Page:Back to the Republic.djvu/70

 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,