PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL ADDRESS away any authority now enjoyed by the states in order to confer it upon the national government. And yet many honest, pa triotic men who think otherwise, men who believe that it were better that the states were shorn of much of their power, seeing the neglect of officials or citizens, or both, in the state or states to which they owe allegiance, would abandon all attempts to right the wrongs, surrender jurisdiction, and pass the responsibility on to the federal government. |M There was ardent support for a strong centralized government prior to the adop tion of our present system. In the begin ning, the advocates of this idea could see only failure in the plan adopted. Almost a century and a quarter of actual experience has shown that they were mistaken — so mistaken that nearly a century later, after studying the federal constitution in the light not only of the circumstances sur rounding its drafting, but also of its prac tical working, Gladstone characterized it as "The most wonderful work struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." When these words were written probably few of our people would have disagreed with him. But finding now many abuses under the present distribution of powers, some turn to their redistribution as furnishing what seems to them the only hope of relief. They urge that the powers conferred may have been judiciously distributed when the federal Constitution was created, but that the country has so expanded and condi tions have become so changed as to present a situation so widely different as to require changed treatment. So far as this argument implies that the Constitution should be so amended as to confer further powers upon the national government, it is not my purpose to con sider it. The Constitution has proved the wisdom of the men who perfected it. No one provision better demonstrates this fact than that providing for the method of
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amendment, under which fifteen articles have to this time been added. In the course of time there will no doubt be others. Perhaps one outcome from the present situation and the resulting discussion, will be a proposed amendment to the Constitu tion of the United States. Until its appear ance, the discussion of the merit of such a measure can be postponed. We have now to deal with a very different question. Indeed, it is claimed that, from the adoption of the Federal Constitution down to the present time, we have proceeded upon the mistaken assumption that certain powers supposed to belong to the states, did in fact reside in the national govern ment — an assumption which has been shared by representatives of the various powers of the federal government, as well as by the like representatives of the state governments. While no one, to my knowl edge, has stated the question in terms so broad as that just used, nevertheless, in the end, it amounts to this, if the present claim is allowed, that powers hitherto exercised by the states with the knowledge and consent of the federal government, may now be exercised by the federal government. The only foundation for this doctrine would be the assertion that the powers were wrongly exercised in the first instance and that ever since the states have usurped the functions of the national government. This must be so, since the enumerated powers vested in the federal government and the powers reserved to the states and to the people by the Constitution and in the First Amendment, comprising ten articles, have not been changed. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments in no wise relate to the powers now being considered. The Constitution as to them stands as it did in the beginning. It seems rather late to argue after a century of judicial and political interpretation, with the acquiescence of every department of both state and federal governments, that
