Page:James Bryce American Commonwealth vol 1.djvu/392

370 majority in either House of Congress can be secured on a party issue; and of course such majorities in both Houses, and a three-fourths majority of State legislatures on a party issue, are still less probable. Now, in a country pervaded by the spirit of party, most questions either are at starting, or soon become, controversial. A change in the Constitution, however useful its ultimate consequences, is likely to be for the moment deemed more advantageous to one party than to the other, and this is enough to make the other party oppose it. The mere fact that a proposal comes from one side, rouses the suspicion of the other. There is always that dilemma of which England has so often felt the evil consequences. If a measure of reform is pressing, it becomes matter of party contention, and excites passion. If it is not pressing, neither party, having other and nearer aims, cares to take it up and push it through. In America, a party amendment to the Constitution can very seldom be carried. A non-party amendment falls into the category of those things which, because they are everybody's business, are the business of nobody.

It is evident when one considers the nature of a Rigid or Supreme constitution, that some method of altering it so as to make it conform to altered facts and ideas is indispensable. A European critic may remark that the American method has failed to answer the expectations formed of it. The belief, he will say, of its authors was that while nothing less than a general agreement would justify alteration, that agreement would exist when omissions impeding its working were discovered. But this has not come to pass. There have been long and fierce controversies over the construction of several points in the Constitution, over the right of Congress to spend money on internal improvements, to charter a national bank, to impose a protective tariff, above all, over the treatment of slavery in the Territories. But the method of amendment was not applied to any of these questions, because no general agreement could be reached upon them, or indeed upon any but secondary matters. So the struggle over the interpretation of a document which it was found impossible to amend, passed from the law courts to the battle-field. Americans reply to such criticisms by observing that the power of amending the Constitution is one