Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 2.djvu/360

342 growth, and to the general prosperity and order which have accompanied it; but chief among them has been the establishment, through the patriotic statesmanship of those who achieved independence, of efficient and stable representative institutions, through the adoption of the constitution of the United States.

The federal constitution was not a perfect instrument; no instrument of government ever was. If anything can be safely predicated of the divine purpose, it is that mankind shall not remain in a stationary condition, but shall advance from age to age, from a lower to a higher state of being, and this not less in what pertains to government than in other respects. The nineteenth century has been one of marvellous progress, which has nowhere been more marked than in the political institutions of European nations. With the exception of Russia and Turkey, there is, perhaps, not to-day a nation in Europe whose government is not greatly in advance of what would have been possible to establish for it a century ago. England is a monarchy in little more than name, and France, whose people were then under a despotism of almost incredible rigor, is now a republic; but the wisest and best statesmen of neither of these countries a century ago would have advocated a government on a representative basis such as is now established. The reason that would have been perfectly conclusive against it is that the time had not come when such institutions would be accepted and supported by the people. The wise statesman will not outrun the people in governmental changes; he must keep them abreast with him if apparent reforms are to be reforms in reality. Like things may be said of Italy and other European countries to those said of England and France; they have gradually come up to what was impossible when the federal constitution was under discussion. But even the federal constitution, as we now admit, was far from being perfect. Nothing, but the paramount necessity of a more efficient Union, and the impossibility of establishing it otherwise than upon a compromise of views, justified the toleration of the great evil of human slavery, in this charter of free government. It was a blot upon an instrument that could not possibly, at the time, have been made immaculate. The fact is now sometimes very thoughtlessly made a ground of accusation against those who framed it; but, when it is considered that it was the best that at the time was possible, the injustice of such an accusation becomes