The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1872-11-12
COLUMBIA. S. C.
Tuesday Morning. November IL, 1872.
Despatio Tendencies.


OF all the kinds of history, that of the
mode by which governments have been
formed, and their powers distributed, is
the most curious and the most instruct
i've. No reading is more entertaining to
the thoughtful man than that OF the
written constitutions of countries wherein
exists, in q concrete form, whatever
amount of liberty their people possess,
with its appropriate guards and checks.
There may be seen the pulsations Of
their interior political life, as it struggles
towards q higher freedom, and seeks
broader guarantees, or as it grows weak
or, and submits to the enervating inAu-
enoes OF vice and power and greed. It
is q record just as distinctly expressive
OF one part of the life and character of
peoples, as language and architecture
express other parts. Law-givers in all
ages, from Moses among the Jews and
Scion and Lycurgus amongst the Greeks,
down to the sagacious men who framed
our own Constitution, hive been held in
unbounded veneration. OF the latter,
Mr.. Calhoun has said that their work
was above unaided humsn wisdom
above the sagacity Of the most enlight-
ened., It was the result of fortunate
combination of circumstances, co. ope-
rating and leading the way to its forma-
zion, and directed by kind Providence.
In viewing the whole, we must be no
less struck with the simplicity Of the
means by which all are blended into one
than we are by the number and com.
plexity of the parts. II know" he adds,
'of no system in either respect, ancient
or modern, to be compared with it, and
can compare it to nothing but that sub
lime and beautiful system of which our
globe constitutes part. and to which it
bears. in many particulars, 80 striking
resemblance"
This beautiful system is now in ruins.
and the fears and forebodings OF Patrick
Henry in Virginia, and Rawlins Lowndes
in South Carolina, who opposed its
adoption in the conventions Of their
States, have been too early and too fu-
tally realized. The growth of despotic
majority, the inordinate love of power,
disregard OF the limitations originally
fixed, together with an unpropitious
train OF circumstances ending in dias.
trous civil war, have shattered to pieces
the exquisite structure. It can never be
what it once was. no more than the Port
land vase, shivered into fragments by
the rude hands Of madman, though
patched and skillfully put together, can
ever become again the paragon of taste,
beauty, finish, color and form. We take
but little blame to ourselves in this State,
for any agency that we may have had in
this sad catastrophe. Our statesmen of
the revolutionary era acted no insigni6-
cant part in framing this Constitution,
aud having it adopted. Those in the
next succeeding generations-William
Lowndes. Cheves, Calhoun, McDu1fie,
Hayne, Preston and oshers-were almost
its most faithful and able defenders, as
thousands of our best men, in more re-
cent times, sealed their devotion to the
rights it should have protected, with
their hearts blood.
We will not DO the people of the
United States the injustice of saying
that they have consciously or wiokedIy
destroyed this instrument and leopard
lied the liberties it guaranteed. They
have been led along, as down the prim-
rose path of dalliance, from one en-
croachment to another, each seeming
small in itself, and each paving the way
for the next succeeding, until at last
they find many Of the most vital re-
served rights Of tho States absorbed, or
usurped, and the barriers to despotic
use of power by the President, or o
Congressional majority, thrown down
and helpless. They see now what wiser
action and timely ana yigilant precau-
tions might have forestalled and pre-
vented. The Offices of the Government
now vested in the gift of the Executive
are no longer public trusts to be sacredly
kept and purely administered. but are