Eighteen Or Twenty
Millions Of People Who Have Lived Under It, - In What Way Do They
Regard It?
Is not that the best evidence that can be had respecting
it?
Is it to them an old woman's story, a useless parchment, a
thing of old words at which all must now smile? Heaven mend them,
if they reverence it more, as I fear they do, than they reverence
their Bible. For them, after seventy-five years of trial, it has
almost the weight of inspiration. In this respect, with reference
to this worship of the work of their forefathers, they may be in
error. But that very error goes far to prove the excellence of the
code. When a man has walked for six months over stony ways in the
same boots, he will be believed when he says that his boots are good
boots. No assertion to the contrary from any by-stander will
receive credence, even though it be shown that a stitch or two has
come undone, and that some required purpose has not effectually been
carried out. The boots have carried the man over his stony roads
for six months, and they must be good boots. And so I say that the
Constitution must be a good constitution.
As to that positive breach of the Constitution which has, as I
maintain, been committed by the present government, although I have
been at some trouble to prove it, I must own that I do not think
very much of it. It is to be lamented; but the evil admits, I
think, of easy repair. It has happened at a period of unwonted
difficulty, when the minds of men were intent rather on the support
of that nationality which guarantees their liberties, than on the
enjoyment of those liberties themselves, and the fault may be
pardoned if it be acknowledged. But it is essential that it should
be acknowledged. In such a matter as that there should at any rate
be no doubt. Now, in this very year of the rebellion, it may be
well that no clamor against government should arise from the people,
and thus add to the difficulties of the nation. But it will be bad,
indeed, for the nation if such a fault shall have been committed by
this government and shall be allowed to pass unacknowledged,
unrebuked - as though it were a virtue and no fault. I cannot but
think that the time will soon come in which Mr. Seward's reading of
the Constitution and Mr. Lincoln's assumption of illegal power under
that reading will receive a different construction in the States
than that put upon it by Mr. Binney.
But I have admitted that the Constitution itself is not perfect. It
seems to me that it requires to be amended on two separate points -
especially on two; and I cannot but acknowledge that there would be
great difficulty in making such amendments. That matter of direct
taxation is the first. As to that I shall speak again in referring
to the financial position of the country.
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