History of the United States Constitution. George Ticknor Curtis

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СКАЧАТЬ Dear Sir,—

      "I will try to find for you my father's speech, as it was collected from tradition and published some years ago. If I live to see warm weather in Marshfield, I shall be glad to see you beneath its shades, and to talk of your book.

      "You are probably aware that I have meditated the writing of something upon the History of the Constitution and the Administration of Washington. I have the plan of such a work pretty definitely arranged, but whether I shall ever be able to execute it I cannot say:—'the wills above be done.'

      "Yours most truly,

      "Danl. Webster."

      Regarding this kind and gracious intimation as a wish not to be anticipated in any part of the field which he had marked out for himself, I replied, that if, when I should have the pleasure of seeing him, my work should seem to involve any material part of the subject which he had comprehended within his own plan, I should of course relinquish it at once. When, however, the period of that summer's leisure arrived, and brought with it, to his watchful observation, so many tokens that "the night cometh," he seemed anxious to impress upon me the importance of the task I had undertaken, and to remove any obstacle to its fulfilment that he might have suggested. Being with him alone, on an occasion when his physician, after a long consultation, had just left him, he said to me, with an earnestness and solemnity that can never be described or forgotten: "You have a future; I have none. You are writing a History of the Constitution. You will write that work; I shall not. Go on, by all means, and you shall have every aid that I can give you."

      The event of which these words were ominous was then only four weeks distant. Many times, during those short remaining weeks, I sought "the shades of Marshfield"; but now it was for the offices and duties, not for the advantages, of friendship;—and no part of my work was ever submitted to him to whose approbation, sympathy, and aid I had so long looked forward, as to its most important stimulus and its most appropriate reward.

      But the solemn injunction which I had received became to me an ever-present admonition, and gave me—if I may make such a profession—the needful fidelity to my great subject. Whatever may be thought of the manner in which it has been treated, a consciousness that the impartial spirit of History has guided me will remain, after every ordeal of criticism shall have been passed.

      And here, while memories of the earlier as well as of the later lost crowd upon me with my theme, I cannot but think of him, jurist and magistrate, friend of my younger as well as riper years, who was called from all human sympathies before I had conceived the undertaking which I have now completed. Fortunate shall I be, if to those in whom his blood flows united with mine I can transmit a work that may be permitted to stand near that noble Commentary, which is known and honored wherever the Constitution of the United States bears sway.

      The plan of this work is easily explained. The first volume embraces the Constitutional History of the United States from the commencement of the Revolution to the assembling of the Convention of 1787, together with some notices of the principal members of that body. The second volume is devoted to the description of the process of forming the Constitution, in which I have mainly followed, of course, the ample Record of the Debates preserved by Mr. Madison, and the official Journal of the proceedings.1

      The period of our history from the commencement of the Revolution to the beginning of Washington's administration is the period when our State and national institutions were formed. With the events of the Revolution, its causes, its progress, its military history, and its results, the people of this country have long been familiar. But the constitutional history of the United States has not been written, and few persons have made themselves accurately acquainted with its details. How the Constitution of the United States came to be formed; from what circumstances it arose; what its relations were to institutions previously existing in the country; what necessities it satisfied; and what was its adaptation to the situation of these States,—are all points of the gravest importance to the American people, and all of them require to be distinctly stated for their permanent welfare.

      For the history of this Constitution is not like the history of a monarchy, in which some things are obsolete, while some are of present importance. The Constitution of the United States is a living code, for the perpetuation of a system of free government, which the people of each succeeding generation must administer for themselves. Every line of it is as operative and as binding to-day as it was when the government was first set in motion by its provisions, and no part of it can fall into neglect or decay while that government continues to exist.

      The Constitution of the United States was the means by which republican liberty was saved from the consequences of impending anarchy; it secured that liberty to posterity, and it left it to depend on their fidelity to the Union. It is morally certain that the formation of some general government, stronger and more efficient than any which had existed since the independence of the States had been declared, had become necessary to the continued existence of the Confederacy. It is equally certain, that, without the preservation of the Union, a condition of things must at once have ensued, out of which wars between the various provinces of America must have grown. The alternatives, therefore, that presented themselves to the generation by whom the Constitution was established, were either to devise a system of republican government that would answer the great purposes of a lasting union, or to resort to something in the nature of monarchy. With the latter, the institutions of the States must have been sooner or later crushed;—for they must either have crumbled away in the new combinations and fearful convulsions that would have preceded the establishment of such a power, or else they must have fallen speedily after its triumph had been settled. With the former alternative, the preservation of the States, and of all the needful institutions which marked their separate existence, though a difficult, was yet a possible result.

      To this preservation of the separate States we owe that power of minute local administration, which is so prominent and important a feature of our American liberty. To this we are indebted for those principles of self-government which place their own interests in the hands of the people of every distinct community, and which enable them, by means of their own laws, to defend their own particular institutions against encroachments from without.

      Finally, the Constitution of the United States made the people of these several provinces one nation, and gave them a standing among the nations of the world. Let any man compare the condition of this country at the peace of 1783, and during the four years which followed that event, with its present position, and he will see that he must look to some other cause than its merely natural and material resources to account for the proud elevation which it has now reached.

      He will see a people ascending, in the comparatively short period of seventy years, from an attitude in which scarcely any nation thought it worth while to treat with them, to a place among the four principal powers of the globe. He will see a nation, once of so little account and so little strength that the corsairs of the Mediterranean could prey unchecked upon its defenceless merchantmen, now opening to their commerce, by its overawing diplomacy and influence, an ancient empire, on the opposite side of the earth we inhabit, which has for countless ages been firmly closed against the whole world. He will first see a collection of thirteen feeble republics on the eastern coast of North America, inflicting upon each other the manifold injuries of rival and hostile legislation; and then again he will behold them grown to be a powerful confederacy of more than thirty States, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with all their commercial interests blended and harmonized by one superintending legislature, and protected by one central and preponderating power. He will see a people who had at first achieved nothing but independence, and had contributed nothing to the cause of free government but the example of their determination to enjoy it, founding institutions to which mankind may look for hope, for encouragement and light. He will see the arts of peace—commerce, agriculture, manufactures, jurisprudence, letters—now СКАЧАТЬ