Our Changing Constitution

Few documents known to history have received as much praise as the United States Constitution. Gladstone called it "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." The casual reader of the Constitution will be at a loss to account for such adulation. It will seem to him a businesslike document, outlining a scheme of government in terse and well-chosen phrases, but he is apt to look in vain for any earmarks of special inspiration. To understand the true greatness of the instrument something more is required than a mere reading of its provisions.

The Constitution was the work of a convention of delegates from the states, who met in Philadelphia in May, 1787, and labored together for nearly four months. They included a large part of the best character and intellect of the country. George Washington presided over their deliberations. The delegates had not been called together for the purpose of organizing a new government. Their instructions were limited to revising and proposing improvements in the Articles of the existing Confederation, whose inefficiency and weakness, now that the cohesive power of common danger in the war of the Revolution was gone, had become a byword. This task, however, was decided to be hopeless, and with great boldness the convention proceeded to disregard instructions and prepare a wholly new Constitution constructed on a plan radically different from that of the Articles of Confederation. The contents of the Constitution, as finally drafted and submitted for ratification, may be described in few words. It created a legislative department consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives, an executive department headed by a President, and a judicial department headed by a Supreme Court, and prescribed in general terms the qualifications, powers, and functions of each. It provided for the admission of new states into the Union and that the United States should guarantee to every state a republican form of government. It declared that the Constitution and the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof, and treaties, should be the supreme law of the land. It provided a method for its own amendment. Save for a few other brief clauses, that was all. There was no proclamation of Democracy; no trumpet blast about the rights of man such as had sounded in the Declaration of Independence. On the contrary, the instrument expressly recognized human slavery, though in discreet and euphemistic phrases.

Wherein, then, did the novelty and greatness of the Constitution lie? Its novelty lay in the duality of the form of government which it created-a nation dealing directly with its citizens and yet composed of sovereign states-and in its system of checks and balances. The world had seen confederations of states. It was familiar with nations subdivided into provinces or other administrative units. It had known experiments in pure democracy. The constitutional scheme was none of these. It was something new, and its novel features were relied upon as a protection from the evils which had developed under the other plans. The greatness of the Constitution lay in its nice adjustment of the powers of government, notably the division of powers which it effected between the National Government and the states. The powers conferred on the National Government were clearly set forth. All were of a strictly national character. They covered the field of foreign relations, interstate and foreign commerce, fiscal and monetary system, post office and post roads, patents and copyrights, and jurisdiction over certain specified crimes. All other powers were reserved to the states or the people. In other words, the theory was (to quote Bryce's "The American Commonwealth") "local government for local affairs; general government for general affairs only."

The Constitution as it left the hands of its framers was not entirely satisfactory to anybody. Owing to the discordant interests and mutual jealousies of the states, it was of necessity an instrument of many compromises. One of the great compromises was that by which the small states were given as many senators as the large. Another is embalmed in the provisions recognizing slavery and permitting slaves to count in the apportionment of representatives. (The number of a state's representatives was to be determined "by adding to the whole number of free persons ... three-fifths of all other persons.") Another was the provision that direct taxes should be apportioned among the states according to population. With all its compromises, however, the Constitution embodied a great governmental principle, full of hope for the future of the country, and the state conventions to which it was submitted for ratification were wise enough to accept what was offered. Ratification by certain of the states was facilitated by the publication of that remarkable series of papers afterward known as the "Federalist." These were the work of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, and first appeared in New York newspapers.

One of the objections to the new Constitution in the minds of many people was the absence of a "bill of rights" containing those provisions for the protection of individual liberty and property (e.g., trial by jury, freedom of speech, protection from unreasonable searches and seizures) which had come down from the early charters of English liberties. In deference to this sentiment a series of ten brief amendments were proposed and speedily ratified. Another amendment (No. XI) was soon afterward adopted for the purpose of doing away with the effect of a Supreme Court decision. Thereafter, save for a change in the manner of electing the President and Vice-president, the Constitution was not again amended until after the close of the Civil War, when Amendments XIII, XIV, and XV, having for their primary object the protection of the newly enfranchised Negroes, were adopted. The Constitution was not again amended until the last decade, when the Income Tax Amendment, the amendment providing for the election of Senators by popular vote, the Prohibition Amendment, and the Woman Suffrage Amendment were adopted in rapid succession. Some of these will be discussed in later chapters.

It is interesting to note that two of the amendments (No. XI, designed to prevent suits against a state without its permission by citizens of another state, and No. XVI, paving the way for the Income Tax) were called forth by unpopular decisions of the Supreme Court, and virtually amounted to a recall of those decisions by the people. These instances demonstrate the possibility of a recall of judicial decisions by constitutional methods, and tend to refute impatient reformers who preach the necessity of a more summary procedure. Such questions, however, lie outside the scope of this book. We emphasize here the fact that the great achievement of the Constitution was the creation of a dual system of government and the apportionment of its powers. That was what made it "one of the longest reaches of constructive statesmanship ever known in the world."[1] It offered the most promising solution yet devised for the problem of building a nation without tearing down local self-government.

[Footnote 1: Fiske: "The Critical Period of American History," p. 301.]

John Fiske, the historian, writing of the importance of preserving the constitutional equilibrium between nation and states, said:[1]

If the day should ever arrive (which God forbid!) when the people of the different parts of our country shall allow their local affairs to be administered by prefects sent from Washington, and when the self-government of the states shall have been so far lost as that of the departments of France, or even so far as that of the counties of England-on that day the progressive political career of the American people will have come to an end, and the hopes that have been built upon it for the future happiness and prosperity of mankind will be wrecked forever.

[Footnote 1: Id., p. 238.]

If allowance be made for certain extravagances of statement, these words will serve as a fitting introduction to the discussions which follow.