Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1847-07-24

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IN the Art of Government, was already in posses
sion III it had known it of abundant evidence that
lnis woodworking resort had been repeatedly
uieu' without comforting any very particular trans
tendency OF wisdom or efficacy or durability upon
uie institutions thus reduced to writing SoLoN
anu Nlr LOCKE tout of the last three instances we
nave mentioned, the nearest TO modern times, and
therefore the wisesD produced their Written Con-
stltuuons when not very young men; but lived
long enough 70 have walked as pal-bearers to their
own codes, II any body besides had cared enough
iogr dying laws to bury them with the honors of a
procession. II we are right in the date which we
have fixed as the fatal inroad upon our Federal
Constitution, President MADISON and Chief Justice
MARSHALL might have borne part in the same sort
of obsequies.
Now, from all this what do we mean to infer
Certainly not the paradox, as idle as the opposite
one, that Written Constitutions are worthless nor
even that they may not, in spite of some inherent
objections to them which wise men comprehend. he.
come under happy circumstances, the bases of yerv
perfect politics, which shall better than others
withstand the lapse of time, though they NAV not
defy the force Of all human decay We intend
not to argue that there is no virtue in them: but
merely that, even when best, there can be no such
virtue, no such mlght in them, shall, in the de-
cline of the public spirit and the loss of the public
sense which created them, preserve the govern
ments, of which they should be the rule, from cor
rupton, degeneracy, mbecility, usurpation; from
the fury of factions; from that common bane of a
government too high or too low, the demagogue
and the courtier, equally ready to hatter kings or
the mob and from all those other diseases Of
which States die, some old, some young, according
as they were or were not healthy, temperate, pru-
dent, and fortunate. Nothing, indeed, is more
common, in public affairs, than to see the BODY of
State survive It's faculties, just as men live on in
decrepltude and impotence, with scarcely the con-
sciousness that they have lost all that made life
worth having. The name Of the :. Democracy
was still as dear to Athens when she bent to the
Thirty Tyrants whom SOCRATES alone Thin whom
she afterwards voted to death as public corrupter
and enemy dared to resist, as when Miltiades and
Cynon led her on to victory and greatness, or Pc
rchs showed her how she might be the mistress of
Europe and Rome when no longer even the Prn-
toran bands, but distant DICTIONARIES of Barbarians
gave away the imperial diadem for largesses, still
rejoiced in the title of !" Republic" and held her
self the sovereign people of the entire globe These
things perpetualy repeat themselves, no matter
what the original form of nations institutions, or
what their degradation in the very depths of pub
lie debasement, when but shadow remains of
what was once Legitimate prde-nay, at times,
when nothing remains but dim tradition of former
greatness or freedom-a people is seen still to cling
to the mere idea of former superiority. No tine
ture so fast as the dye of peoples vanity. The
Turk, forgetting present humiliation in the memory
of times when all Europe trembled at the name of
his master, still halls him as the Light of the
Universe: :" the ratified Chinese looks scornfully
upon Europe and America as lands of "Quter Bar
barians:" the Mexcans have constantly grown
more boastful as their freedom became less and
their arms feebler: the Italian is still as vain as
when Italy gave law to the world Rome is proud
than all the rest of Italy, though now breeding
heroes no longer: and it is not hundred years
since the Khan of little Tartar horde in the de-
serts above the Caspian, mindful of the time when
his ancestors ravaged continents, never rose, in his
tent of skins, from his banquet Of raw horse-hesh,
without a trumpet and herald's proclaiming
+" That all the monarch's of the world might now
sit down to dinner -
When nations change an old mode of govern
ment for a new Though beter one, the great diff
Guilty is, not in devising very wise and happy
body Of Institutions, but in finding out their attend
ant difficulties, and in learning for there's the ruby
how that which they have designed may be brought
about how what was but scheme shall become
an effect; how whatwas but foreshadowing shall
be made the substance. All this must be the work
of time, no matter how wisely and earnestly a
country may set about it and, meantime, before
it can be accomplished, how fortunate if some do
nestle agitation of factions or some foreign ques-
ton seized and converted TO their purposes does
not intervene, TO postpone or even to mar that
Of the Constitution to its proper prac-
tice, to its harmonious and complete body of pre-
cedents and to its proper establishment of correla
tive administrative usages, all which are necessary
to convert the Written Constitution into the real,
the Constitution into the Government The
conjuncture of some foreign event, not really
involving the principles the safety Of the Govern
ment, but rousing public passions or sympathies,
may cast every thing at sea again, as happened