IT

CHAPTER I.

THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION.

Hon. JEFFERSON CHANDLER, LL. D.

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T has been declared by one of the wisest of modern statesmen that the Constitution of the United States is the greatest work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man. This system of American government, resting upon the sovereignty of the people, defined and limited by State, and Federal constitutions, is the first in the world's history to deny the dogma of unlimited power in government. It is the first to correctly define and locate sovereignty, and to fix its seat in the consent of the governed. It is the first to reduce pure democratic doctrines to a political philosophy, and to declare that governments are instituted to secure to mankind rights with which they are endowed by their Creator and over which State jurisdiction does not and cannot extend. It is the first to proclaim the existence of an area of personal liberty and a jurisdiction superior to, and above the State, presided over by private judgment, in which free, religious and other opinions, the right of exemption from personal control and the right to pursue happiness, are sheltered, by constitutional immunity, from govern

mental invasion. It is the first to divide, and at the same time to compound, Federal and State sovereignty in one system, and to make the whole unassailably strong, by exacting of the Federal government protection of all the States, and by building each State upon the affections of the people thereof.

This system is little, if any, less than a revelation. Into it are imported the ripest and wisest conclusions of our race, gathered from every field of human knowledge. To preserve this system is the highest ambition and duty of the American people. Every great political contest brings the principles of our institutions and civilizations up for review, and invites a comparison of the relative fidelity of the great contending parties to them.

Parties may divide on the methods of administering the government, and their success or failure leave no permanent impression on the system itself. But continued party success on convert, or declared disrespect of the system, or any of its parts, will, in a brief period, work the overthrow of the whole. The supreme issue in American politics now is, and will always be, a correct understanding and the the preservation of the government itself. The Constitution of the United States and its construction, have been the special political battle ground of the last twenty years. The center of the conflict has been, and now is, the Constitutional rights of the States.

It is the object of this article to of this article to review this

struggle and from its history to demonstrate two propositions first, that the creed of the Democracy is the gospel of the Constitution, that the Democratic party has attained and will retain power, because a majority of the people of the United States so believe; and, second, that the Republican party has been reduced to a minority because of its betrayal of the Constitution, and that it has degenerated into a revolutionary force.

As a basis for these conclusions it will be assumed that the fidelity to the Constitution of the United States includes and requires fidelity to the rights of the States, that the whole government, State and Federal, is a unit, that State and Federal sovereignty are but different hemispheres of one system, and that neither can sustain injury without suffering to both; that each moves in its sphere under the full constitutional sympathy and protection of the other.

The Federal Constitution contains provisions not only interdicting the Federal Government from attacking the States, but it has provisions also which require the Federal Government to uphold and sustain the States.

In "Lane County vs. Oregon, 7 Wall., 76," the Supreme Court say, "The people of the United States. constitute one nation, under one government, and this government within the scope of the powers with which it is vested is supreme. On the other hand, the people of each State compose a State, having its