CHAPTER XLV. CONCLUDING REMARKS. § 1910. We have now reviewed all the provisions of the original constitution of the United States, and all the amendments which have been incorporated into it. And here the task originally proposed in these Commentaries is brought to a close. Many reflections naturally crowd upon the mind at such a moment, many grateful recollections of the past, and many anxious thoughts of the future. The past is secure. It is unalterable. The seal of eternity is upon it. The wisdom which it has displayed and the blessings which it has bestowed, cannot be obscured; neither can they be debased by human folly or human infirmity. The future is that which may well awaken the most earnest solicitude, both for the virtue and the permanence of our republic. The fate of other republics — their rise, their progress, their decline, and their fall - are written but too legibly on the pages of history, if indeed they were not continually before. us in the startling fragments of their ruins. They have perished, and perished by their own hands. Prosperity has enervated them, corruption has debased them, and a venal populace has consummated their destruction. Alternately the prey of military chieftains at home, and of ambitious invaders from abroad, they have been sometimes cheated out of their liberties by servile demagogues; sometimes betrayed into a surrender of them by false patriots; and sometimes they have willingly sold them for a price to the despot who has bidden highest for his victims. They have disregarded the warning voice of their best statesmen; and have persecuted and driven from office their truest friends. They have listened to the fawning sycophant, and the base calumniator of the wise and the good. They have reverenced power more in its high abuses and summary movements than in its calm and constitutional energy, when it dispensed blessings with an unseen but liberal hand. They have surren dered to faction what belonged to the country. Patronage and party, the triumph of a leader, and the discontents of a day, have outweighed all solid principles and institutions of government. Such are the melancholy lessons of the past history of republics down to our own. § 1911. It is not my design to detain the reader by any elaborate reflections addressed to his judgment, either by way of admonition or of encouragement. But it may not be wholly without use to glance at one or two considerations, upon which our meditations cannot be too frequently indulged. § 1912. In the first place, it cannot escape our notice, how exceedingly difficult it is to settle the foundations of any government upon principles which do not admit of controversy or question. The very elements out of which it is to be built are susceptible of infinite modifications; and theory too often deludes us by the attractive simplicity of its plans, and imagination by the visionary perfection of its speculations. In theory, a government may promise the most perfect harmony of operations in all its various combinations. In practice, the whole machinery may be perpetually retarded, or thrown out of order by accidental mal-adjustments. In theory, a government may seem deficient in unity of design and symmetry of parts, and yet in practice it may work with astonishing accuracy and force for the general welfare. Whatever, then, has been found to work well in experience should be rarely hazarded upon conjectural improvements. Time and long and steady operation are indispensable to the perfection of all social institutions. To be of any value they must become cemented with the habits, the feelings, and the pursuits of the people. Every change discomposes for a while the whole arrangements of the system. What is safe is not always expedient; what is new is often pregnant with unforeseen evils and imaginary good. § 1913. In the next place, the slightest attention to the history of the national constitution must satisfy every reflecting mind how many difficulties attended its formation and adoption, from real or imaginary differences of interest, sectional feelings, and local institutions. It is an attempt to create a national sovereignty, and yet to preserve the State sovereignties; though it is impossible to assign definite boundaries in every case to the powers of each. The influence of the disturbing causes which, more than once in the convention, were on the point of breaking up the Union, have since immeasurably increased in concentration and vigor. The very inequalities of a government confessedly founded in a compromise were then felt with a strong sensibility; and every new source of discontent, whether accidental or permanent, has since added increased activity to the painful sense of these inequalities. The North cannot but perceive that it has yielded to the South a superiority of representatives, already amounting to twenty-five, beyond its due proportion; and the South imagines that with all this preponderance in representation, the other parts of the Union enjoy a more perfect protection of their interests than her own. The West feels her growing power and weight in the Union; and the Atlantic States begin to learn that the sceptre must one day depart from them. If, under these circumstances, the Union should once be broken. up, it is impossible that a new constitution should ever be formed embracing the whole territory. We shall be divided into several nations or confederacies, rivals in power and interest, too proud to brook injury, and too close to make retaliation distant or ineffectual. Our very animosities will, like those of all other kindred nations, become more deadly, because our lineage, laws, and language are the same. Let the history of the Grecian and Italian republics warn us of our dangers. The national constitution is our last and our only security. United we stand, divided we fall. § 1914. If these Commentaries shall but inspire in the rising generation a more ardent love of their country, an unquenchable thirst for liberty, and a profound reverence for the Constitution and the Union, then they will have accomplished all that their author ought to desire. Let the American youth never forget that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils. and sufferings and blood of their ancestors, and capable, if wisely improved and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence. The structure has been erected by architects of consummate skill and fidelity; its foundations are solid; its compartments are beautiful as well as useful; its arrangements are full of wisdom and order; and its defences are impregnable from without. It has been reared for immortality, if the work of man may justly THE aspire to such a title. It may, nevertheless, perish in an hour by the folly or corruption or negligence of its only keepers, PEOPLE. Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest; and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people in order to betray them. CHAPTER XLVI. BY T. M. COOLEY. THE EMANCIPATION OF THE SLAVES. § 1915. THE examination of the Constitution would be incomplete without some notice of the interesting and highly important changes made therein by amendments adopted after the conclusion of the great civil war. § 1916. The original compromises on the subject of slavery, and the condition of the country and of society at the time the Constitution was adopted, and from which those compromises sprung, have been touched upon in the preceding pages.1 It is very generally believed that but for the mutual concessions then made the Constitution could not at that time have been adopted, and possibly all attempts to form a national government might for a long period have proved wholly abortive.2 The subject of slavery was one upon which, for obvious reasons, the utmost sensitiveness might reasonably be looked for among men just emerging from a successful struggle for their own liberties; and it is worthy of remembrance that the Constitution, as finally agreed upon, did not mention it by name, but only referred to servitude and the slave trade in vague terms as things the existence of which under a free constitution was to be overlooked rather than recognized.3 It is not probable, however, that at that time the 1 Supra, §§ 636-644, 1332-1337, 1807-1811. 2 Curtis, Hist. of Const. II. 20, 292, 313; Life and Writings of Judge Iredell, II. 213; Life of Webster by Curtis, II. 382; Tucker's Hist. of U. S., I. 362; Everett's Speeches, IV. 390; Greeley's American Conflict, ch. 5; Lecture on Slavery at Faneuil Hall, by Robert Toombs, January 24, 1856. On these concessions, it has justly been remarked by a recent writer, "hung mighty issues. They are of the past now. They were the price that was paid for republican government." Frothingham's Rise of the Republic, 594. Mr. Choate expresses the same idea, and classes concession 'among the whiter virtues." Life and Writings, by Brown, II. 432, 433. 66 3.66 'The word 'slave' is not in the Constitution; and so peculiar and wise were its provisions that, when State after State abolished slavery, no alteration was required to meet the great social change. Nor would any change have been required |