affect the fundamental principles on which the Government rests.

By making these omissions we come now to the vital point, which is, What kind of a government did the makers of the Constitution intend to establish and how did they mean to have it work? They were, it must be remembered, preparing a scheme of government for a people peculiarly fitted to make any system of free institutions work well. The people of the United Colonies were homogeneous. They came in the main from Great Britain and Ireland, with the addition of the Dutch in New York, of some Germans from the Palatinate, and of a few French Huguenots, whose ability and character were as high as their numbers were relatively small. But an overwhelming majority of the American people in 1787 were of English and Scotch descent, and they, as well as the others from other lands, were deeply imbued with all those principles of law which were the bulwarks of English liberty. In this new land men had governed themselves and there was at that moment no people on earth so fit or so experienced in self-government as the people of the thirteen colonies. Their colonial governments were representative and in essence democratic. They became entirely so when the Revolution ended and the last English governor was withdrawn. In the four New England colonies local government was in the hands of the town meetings, the purest democracies then or now extant, but it is best to remember, what the men of 1787 well knew, that these little democracies moved within fixed bounds determined by the laws of the States under which they had their being.

For such a people, of such a character, with such a past and such habits and traditions, only one kind of government was possible, and that was a democracy. The makers of the Constitution called their new Government a republic, and they were quite correct in doing so, for it was of necessity republican in form. But they knew that what they were establishing was a democracy. One has but to read the debates to see how constantly present that fact was to their minds. Democracy was

then a very new thing in the modern world. As a system it had not been heard of, except in the fevered struggles of the Italian city republics, since the days of Rome and Greece, and although the convention knew perfectly well that they were establishing a democracy and that it was inevitable that they should do so, some of them regarded it with fear and all with a deep sense of responsibility and caution. The logical sequence as exhibited in history and as accepted by the best minds of the eighteenth century, struggling to give men a larger freedom, was democracy-anarchy-despotism. The makers of the Constitution were determined that so far as in them lay the American Republic should never take the second step, never revolve through the vicious circles which had culminated in empire in Rome, in the tyrants of the Grecian and the despots of the Italian cities, which is their turn had succumbed to the absolutism of foreign rulers.

The vital question was how should this be done; how should they establish a democracy with a strong government-for after their experience of the Confederation they regarded a weak government with horror-and at the same time so arranged the Government that it should be safe as well as strong and free from the peril of lapsing into an autocracy on the one hand, or into disorder and anarchy on the other? They did not try to set any barrier in the way of the popular will, but they sought to put effective obstacles in the path to sudden action which was impelled by popular passion, or popular whim, or by the excitement of the moment. They were the children of the "Great Rebellion" and the "Blessed Revolution" in the England of the seventeenth century, and they were steeped in the doctrine of limiting the power of the King. But here they were dealing with a sovereign who could not be limited, for, while a king can be limited by transferring his power to the people, when the people are sovereign their powers cannot be transferred to anybody. There is no one to transfer them to, and if they are taken away the democracy ceases to exist and another government, fundamentally different, takes its place.

The makers of the Constitution not only knew that the will of the people must be supreme, but they meant to make it so. That which they also aimed to do was to make sure that it was the real will of the people which ruled and not their momentary impulse, their well-considered desire and determination and not the passion of the hour, the child, perhaps, of excitement and mistake inflamed by selfish appeals and terrorized by false alarms. The main object, therefore, was to make it certain that there should be abundant time for discussion and consideration, that the public mind should be thoroughly and well informed, and that the movements of the machinery of government should not be so rapid as to cut off due deliberation. With this end in view they established with the utmost care a representative system with two chambers and an executive of large powers, including the right to veto bills. They also made the amendment of the Constitution a process at once slow and difficult, for they intended that it should be both, and indeed that it should be impracticable without a strong, determined, and lasting public sentiment in favor of change.

Finally they established the Federal judiciary, and in the Supreme Court of the United States they made an addition to the science of government second only in importance to their unequaled work in the development of the principle of federation. That great tribunal has become in the eyes of the world the most remarkable among the many remarkable solutions devised by the convention of 1787 for the settlement of the gravest governmental problems. John Marshall, with the intellect of the jurist and the genius of the statesman, saw the possibilities contained in the words which called the court into being. By his interpretation and that of his associates and their successors the Constitution attained to flexibility and escaped the rigidity which then and now is held up as the danger and the defect of a written instrument. In their hands the Constitution has been expanded to meet new conditions and new problems as they have arisen. In their hands also the Constitution has been the protection of the rights of States and the

rights of men, and laws which violated its principles and its provisions have been set aside.

By making the three branches of the Government, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial, entirely separate and yet coördinate, and by establishing a representative system and creating a Supreme Court of extraordinary powers, the framers of the Constitution believed that they had made democracy not only all powerful but at the same time safe and that they had secured it from gradual conversion into autocracy on the one hand and from destruction by too rapid motion and too quick response to the passions of the moment on the other. If ever men were justified by results they have been. The Constitution in its development and throughout our history has surpassed the hopes of its friends and utterly disappointed the predictions and the criticisms of its foes. Under it the United States has grown into the mighty republic we see to-day. New States have come into the Union, vast territories have been acquired, population and wealth have increased to a degree which has amazed the world, and life, liberty, and property have been guarded beneath the flag which is at once the symbol of the country and of the Constitution under which the nation has risen to its high success.

جلال

CHAPTER. I

THE STAMP ACT

Proposal in the British Parliament of a Colonial Stamp Act-Colonial Opposition-Passage of the Act: in favor, Sir George Grenville and Sir Charles Townshend; opposed, Gen. Henry Seymour Conway, Alderman Beckford, Mr. Jackson, Sir William Meredith, and Col. Isaac Barré-Tilt between Townshend and Barré-Debate on the Resolutions of Patrick Henry against the Act in the Virginia Assembly: in favor, Mr. Henry, George Johnson and Richard Henry Lee; opposed, Peyton RandolphStamp Act Congress-Boycott of Stamps-Sons of Liberty-Speech of John Adams [Mass.]: "Our Blood-bought Liberty"-Daniel Dulany [Md.] on the Stamp Act Riots.

T

HE acts of Parliament restraining the trade and manufacture of the colonies were deemed by the colonists, in some instances, a violation of their rights, and in others an unnecessary and improper sacrifice of their interest to the supposed interest of the parent country, or some other more favored part of the British empire; and they had, accordingly, been very little regarded.

A distinction had been made by the colonists between what were called external and internal taxes, the former being considered as imposed for the regulation of the trade of the empire, and not for the purpose of revenue. Plans of laying internal taxes and of drawing a revenue from the colonies had been at times suggested to the ministry, and particularly to Sir Robert Walpole and Mr. William Pitt during their respective administrations, but these statesmen were too wise and sagacious to adopt them.

The first attempt to draw a revenue directly from the colonies was made after the power of the French in America had been reduced. This was deemed a favorable moment to call upon the Americans for taxes to