immediately after the original instrument had come into force, by the method it prescribes, viz. a two-thirds majority in Congress and a majority in three-fourths of the States. They are the amendments of 1791, ten in number, and they constitute what the Americans, following a venerable English precedent, call a Bill or Declaration of Eights.
The Constitution of 1789[1] deserves the veneration with which the Americans have been accustomed to regard it. It is true that many criticisms have been passed upon its arrangement, upon its omissions, upon the artificial character of some of the institutions it creates. Recognizing slavery as an institution existing in some States, and not expressly negativing the right of a State to withdraw from the Union, it has been charged with having contained the germ of civil war, though that germ took seventy years to come to maturity. And whatever success it has attained must be in large measure ascribed to the political genius, ripened by long experience, of the Anglo-American race, by whom it has been worked, and who might have managed to work even a worse drawn instrument. Yet, after all deductions, it ranks above every other written constitution for the intrinsic excellence of its scheme, its adaptation to the circumstances of the people, the simplicity, brevity, and precision of its language, its judicious mixture of definiteness in principle with elasticity in details.[2] One is therefore induced to ask, before proceeding to examine it, to what causes, over and above the capacity of its authors, and the patient toil they bestowed upon it, these merits are due, or in other words, what were the materials at the command of the Philadelphia Convention for the achievement of so great an enterprise as the
- ↑ One may call the Constitution after either the year 1787, when it was drafted, or the year 1789, when it took full effect, the Congress of the Confederation having fixed the first Wednesday in March in that year as the day when it should come into force. The year 1789 has the advantage of being easily remembered, because it coincides with the beginning of the great revolutionary movements of modern Europe. The Confederation may be taken to have expired with the expiry of its Congress, and its Congress died for want of a quorum.
- ↑ The literary Bostonians laid hold at once of its style as proper for admiration. Mr. Ames said in the Massachusetts Convention of 1788, "Considered merely as a literary performance, the Constitution is an honour to our country. Legislators have at length condescended to speak the language of philosophy." -- Elliot's Debates, ii. 55.
