Page:James Bryce American Commonwealth vol 1.djvu/405

CHAP. XXXIII it when he sat in Congress) remarks that it went to the extreme verge. More startling, and more far-reaching in their consequences, were the assumptions of Federal authority made during the War of Secession by the executive and confirmed, some expressly, some tacitly, by Congress and the people. It was only a few of these that came before the courts, and the courts, in some instances, disapproved them. But the executive continued to exert this extraordinary authority. Appeals made to the letter of the Constitution by the minority were discredited by the fact that they were made by persons sympathizing with the Secessionists who were seeking to destroy it. So many extreme things were done under the pressure of necessity that something less than these extreme things came to be accepted as a reasonable and moderate compromise.

The best way to give an adequate notion of the extent to which the outlines of the Constitution have been filled up by interpretation and construction, would be to take some of its more important sections and enumerate the decisions upon them and the doctrines established by those decisions. This process would, however, be irksome to any but a legal reader, and the legal reader may do it more agreeably for himself by consulting one of the annotated editions of the Constitution. He will there find that upon some provisions such as Art. i. § 8 (powers of Congress), Art. i. § 10 (powers denied to the States), Art. iii. § 2 (extent of judicial power), there has sprung up a perfect forest of judicial constructions, working