Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/55

Rh ism of government, for all its checks have been evaded. Not the conscience of the Legislature and the Presi- dent, for heated combatants seldom shrink from justi- fying the means by the end. Nothing but the fear of the people, whose broad good sense and attachment to the great principles of the Constitution may gener- ally be relied on to condemn such a perversion of its forms. Yet if excitement has risen high over the coun- try, a majority of the people may acquiesce ; and then it matters little whether what is really a revolution be accomplished by openly violating or by merely distorting the forms of law. To the people we come sooner or later: it is upon their wisdom and self- restraint that the stability of the most cunningly de- vised scheme of government will in the last resort depend."

No institution of government can be devised which will be satisfactory at all times to all people. But it may truly be said that, in spite of necessary human imperfections, the Court today fulfills its function in our National system better than any instrumentality which has ever been advocated as a substitute. Very apposite are the sentiments expressed by a lawyer in the anxious days of the Republic, just before the Dred Scott CasCy as follows: ** Admit that the Federal Judiciary may in its time have been guilty of errors, that it has occasionally sought to wield more power than was safe, that it is as fallible as every other human institution. Yet it has been and is a vast agency for good ; it has averted many a storm which threatened jour peace, and has lent its powerful aid in uniting us together in the bonds of law and justice. Its very existence has proved a beacon of safety. And now, when the black cloud is again on the horizon, when the trem-