596
THE GREEN BAG
was for many years a check, but its con servative force has been greatly weakened through the primary election in which the people by direct action nominate as well as elect their officers. When the govern ment was established, the means for organ izing and expressing public opinion were comparatively feeble. To-day the mail, the telegraph, the telephone, the press, gather and proclaim that opinion so fully and swiftly that all may speak and all may hear, and the condition is much as if the nation was daily assembled in a great Athenian council. Public opinion has also been organized in a thousand forms of unions, parties, and business, and in that way given a manifold intensity. As a consequence the officers of government are becoming less and less representatives clothed with an independent judgment, and are becoming more and more delegates to execute the popular will with which they are in constant communication. The practical significance of these changes is manifest. The force of passion and preju dice has been immensely increased, and at the same time the checks upon it have been greatly diminished. The Constitution, and that alone, remains between the people on one side, and personal liberty and private property on the other. Triumphant democ racy, having swept away all other bounds, now stands face to face with the instrument itself. For the first century the Constitution was worshiped by all classes, no less by those who demanded its strict, than by those who demanded its liberal construc tion; but within the last twenty years there has arisen a cult who regard its limitations as productive of more harm than good. Mr. Bryce notices this new doctrine in his essays published in 1901, and since that date it has experienced rapid growth. One hears it frequently among the advo cates of social reform. It is a distinct feature of the journalism of trade unions. At nearly all academic centers will be
found one or more members who are giving to it a body of philosophy. They believe that the Constitution serves its only bene ficent purpose when it is used as a standard to which public opinion may appeal in judging of the acts of government; that the legislature and not the courts, should be, the arbiter of constitutional law. This view, of course, overlooks our democratic society, and our lack of historic moorings, and by a superficial generalization applies to our Constitution the same principle as obtains among those nations of Europe which have similar instruments. This doc trine goes to the very foundation of our system of government. A more baneful heresy could not find lodgment among our people; and yet I know of no method by which it could be given more substantial help than by the vigorous teaching and rigorous enforcement of the rule that the Constitution speaks the same meaning yes terday, to-day and forever, and that those who are charged with its interpretation will be guided by this purely scholastic spirit. Of late we have heard quoted again and again, from the bench and from the plat form, the language of Chief Justice Taney in the Dred Scott case, that the Constitution "Speaks not only in the same words, but with the same meaning and intent with which it spoke when it came from the hands of its framers. " The only objection to that fine phrase is that it is not true. The exact contrary would be nearer the truth, viz: That not a single distinctive word or phrase in the Constitution has the same meaning to-day which it had when that instrument came from the hands of its framers. Such language is as reprehensible from that side of the controversy as on the other side are the words of the impassioned phrasemaker referred to by Senator Knox in his very able address at Yale. With a practical and rapidly progressive people like ours, the pharisaical doctrine that the nation exists for the Constitution instead of the Constitution for the nation, can
