Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this Article by appropriate legislation. * The time which elapsed between the proposal of each Amendment by Congress and the proclamation by the Secretary of State of ratification by three fourths of the States affords an interesting study: When Chisholm sued the State of Georgia and the Supreme Court upheld (1793) the action as authorized by the Constitution (Note 104) the excitement was intense and the Eleventh Amendment was proposed by Congress two days afterward. One State enacted a law fixing the penalty of death for any one who should bring a suit against it. Another convoked a special session of its legislature which declared the decision to be dangerous. Yet the temper cooled, and the Amendment was before the public for three years and a third before it secured the necessary ratifications. The struggle over the Fourteenth Amendment was, of course, very bitter as well as long. Southern States were slow in ratifying it, notwithstanding that their representation again in Congress was conditioned upon acquiescence; and as some of the northern States were against the Amend ment, the help of southern States for a time seemed necessary. When the Supreme Court held (1895) that a tax on the income from land is equivalent to a tax on the land itself, and that it must therefore be apportioned among the States (Note 10) as taxes on lands always had been under the constitutional requirement, there was much dissatisfaction. Yet the Sixteenth Amendment, removing the necessity for apportionment, was not proposed by Congress for fourteen years, and it remained before the States for adoption over three years more, the longest time that an Amendment has been under consideration. was The first of the last four Amendments was proposed (1909) at a time when in some circles it was fashionable to find fault with the Constitution as an outgrown shell, and in particular to criticize it as not so readily amendable as the needs of a progressive age required that it be. Yet the Sixteenth Amendment was adopted. And the three Amendments following that the first of which adopted in the same year, the second of which was proposed four years thereafter, and the last of which was proposed less than six months after the preceding one had been proclaimed adopted-each of which affects our National and political life profoundly, were each before the people only a little over a year. Thus time and circumstance, which dispose of so many questions, made sweeping answer to the criticism that our Constitution is not sufficiently flexible. Indeed, and singularly enough, during the pendency of the Prohibitory Amendment objection to the Constitution was that it is too readily amended, and during the progress of the great lawsuits which grew out of it the statement was often made that ratification was hurried through State legislatures before the people had sufficient time to weigh the matter carefully. It was said that Congress should have called conventions in the States (Note 129) to consider ratifying the proposed Amendment instead of submitting it to the State legislatures, and it was also contended that the legislatures should have first ascertained the wishes of the people instead of ratifying hastily. More than two thousand amendments to the Constitution have been proposed in Congress. Forty-eight were proposed in one Congress, fifty-four in another, and seventythree in another. Nine proposed amendments have passed the Senate and failed in the House of Representatives, and the Senate has rejected as many that passed the House. Those facts indicate that the sober sense of the people is against frequent alterations of the fundamental law except in case of clear necessity. To the English historian Lecky the inability to amend our Constitution to suit every notion of the day seemed the greatest blessing of the American. Bryce also has expressed the like opinion. "Moreover, the process prescribed for amendment," he says, "interposes various delays and formalities before a change can be carried through, pending which the people can reconsider the issues involved and recede, if they think fit, from projects that may have at first attracted them. Both in Switzerland and in the States of the American Union it has repeatedly happened that constitutional amendments prepared and approved by the legislatures have been rejected by the people, not merely because the mass of the people are often more conservative than their representatives, or less amenable to the pressure of particular interests' or sections of opinion, but because fuller discussions revealed objections whose weight had not been appreciated when the proposal first appeared. In these respects the rigid Constitution has real elements of stability." The history of proposed amendments proves clearly that what Congress and the people are eager for to-day may be deemed undesirable to them to-morrow. But amendments the need of which the people had well considered before they were proposed, and of the usefulness of which they were fully convinced, have been very easily adopted. Of the many particulars in which the practical operation of the Con stitution has been next to marvelous, there is none in which it has worked more successfully than in fitting itself by amendments to the advancing opinions of mankind. And by judicial construction which has been expressive of prevailing thought, the general principles stated in the Constitution have been adapted to a great variety of conditions of industrial, commercial, and legal facts of which the Founders of the Republic never could have dreamed. As for more than a century and a quarter of unexampled social, civil, and material advancement, in which it has been the controlling force, the Constitution has applied itself, adapted itself, developed itself, amended itself, and, through stress and shock of civil war the like of which no other constitution ever felt, maintained its equilibrium, the American has reason to believe that his fundamental law contains inherently what the Scriptures call "the power of an endless life." "Love thou thy land, with love far-brought A land of settled government, A land of just and old renown, Where Freedom slowly broadens down A LIST OF THE LEADING CASES EXPOUND ING THE CONSTITUTION, WITH NOTES ACCUSED. See CRIMINAL PROCEDURE. entitled to equal protection as though citizen. Truax v. Raich 243 naturalization of, may be revoked for disloyalty. United States 57 ALIEN CONTRACT LABOR LAW, held not to exclude minister of gospel. Church of the Holy Trinity 6 AMENDMENT, cannot be ratified by referendum to people. Hawke v. Smith 171 seven-year limitation of ratification of, not extra constitutional. 256 BANK OF UNITED STATES, Act of Congress creating constitutional. McCulloch v. Maryland BANKRUPTCY, Act of Congress supersedes State insolvency law. Sturges v. debtor imprisoned, released by State but held for debt to Nation. State cannot release debt owing to citizen of another State. State law may release debtor as to future but not past con- BILL OF ATTAINDER, in law of West Virginia. Pierce v. Carskadon (1872), 16 Wall. in Missouri constitution. Cummings v. State ́(1866), Wall. 4 277 81 |