Back to the Republic/Chapter5
Chapter V
THE CONSTITUTION
MANY books have been written upon the Constitution and many eloquent and deserved tributes have been paid to it; but there have been comparatively few brief, clear, accurate statements telling just what the Constitution is and what it contains.
Many have come to regard the wording, the style and the tradition of the Constitution as almost sacred, but to my mind the most sacred thing about the Constitution is that it embraces just four elements: (1) An executive and (2) a legislative body, who, working together in a representative capacity, have all power of appointment, all power of legislation, all power to raise and expend money, and who are required to do just two things: (3) to create a judiciary to pass upon the justice and legality of their governmental acts and (4) to recognize certain inherent individual rights.
It has been the general custom of writers to divide our government into three departments, but the element of inherent individual rights is as essential to the other three departments as the fourth wheel of a standard vehicle is to the other three wheels in the domain of transportation. The more additional wheels you add to the standard four-wheel vehicle, the more useless and confusing the vehicle would become; likewise, the more additional elements you add to the four elements provided for by the Constitution, the more useless and confusing the government becomes. The executive, legislative and judicial branches should be guided, controlled and protected by individual rights. All the people are entitled to the enjoyment and protection of individual rights guaranteed by the Constitution. No one of the four elements is more important than the element of individual rights, but there is evidence that we are in danger of forgetting and violating this all-absorbing, gravely important fundamental fact.
The Constitution provides a system of checks and balances. The executive can veto an action of the majority of the legislative body, but the legislative body can override the veto of the executive by a two-thirds vote; so they have a check and balance upon each other.
The judiciary is required to recognize individual rights, and individual rights are dependent upon the judiciary for their interpretation; so they have a check and balance upon each other.
The judiciary passes upon the justice and legality of the acts of the executive and the legislative body, and the executive and the legislative body have the appointive power and have the power to remove for lack of good behavior; so they have checks and balances upon each other.
Individual rights must be recognized by the executive and the legislative body and are dependent upon the executive and the legislative body for enforcement; so there are checks and balances between the individual rights and the executive and legislative branches.
Let me illustrate it in the diagram on the following page. Assume that the executive and the legislative body are the front wheels of a governmental vehicle, and the check and balance between them the axle that connects them; that the judiciary and individual rights are the hind wheels, and the check and balance is represented by the axle between them; and that the reach connecting the two axles represents the checks and balances between the four elements.
The diagram indicates clearly just what the Constitution is and all that it contains. That is the four-wheeled vehicle provided for by the Constitution. It was the first and only governmental 
Diagram of the Constitution
The organic law on which was founded the first sound government in history: the republic—the golden mean—the standard form.
vehicle ever conceived by the mind of man that was able to bear safely the burdens of human liberty and human rights. That is the standard form, the golden mean, the republic, in the science of government, just as four wheels constitute the standard, the golden mean, in the domain of transportation. It is comparatively simple to figure out what would happen in the domain of transportation if we should try to work out the problem of transportation on three wheels or less, or five wheels or more. It would merely result in confusion and failure to work out the problem.
That identical thing happens in government. When you take away one or more of the four elements you have autocracy. When you add one or more to the four elements you have democracy. This accounts for the comparatively slight progress which was made toward the solution of the problems of government during all the thousands of years prior to 1788 A.D. The pendulum was swinging back and forth from the extreme of autocracy, with its attendant evils, to the extreme of democracy with its attendant evils. The reason we made great progress for a century and a quarter following the adoption of the Constitution and founding of the republic is that we followed quite closely the plan of creating and utilizing those four elements in the nation and to some degree in the various States; and foreign countries were partially utilizing the lessons taught through the Constitution and the founding of the republic. Departures from the republic account for the complications and retrogressive tendencies of recent years.
The next most sacred thing about the Constitution is that it provided that the people could do two things only: first, vote for President once in four years; second, vote for a member of Congress from their district once in two years. You may read and reread the Constitution, and you cannot find another thing that the people are permitted to do. The Constitution provides for absolutely strict representative government and gives the people no voice in the solution of governmental problems save that of electing representatives to work out the problems. In other words, the Constitution applies the same common sense and judgment to working out the problems of government that is applied in other fields of activity in working out other problems.
This is wise, because the human race is so endowed by Providence that a small percentage of the people have more natural artistic ability than the remaining larger percentage; a small percentage of the people have more natural musical ability than the remaining larger percentage; a small percentage of the people have more natural inventive ability than the remaining larger percentage; a small percentage have more natural medical ability than the remaining larger percentage; a small percentage of the people have more natural educational ability than the remaining larger percentage; a small percentage of the people have more natural theological ability than the remaining larger percentage; a small percentage of the people have more natural mechanical ability than the remaining larger percentage; a small percentage of the people have more natural agricultural ability than the remaining larger percentage, and a comparatively small percentage have greater governmental ability than the remaining larger percentage.
Under the Constitution it was assumed that just as we select people with musical talent to give concerts, people with artistic talent to paint pictures, people of inventive ability to provide inventions, people of educational ability as teachers, people of theological ability as preachers, an architect to plan and supervise the construction of a building, a surgeon to perform an operation, an engineer for engineering work, just so the people would elect men of governmental ability to executive and legislative positions and permit them, in a representative capacity, to work out the varied and oftentimes perplexing problems of government.
It is not a popular statement, but it is a fundamental fact, that the people generally know comparatively little about governmental problems. While this statement is widely at variance with the vociferous contentions of the demagogue, it is a truth that the founders of the republic thoroughly recognized, and they acted in accordance therewith.
To summarize, the Constitution provides for (1) an executive and (2) a legislative body and defines their qualifications and powers. It requires them to appoint (3) a judiciary and to recognize (4) certain inherent individual rights, and it defines the powers of the judiciary and enumerates the individual rights. It also provides that the people may vote once in four years for the executive and once in two years for members of the legislative body.
The Constitution was far from perfect. The Electoral College as a method of electing the President is an awkward creation that could be much improved. The enumeration of inherent individual rights was incomplete, and the classification and arrangement of them could be improved. There were other imperfections that detracted, but it did provide for just the four elements that are necessary to make a republic, and that is its mighty virtue.
Of the men who framed the Constitution Mr. Thorpe, in his great work on the Constitutional History of the United States, says:
"Profound knowledge of all early plans of government of which history has record prepared them to take up the arduous civil problem before them."
After reading the Constitution the great Gladstone said:
"It is the greatest piece of work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man."
Gladstone must have been convinced that it provided for the best form of government ever conceived by the mind of man.
The world-famed William Pitt, when he read it, exclaimed:
"It will be the wonder and admiration of all future generations and the model of all future constitutions."
Dictionaries use the words "model" and "standard" synonymously. It would seem that Pitt must have foreseen what this book is trying to make clear. His was an exclamation of joy because of the mighty achievement of the founders of this republic, but if Pitt could return to earth and read the constitutions of Ohio, Oklahoma and other States and note our numerous departures from the Constitution, he would recognize his prophecy as false and breathe a sigh of regret.
In his remarkable book, "Why Should We Change Our Form of Government?" which, in my opinion, is the most masterly treatise on government that has been published during the twentieth century, Nicholas Murray Butler declares:
"The making of the American Constitution was a stupendous achievement of men who through reading, through reflection, through insight, and through practical experience, had fully grasped the significance of the huge task to which they devoted themselves, and who accomplished that task in a way that has excited the admiration of the civilized world. Those men built a representative republic; they knew the history of other forms of government; they knew what had happened in Greece, in Rome, in Venice and in Florence; they knew what had happened in the making of the modern nations that occupied the continent of Europe. Knowing all this, they deliberately, after the most elaborate debate and discussion both of principles and details produced the result with which we are so familiar. . . . This government was founded by men whose minds were fixed upon the problems involved in the creation of political institutions. They were thinking of liberty, of representative government, of protection against tyranny and spoliation, and of ways and means by which public opinion might, in orderly fashion, express itself in statute laws, in judicial judgments and in executive acts. The task of the founders was a political task, and with what almost superhuman wisdom, foresight and skill they accomplished it, is recorded history. . . . It is a noteworthy and singular characteristic of our American government that the Constitution provides a means for protecting individual liberty from invasion by the powers of government itself, as well as from invasion by others more powerful and less scrupulous than ourselves. The principles underlying our civil and political liberty are indelibly written into the Constitution of the United States, and the nation's courts are instituted for their protection. . . .
"The representative republic erected on the American continent under the Constitution of the United States is a more advanced, a more just and a wiser form of government than the socialistic and direct democracy which it is now proposed to substitute for it. . . . To put the matter bluntly, there is under way in the United States at the present time a definite and determined movement to change our representative republic into a socialistic democracy. That attempt, carried on by men of conviction, men of sincerity, men of honest purpose, men of patriotism, as they conceive patriotism, is the most impressive political factor in our public life of to-day. . . . This attempt is making while we are speaking about it. It presents itself in many persuasive and seductive forms. It uses attractive formulas to which men like to give adhesion; but if it is successful, it will bring to an end the form of government that was founded when our Constitution was made and that we and our fathers and our grandfathers have known and gloried in.
"We began the destruction of the fundamental principles of representative government in this country when we reduced the representative to the position of a mere delegate; when we began, as is now quite commonly the case, to instruct a representative as to what he is to do when elected; when we began to pledge him, in advance of his election, that if chosen he will do certain things and oppose others—in other words, when we reduced the representative from the high, splendid and dignified status of a real representative chosen by his constituency to give it his experience, his brains, his conscience and his best service, and made him a mere registering machine for the opinion of the moment, whatever it might happen to be."
That is a remarkably strong statement of what our heritage was and a solemn warning against the dangers toward which we have been drifting.
During an address on "The Constitution between Friends" delivered before the Missouri Bar Association at Kansas City, Missouri, September 26th, 1913, Henry D. Estabrook paid a magnificent tribute to the Constitution as follows:
"And so, on this great continent, which God had kept hidden in a little world—here, with a new heaven and a new earth, where former things had passed away, the people of many nations, of various needs and creeds, but united in heart and soul and mind for the single purpose, builded an altar to Liberty, the first ever built, or that ever could be built, and called it the Constitution of the United States. . . .
"O marvelous Constitution! Magic parchment, transforming word, maker, monitor, guardian of mankind! Thou hast gathered to thy impartial bosom the peoples of the earth, Columbia, and called them equal. Thou hast conferred upon them imperial sovereignty, revoking all titles but that of man. Native and exotic, rich and poor, good and bad, old and young, the lazy and the industrious, those who love and those who hate, the mean and lowly, the high and mighty, the wise and the foolish, the prudent and the imprudent, the cautious and the hasty, the honest and the dishonest, those who pray and those who curse—these are 'We, the people of the United States'—these are God's children—these are thy rulers, O Columbia. Into our hands thou hast committed the destinies of the human race, even to the omega of thine own destruction. And all thou requirest of us before we o'erstep boundaries blazed for guidance is what is required of us at every railroad crossing in the country: 'Stop. Look. Listen.' Stop and think. Look before and after and to the right and left. Listen to the voice of reason and to the small, still voice of conscience. . . .
"If the zealot, impatient of the wise caution and delay enjoined by the Constitution, would break down its barriers to hasty action, he should be compelled, if only as a penance, to study the Constitution and to know all the circumstances out of which it grew, the quality of the men who fashioned it, as well as the quality of the work accomplished by them. He should be taught these things in school. We have deposed the Bible in our public schools; would any American object if we substituted the Constitution? Why should our schools have a 'Flag Day'? Why should a teacher point her pupil to the flag and the stars enskied in it, as the symbol of human liberty, without telling him of the tremendous Law that put each star in its place and keeps it there? I would fight for every line in the Constitution as I would for every star in the flag, for flag and Constitution will live or die together. . . .
"I know not if the times are ripe, or if events are merely gathering to a head; but soon there must come someone—some Washington in the field or some Marshall in the forum—who will sound a trumpet that will once more rally us to the defense of the Law."
Events have gathered to a head in this the greatest of all war crises. The time is ripe for the people of the world to understand that the Constitution provided for the four elements that constitute a republic and for nothing more. In this book I am trying "to sound a trumpet" that will rally us to a clearer understanding and a more accurate use of governmental terms, which is the all-important first step toward the "defense of the Law," getting back to the republic and grappling wisely and successfully with this grave national and international situation.