him, but actually misunderstood. Not a single one of the members of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 would have agreed to this panegyric. When the instrument left their hands, the utmost they could and did say of it was, that they accepted it as a sincere effort towards a better union. As it went into practice, they saw, like everybody else, defects, and either joined in or opposed the provisions that were proposed to remedy them. All desired, before they died, this or that correction in the text and scope; and they were perplexed by the totally different course which public affairs took, from what they anticipated. Silas Wright, the wisest and truest friend of the Constitution, who, though not a member of the Convention, had enjoyed the confidence of several of them, said: "If studied faithfully and by an unbiassed mind, it will lead it to read the Constitution practically and to understand it as it is." he adds in the same letter:

And

"No one familiar with the affairs of our government can have failed to notice how large a proportion of our statesmen appear never to have read the Constitution of the United States with a careful reference to its precise language and exact provisions; but rather, as occasion presents, seem to exercise their ingenuity, unfortunately too often powerful and powerfully exerted, to stretch both to the line of what they at the moment consider expedient. A reference to a careful, perfect, and full analysis of that instrument and of the grants of power really found in it, cannot fail to exert a strong and salutary influence upon such minds."

There is but too much truth in. Governor Wright's remark that the constitution has been stretched for expediency's sake; but is this not a necessity with all written constitutions? Suppose, for argument's sake, that a given constitution should contain, when made, the very best political thoughts, and have for their development the aptest organs; and for how long would they be best and aptest? Is it not clear, then, that the better a constitution fits a certain land and people at a given time, the less will it fit their future condition? Every constitution-maker looks, therefore, forward to a coming time, which he can but imagine, but not realize sufficient to take its measure. The best written constitution becomes in time obsolete, and only those seem to escape this fate (for a time) in which the practical politician co-operates with some prophetic genius. They extend their own age to and bind it to the future; while those who have to carry out the constitution which they made, extend their instrument, so as to refit it to the then living society. The old proverb, "Man wants but little, nor that little long," applies also to

constitutions. Obviously, therefore, whatever went into the Constitution of 1787, beyond the formation of a closer union and a free-er organism for the government of the United States, was a hazardous experiment. The time is fast coming when the government established in 1787 will have to be superseded like its predecessor, the Confederation; and then we hope the country and the people shall be ripe for the one constitution that unites all, and constitutes for them a total organism, that secures local freedom, but also an effective general government.

The inspiration most needed for a country's constitution is an intelligent, virtuous, and wise public spirit; it alone can quicken into life, and always at the right moment, the proper readjustments of social with political conditions. Constitutions that debar society from carrying out its well-matured public will are as obnoxious, as a public disposition that sets easily aside the recorded experience of preceding generations.

"To the Old true,

Yet friendly to the New,"

is one of the mottoes of the author from whom we quote at the head of this chapter. That is his "life's golden tree."

A public will embodied in a constitution always deserves respect-yea, reverence-but never worship. We yield the first to the Constitution of 1787, including its fifteen amendments. It contains many provisions that should be carried out in all integrity; but there is not one word in them which should preclude American society from ever inquiring; whether a change is not necessary. We know, that a thorough revision is necessary, because there are provisions that are already obsolete, whilst others are being used for public harm. The great task of safeguards protecting government against social forces, and society against political usurpation, is still unperformed.

The best work in our constitution is, if our premises are true, the general framework. That will enable us to discard unnecessary provisions, to add others that may be needed, and to rectify defective points, and thus we hope we shall continue to be organic and ethical, that is to say, national. We owe, therefore, gratitude to the Fathers, not only for the good they accomplished for us, but still more for the improvements which they intended to inaugurate and left for us to secure; and this latter duty, that of revising the Constitution by the aid of experience, is now upon this people. The sooner, and the more careful it will be performed, the better.

CHAPTER IX.

THE RESOLUTIONS OF 1798.

America hath neither the power, nor the will, to end the crisis, that is forever upon it."-St. Simon.

THE resolves of the States of Virginia and Kentucky, that go by the name that stands at the head of this chapter, have received both more laudation and more censure than they deserve. They have neither, as they purposed, arrested the real diseases of the government, nor produced, as they are accused of, the disasters ascribed to them. The crisis, that was claimed to exist at the time of their promulgation, existed more in the brains of the authors of the resolutions than in reality; and the remedy was too heroic for the actual wrong. This would have been seen early, if the movement had been seconded by the other ten states, and become one of the acknowledged methods in politics. Their immediate object was to oust a party from power, and to put another one in its place; and, as is usual in partisan warfare, a much louder alarm-bell was rung than was really necessary. And this practice of exaggerating public grievancesmaking a mountain out of a molehill-was thus begun in the United States. It is the great fault of our parties, for it prevents an impartial settlement of public questions. It seems almost inseparable from the politics of countries, that are attempted to be governed through popular suffrages, because the thing to be done at elections is to arouse the people from the apathy, to which they instinctively incline.

Overacting was, however, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, the political mannerism in America, for special as well as general reasons. The French Encyclopædists, and Beccaria and Bentham had incited a radical inquiry into the nature of government. They saw, and the world with them, how noxious a superstructure had been built on false theological and political premises; and it seemed to that age, that mankind could not be over-alarmed in furtherance of some immediate reform. All

were seeking sounder foundations for [the new, and, as they believed, better political edifices with which mankind were to be blessed.

The framers of our Constitution, and those, who organized the government under it, were all more or less infected with this sentiment, and the ten amendatory articles were added to the Constitution in pursuance of it. When, therefore, under Adams, the ship of state was careening, to what was held to be the wrong side by those who regarded themselves as Republicans par excellence, they concluded at once that the difference between themselves and the Federalists was fundamental as to the nature of the American government, and they set to work to rectify it by state resolves, which was then the readiest and handiest modus operandi for appeals to the masses. They effected their partisan object, but established no permanent fundamental rule for the government.

The Americans of that period had taught and talked themselves into the belief that two perils threatened the countryfirst, a relapse into British royalty; second, the erection of some "kingship" in America itself; and the press and the stump were to them what the village-bells were formerly in Germany, when the Huns and Turks threatened Fatherland, to wit means to keep them awake. Sentinels of liberty still believe, that sounding the alarms sharply and often is the best service they can render humanity. Like steamships at sea that are befogged, they ring the gong at intervals and alternate with the steam-whistle. During Washington's administration, who was too much a king in the good old sense to want to be one in America, these signalings always failed in arousing the .people, because they had unshaken faith in Washington. But when Adams had become President and Hamilton the party leader, the people were much easier led to mistake the positiveness of their characters for a royal disposition and kingly inclination. And this suspicion received strength from the fact that these statesmen sympathized with imperial England against republican France. Adams had been minister at the Court of St. James, and his reception and behavior there had been distorted. So when the British commercial treaty became one of the measures of his administration, and the alien and sedition laws were passed, it drew the fire of the Republican batteries in the press and on the stump, and America had its first great political fight. The Resolutions of 1798 gave the battle-cry!

Adams and Hamilton's course was impolitic, nothing more; but it furnished Jefferson and Madison's friends with the

plausibilities, which they needed for their opposition. The alien and sedition laws gave, indeed, the President an undue degree of arbitrary power. The first provided that "an alien guilty of treasonable and secret machinations against the government of the United States should be expelled by order of the President,"-mark-without the benefit of judicial inquiry and adjudication. The animus of such an enactment was, however, the most objectionable point in the popular mind, for it was believed that the aim was chiefly against French republicanism; and as the Americans were still in the mood of regarding themselves as the general protectors of human liberty, it was denounced as treason to freedom. Jefferson afterwards exercised himself the power of ordering mischief-making foreigners out of the country without legal process; Jackson tried an alien by court-martial for aiding Indians, and he was executed within twelve hours; and Lincoln, Seward, and Stanton, and A. J. Johnson, arrested, arraigned before improvised courts, and executed judgment much more arbitrarily than was done under the sedition law. Thus America is a reillustration of the inscription on Hadrian's grave: Pro dolor quantum refert in quæ tempora vel optimi cujusque virtus incidat (Everything depends on the time into which even the best man's virtues fall).

John Adams allowed himself to look at French politics through British spectacles; but not those of the king, the lords spiritual and temporal. No; he saw with the eyes of Burke and Bentham. Their views were, however, not free from the common English failing of judging other nations by British preconceptions. Washington, Jay, Knox, Hamilton, indeed all conservative Americans, had been more or less influenced in this way. Even nowadays much of this "falsetto" English view of Continental politics prevails.

But we are much more interested in the mutual misunderstanding (often it was misrepresentation) of American politics of each other, and we must bear testimony to the truth, that Adams and Hamilton were neither royalists nor centralizationists (as a policy); on the contrary, they were good Federal republicans. But it must also be stated, that Jefferson and Madison were not what the Federal party charged them to be, viz.: Democrats in the European sense, nor could they be designated truthfully now as Socialists or Communists. The fact is, that all the four named were true friends of America; and if any one of them ever did this country any harm, it was an error of judgment, not of intention. It is, therefore, ever to be regretted that they allowed a British habit, that of dividing into