ANNOUNCEMENT The next number of The Constitutional Review, to be issued July 1st, will contain, among its leading features, an exhaustive and critical study of the new constitution of Mexico, an account of Russia's struggle for freedom and constitutional government, with special reference to the rapid progress of the present revolution and the plans and purposes of the provisional government, an account of the proceedings in the constitutional convention of Massachusetts, a review of constitutional amendments adopted or rejected in the several states in 1916, and a study of pending and proposed constitutional revisions and amendments in the various commonwealths, besides synoptical notices of several important articles in the current magazines and reviews of certain notable new books. The National Association for Constitutional Government was formed for the purpose of preserving the representative institutions established by the founders of the Republic and of maintaining the guarantees embodied in the Constitution of the United States. The specific objects of the Association are: 1. To oppose the tendency towards class legislation, the unnecessary extension of public functions, the costly and dangerous multiplication of public offices, the exploitation of private wealth by political agencies, and its distribution for class or sectional advantage. 2. To condemn the oppression of business enterprise, the vitalizing energy without which national prosperity is impossible; the introduction into our legal system of ideas which past experience has tested and repudiated, the adoption of the Initiative, the Compulsory Referendum, and the Recall, in place of the constitutional system; the frequent and radical alteration of the fundamental law, especially by mere majorities; and schemes of governmental change in general subversive of our republican form of political organization. 3. To assist in the dissemination of knowledge regarding theories of government and their practical effects; in extending a comprehension of the distinctive principles upon which our political institutions are founded; and in creating a higher type of American patriotism through loyalty to those principles. 4. To study the defects in the administration of law and the means by which social justice and efficiency may be more promptly and certainly realized in harmony with the distinctive principles upon which our government is based. 5. To preserve the integrity and authority of our courts; respect for and obedience to the law, as the only security for life, liberty, and property; and above all, the permanence of the principle that this Republic is "a government of laws and not of men." Wise and Unwise Extension of Federal Power By William Howard Taft1 Washington was the President of uals, and the twelfth amendment was a the Convention of 1787 which framed our present Constitution. The sketchy and laconic journals do not show that he took much part in the deliberations of the body, but they do show that he was very constant in his attendance, and his correspondence indicates that he followed closely the proceedings. We cannot doubt that, with his commanding influence, his well-balanced judgment, and his high patriotism, he was a power for good in securing the wonderfully wise compromises of that remarkable instrument of government, and that his title to credit in the ultimate result cannot be overestimated. This great charter from the people of the United States, organizing a national government, is in nothing more exceptional than in its preservation down to the present moment substantially as it was when it was ordained by the people one hundred and twentyeight years ago. The first ten amendments were practically contemporary with the Constitution itself. They comprised the Bill of Rights against abuses of the national government and two rules of construction, and were adopted in fulfillment of an informal condition of ratification exacted by the State conventions. The eleventh amendment was a mere reversal of a Supreme Court decision at variance with the construction promised in the Federalist as to the nonsuability of states by private individ 'An address delivered at Johns Hopkins by permission of the author. mere reframing of an awkward and clumsy method of selecting the President. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments seventy years later were the result of the war, and were adopted to protect the emancipated slaves and to readjust conditions to their freedom. For a moment, until the "Slaughter House cases," it seemed as if the balance up to that time carefully maintained in the Constitution between the local self-government of the states and the national powers of the government might be disturbed; but that decision so limited the operation of the fourteenth amendment that the danger passed. By the fourteenth amendment, the short Bill of Rights contained in the original Constitution, to secure persons within state jurisdiction from abuses of the state government, was extended to forbid state laws taking life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or depriving a person of the equal protection of the laws. Practically this has not expanded congressional or federal executive powers, but has only brought within the power and duty of the Supreme Court the enforcement of these guaranties in respect of state legislation. In the sixteenth amendment, the taxing powers of Congress are enlarged, but not beyond their actual exercise during the Civil War; and by the seventeenth amendment the mode of selecting Senators in the state, transUniversity February 22, 1917, and reprinted ferred from the legislatures to the people, has not enlarged or diminished state powers. The plan of Washington and his associates was to create a nation to consist of a central government and state governments. The central government was to have the power over foreign relations without interference by the states, complete power over war and peace, independent power to tax and raise money, and the absolute power over commerce, foreign and national. The states retained the wide field of local government. To this balance of authority is due the permanence of our Republic. An attempt to govern from Washington the home affairs of the people in forty-eight different states by acts of Congress and executive order would have severed the union into its parts. An attempt to give the national government power to brush the doorsteps of the people of a state in parochial matters and in a local atmosphere which must be breathed in order to be understood, would have created a dissatisfaction and a fatal gnawing at the bond between the states. Confederations like ours have usually gone to destruction either through the expansion of the national authority into an arbitrary and tactless exercise of power, or through the paralyzing of needed national strength by the encroachment of the constituent states. Our Constitution has maintained its balance, and that is why we are stronger to-day than we ever were in our history. This statement will not meet the concurrence of many who insist that the power of the national government has vastly increased as compared with that exercised by the states. Their view is not inconsistent with mine when the facts upon which they rely are analyzed. The national government exercises a much greater volume of power that it ever did in the history of the country. But the increase is within those fields of jurisdiction which have always under our Constitution belonged to the federal government, and the increase that we see to-day over what it was in Washington's day and in Jefferson's day is due not to a change of the original plan, but to two circumstances. One is that Congress did not see fit at once to exercise all its powers and allowed them to lie dormant until long after the Civil War. No one will deny, for instance, that Congress always had power over interstate commerce, but not until 1887 did it attempt to exercise direct control by an Interstate Commerce Commission. This is only one instance of many. The second circumstance is that in the growth and settlement of the country and expansion of its industries and business and the change effected by the use of steam and electricity in transportation, by which distance has been minimized and the country has been made compact, the volume of commerce of national and international character has greatly increased in proportion to that confined within the individual states. In Washington's day the total commerce within the states was 75 per cent. of all the commerce of the country. To-day the commerce within the limits of the states is 25 per cent. only of all the commerce of the country, and the proportion is dim |