States government is the most powerful and the least under control known to any country. Although there were bounds prescribed in the Constitution beyond which the President could not pass, yet those bounds seemed too elastic for the public safety, and the most accomplished American statesmen and constitutional writers have expressed misgivings lest one day the liberties of the people should be invaded. Patrick Henry, in the early days of the Republic, declared his dread that the President "might easily become a king." "If," he said, "your American chief be a man of ambition and abilities, how easy it will be for him to render himself absolute!" It was unquestionably the intention of those who originally framed the government that the Executive should exercise a considerable, and to some degree an independent control over public affairs. Judge Story, among other commentators on the Constitution, justifies this upon the ground that a feeble Executive implies a feeble exe