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Preface

counties feels its power. Democracy has so revised its ideals that it seems to have passed through a peaceful revolution. The details of this revolution are recorded in the later chapters of the second volume. An examination of the evidence there presented shows the truth and the insight of Emerson's observation, that society is ever in a state of flux. Constitutions and laws, usually placed as permanent landmarks on the civil estate, appear and disappear like the species in the organic world. Even our constitutions of government prove the law of evolution.

Many concepts of the Fathers have been revised; some have been abandoned. It is a wise generation that knows itself and its own. From the evidence presented in these volumes it must be admitted that the changes wrought in American civil life during these seventy-five years indicate that the American people became liberal and altruistic as they became a power among the nations of the world, and that our constitutional history is of a constituency that has grown humane as it has become conscious of its responsibilities.

The guarantee of rights. .

Contents

Reforms and new precedents.

Effort to make constitutional provisions permanent
Constitutions evolving into codes

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The States were making the first attempt in history to define
civil functions by means of a written constitution
English and American legislative systems compared
The difficulties in fixing a basis of representation
Conservatism of early democracy

The qualifications of members of the Assembly
Legislative procedure borrowed from England
The test of sovereignty . .

State and national sovereignty

John Adams, the father of the public school
First limitation of the power of the Legislature

The most artificial part of the system, the Senate
The qualifications of senators.

Senatorial apportionment.
Characters of the early Senate

The Senate a discovery in politics

Qualifications of the governor
Popular distrust of executive power
The first commonwealth governors
Their obscure functions.
Dignity attached to the office
The executive council
Organization of the courts.

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