Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 4.djvu/382

366 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. 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