Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 05.djvu/393

CONSTITUTION OF THE U. S. nor contracts with the limits of American jurisdiction; but, whatever those limits may be, it steadily and invariably binds the governmental agencies of the nation and limits their authority. In so far as it confers general powers of government on the President and Congress, those powers may be exercised in the ends of the earth as well as within the limits of the original States; whereas, the restrictions upon that power are equally valid, wherever it may be exercised.

This view of the Federal Constitution, as a carefully guarded grant of powers to the Central Government, explains even those guarantees of personal liberty and security which it contains and which are commonly referred to as the Bill of Rights of the Constitution (Amendments I.-X.). These are not, as they are commonly understood, an unlimited charter of liberties for the people of the United States, but only restrictions upon the exercise of arbitrary power by the President and Congress. They are not aimed at the States or at local authority. It is announced as “a settled rule of construction of the national Constitution, that the limitations it imposes upon the powers of government are in all cases to be understood as limitations upon the government of the Union only, except where the States are expressly mentioned” (Cooley, Constitutional Limitations, p. 19). Accordingly, even such a right as that of trial by jury in criminal cases, which is usually regarded as one of the inalienable rights of the American citizen, is by the Federal Constitution protected only against violation by Congress and the Federal judiciary. Excepting as they are restrained by their own constitutions, there is nothing to prevent the several States from abolishing the jury system entirely.

From what has been said above it will be observed that the Constitution of the United States is not, as it is conceived by foreigners, a complete scheme of government for the people of the United States, but only a part, and that the smaller part, of such a scheme. To fill out the outline, the constitutions and laws of the several States must be taken into account. These provide by far the greater part of the machinery of government, the securities of life, liberty, and property, and the political rights of the citizen.

The Constitution of the United States, in the form in which it is reprinted in this article, represents a long process of experiment and discussion, in the course of which the jealousies and conflicting interests of the different States and sections of which the Union was made up, were gradually compromised and subordinated to the common welfare of all. The Articles of Confederation, by which the ill-jointed union of the thirteen original States was held together from 1779 to 1789, can scarcely be described as a constitution, in any proper sense of that term, as they created only the form and not the substance of government, and vested no real authority in the common representatives of the several commonwealths. They were more in the nature of a treaty of alliance, by which the States bound themselves to common action, and the Congress constituted by them an international conference for promoting the common welfare. The inconveniences and dangers of this arrangement speedily became too pressing to be ignored, and in February, 1787, Congress took such action as its limited powers permitted, and passed a resolution, suggesting that a convention of delegates from the several

States be held at Philadelphia on the second Monday of May following, “for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation, and reporting to Congress and the several State legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as shall, when agreed to by Congress and confirmed by the States, render the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of government, and the preservation of the Union.” Pursuant to this resolution of Congress, delegates from twelve of the thirteen States (Rhode Island alone being unrepresented) assembled at Philadelphia, the convention opening its sessions in Independence Hall on May 14, 1787, under the Presidency of George Washington. For four months the delegates carried on the great work which had been intrusted to them, and at the close of their deliberations, on September 17, 1787, they had completed the Constitution of the United States, with the exception of the amendments, in the form in which we have it to-day. Their work was promptly approved by Congress, and at the close of the year 1788 had been adopted by eleven of the States and went into operation between them. The two remaining States, North Carolina and Rhode Island, ratified it and entered into the American Union in 1789 and 1790, respectively.

These results were not achieved without difficulty—in the face of profound differences of opinion. In most of the States the ratification of the Constitution was secured by narrow majorities, and after prolonged and earnest discussion, and in none of the States was it approved with anything approaching unanimity. This opposition and these differences of opinion were primarily due to what have been called ‘the compromises of the Constitution.’ These were three in number. The first dealt with the fundamental conflict between those who desired a strong central authority and those who feared the extension of executive power. This was compromised by investing the President of the Republic with great powers, but for a limited term only, and by a complicated system of ‘checks and balances,’ whereby the exercise of his power was at divers points and in various ways subjected to the control of Congress or of the Senate.

The second compromise was of the conflict of the great and small States, the former claiming the weight in the National Government to which their size, wealth, and population entitled them, and the latter insisting upon the recognition of their equality as independent, self-governing commonwealths. This was effected by the institution of two chambers of legislation, a Senate, in which the States were to have equal representation, and a House of Representatives, in which the representation should be in proportion to population. This compromise involved also the delicate question of the distribution of power between the two Houses of Congress.

The third compromise was of the controversy between the upholders of slavery and those who believed that slavery should be restricted or abolished. This was adjusted by the proviso forbidding Congress to prohibit the importation or migration of slaves before the year 1808 (Art. I., Sec. 9). and the requirement that fugitive slaves should be delivered up by the States in which they had taken refuge (Art. IV., Sec. 2). As no power was conferred upon Congress or the President to