of which the Supreme Court has recently made such an extraordinary application.[1]
On every page contradictory clauses show traces of a constant struggle, and of victory alternating between the Northern and Southern States, the industrial and agricultural States, between the populous States and the small States, between the free and the slave States, and lastly, between all the States, and the yet unborn national authority. Logical sequence and systematic order break down and constantly perish amid these struggles for power.
A treaty further aims at settling only the points already in dispute, or likely to become so. All other points are either not settled or settled by protocols and complementary documents. In this also Anglo-Saxon constitutional law resembles a treaty. Both in England and in the United States, side by side with special and definite constitutional documents, a large field is occupied by custom, by supplementary legislation, and by local law; thus changes and adaptations which the course of time renders necessary, are prudently and, so to speak, noiselessly provided for. Hence on each occasion for change, naturally much less is at stake than if it were necessary solemnly to modify the fundamental provisions of the Constitution. Such a Constitution as that of England or of the United States is therefore freer, more supple, and yet at the same time more stable,
- ↑ It is well known that when certain States repudiated their debt, or reduced the interest assured to their creditors by law, the Supreme Court declared itself incompetent and refused to entertain the claims of the plaintiffs.
