rights had been independently secured, the English Constitution could never have existed. In other words, it is part and parcel of the law of the land, a generalization of common-law rights, the natural outgrowth of the customs of the people. And so is it also with our American constitutions. They are historical instruments, the possessions of a people with a legal history beginning, not with the Declaration of Independence, but with that of their English brethren. They are not the beginning, but the end; for they represent the last stage in a series of changes, the great landmarks of which are the Magna Charta, the Petition of Right the Habeas Corpus Act, and the Bill of Rights.
It is obvious, therefore, that one who seeks to put a true construction on any part of our constitutions must have a constant eye to its history, and this is particularly the case when one is dealing with a clause in a bill of rights, because an American bill- of rights is a collection of words and clauses, many of which have had a definite meaning for centuries. It may be true that if our constitutions are to meet all the requirements of a constantly advancing civilization, they must receive a broad and progressive interpretation. It is also true that upon no legal principle can an interpretation be supported, which ignores the meaning universally accorded to a word or clause for centuries, and the meaning which must, therefore, have been intended by those who inserted it in the constitution.[1] It is perhaps well to bear this in mind at a time when there is a manifest tendency to regard constitutional prohibitions as a panacea for moral and political evils, to look upon courts of law, as distinguished from legislatures, as the only real protectors of individual rights, and to trust to the courts for remedies for evils resulting entirely from a failure to attend to political duties, —at a time, that is to say, when there is danger of loose and unhistorical constitutional interpretation.
It is not within the scope of this essay to discuss at any length
- ↑ "The members of the convention unquestionably used the words they inserted in the constitution in the same sense in which they used them in their debates. It is their object to be understood, and not to mislead, and they ought not to be supposed to have used familiar words in a new or unusual sense. And there is no reason to suppose that they did not use the word 'imports,' when they inserted it in the constitution, in the sense in which it had been familiarly used for ages, and in which it was daily used by them- selves. If in this Court, we are at liberty to give old words new meanings when we find them in the constitution, there is no power which may not, by this mode of construction, be conferred on the general government, and denied to the state." - Chief Justice Taney in the Passenger Cases, 7 How. 478.
