Page:James Bryce American Commonwealth vol 1.djvu/391

Rh has been made of the provisions for amendment, this has been due, not solely to the excellence of the original instrument, but also to the difficulties which surround the process of change. Alterations, though perhaps not large alterations, have been needed, to cure admitted faults or to supply dangerous omissions, but the process has been so difficult that it has never been successfully applied, except either to matters of minor consequence involving no party interests (Amendments xi. and xii.), or in the course of a revolutionary movement which had dislocated the Union itself (Amendments xiii. xiv. xv.).

Why then has the regular procedure for amendment proved in practice so hard to apply?

Partly, of course, owing to the inherent disputatiousness and perversity (what the Americans call "cussedness") of bodies of men. It is difficult to get two-thirds of two assemblies (the Houses of Congress) and three-fourths of forty-four commonwealths, each of which acts by two assemblies, for the State legislatures are all double-chambered, to agree to the same practical proposition. Except under the pressure of urgent troubles, such as were those which procured the acceptance of the Constitution itself in 1788, few persons or bodies will consent to forego objections of detail, perhaps in themselves reasonable, for the mere sake of agreeing to what others have accepted. They want to have what seems to themselves the very best, instead of a second best suggested by some one else. Now, bodies enjoying so much legal independence as do the legislatures of the States, far from being disposed to defer to Congress or to one another, are more jealous, more suspicious, more vain and opinionated, than so many individuals. Nothing but a violent party spirit, seeking either a common party object or individual gain to flow from party success, makes them work together.

If an amendment comes to the legislatures recommended by the general voice of their party, they will be quick to adopt it. But in that case it will encounter the hostility of the opposite party, and parties are in most of the Northern States pretty evenly balanced. It is seldom that a two-thirds

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