Page:Back to the Republic.djvu/67

 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