The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1891-06-09
THE GENESIS OF A WRITTEN CONSTITU
TION.

THE GENESIS OF A WRITTEN CONsTITU-
TION.
Admirers of the British Constitution
are accustomed to call attention to
what they regard as its two great
merits, its permanence and its pliabil-
ity. These merits are often attributed
to the fact that it is an unwritten Con
stitution. Resting upon immemOrial
custom, it is closely related to the life
and thought of the people, has ex-
banded with the growth of society,
and reflects the permanence and prog
ress of the nation. -
No unbiased student of p%olitial his
tory is disposed to ignore the great
merits of the English Constitution,
due to the fact that it is the result of
growth, and not of manufacture. The
history of fiat constitution of France
and other countries illustrates the pitt
full failures of organic law made to
order.
Our organic law is set forth in a
written document, fashioned in the
heat of discussion by a chosen body
of men who have been generally
apotheosized in American political
literature as it's sole creators, both in
outline and detail. Nor has this view
been confined to native writers. Mr..
Gladstone's words have been often
quoted:
LAS the British Constitution is the most
subtitle organism which has proceeded from
progressive history, so the American ConsJ1tu-
tion is the most wonderful work ever struck OH
at a given time by the brain and purpose OF
man."
More recent views regarding the
growth of the Constitution need not
destroy our ~veneration for this docu-
ment, nor detract from esteem of
those who gathered the materials of
which is composed. 1t has been
recently said that the Federal Con
stitution was modelled directly after
the English Constitution; it was an
adjustment of English form of Ameri-
can wants An English writer in the
Encyclopedia Britannica says:
The American constitution OF 1903 was a
faithful copy, so far as it was possible to make
one out of the materials at hand, of the con-
temporary Constitution of England"
But had this writer studied the
previous government of the different
States, all of which had written con-
situations several years before the
Federal Convention was called, it
might have surprised him to find that
each of these constitutions might just
as we'll be considered a faithful copy
of the contemporary Constitution of
England. Had he gone still further
back and examined the governments
of the several colonies, all of which,
from the earliest times, rested upon
written documents, he might have
seen in each of them also quite as
faithful a copy Of the contemporary
Constitution of England. The fact is,
that the adaptation of the political
institutions of England to the wants
Of the English people In America did
not begin with the convention of 1872.
1t began nearly two hundred years
before, with the migration of English.
men to American shores, and through
all the succession of political vicissi-
tudes in which the American colonists
saw that their persons and property
could be protected only by appealing
to the constitutional rights of English
men. The perpetual influence Of Eng
lish institutions is one of the marked
features in the growth of the American
nation.
The Federal Constitution is not only
not a fiat-constitution projected from
the brain OF the Fathers, o a copy