Evening journal., 1898-01-27
PRESIDENTIAL POWER.
Executive Authority Of the Gov
ernmental Head.
Increased ard Extended by the Four
tcenth AmcndmcDt-PrOud
Progress of the Ship
of state.

Judge Simeon L. Baldwin, of the
Supreme court of Connecticut, writes as
follows in an article on absolute
Power:"
''Down to 1865 each state had saidlfor
herself: My people shall be free from
arbitrary arrests; their liberty and
prosperity shall be secure; their rights
equal; the law impartially admins
tered; the stranger within my gates
protected from wrong as fully as my.
own sons Now came back for brief
moment to the scene of action the peo-
BILE to the United States to say, by the
fourteenth amendment, that thence
forth every man should have their
guarantee that the state would not re-
tede from these obligations, but they
should forever and forever be the foun-
hation stones of American institutions.
''Was the great change welcome one
TO every state? You well know that it
was not. Only absolute power, the
absolute power of a three-fourths vote
Under a written constitution-the abso-
lutte power of a congress with the right
In each of its houses to determine on
the qualifications of its own members
md the admission of members from any
~ccalcitrant state, with the right to
pack the jury even by admitting to
ltatehood a row of mining camps on
barren mountains, and giving to Ne
gada an equal vote with Virginia or
Alassachusetts-this IS what forced the
fourteenth, if not the thirteenth. amend
lnent into organic law.
But there it is. It was a slight mat
ter that it hastened the day of negro
outrage and paved the way for the
fifteenth amendment, passed two years
later. Whenever and wherever the
American negro has education enough
20 enable him 10 cast an intelligent
pote he will cast thatvote, and he ought
TO cast it. And whenever and wherever
be has not such education he ought not
70 vote. and, in the long run, he viii
hot vote. Mississippi and South Caro-
lima have put themselves upon solid
ground in saying that education must
be condition of suffrage. It is no
now doctrine. In the north there is
more than one state in which such has
been the law for nearly half CEN
tury.
THE great change wrought by the
fourteenth amendment has been TO
eoucede and perpetuate to the United
States vast and far-reaching national
powers; to unity and centralize its
! government, for good or i'll.
IF absolute power has risen up in
the United States, and for the United
States. during this century. to height
bur fathers never contemplated, il is be-
rause we have departed from our Anglo
Baxon inheritance Of individualism, be-
rause the people demand more of their
government and have given it more.
when Coleridge declared that
o" We receive but what we give,
And IN our life alone does nature live,
he spoke what is. above all things. true
If free institutions. For each of them
the individual citizen has parted with
something They are the great result
uf common contribution. and what
rver they give back we who receive have
paid for, are paying for. whether we
recognize it OF not.
1T was collectivism that wrote the
fourteenth amendment. collectivism
that ratified it. collectiVism that en-
forces IL. Does IL protect individua
rights, as in no land under the broad
heaven they were ever. in any age. pro
/ tected before? Yes. but only by th,
3 sacrifice of other rights of individual
p ism, only by extension Of tho sovereign
ty of the union, at the cost of the sov
rreignty Of the state, only by giving Il
t the courts new authority to contro
= legislatures, and congress new powe
. 10 control the citizen; only by giyini
e to the president new laws TO execute
Of such kind as put him forward init
fields before unoccupied.
In the impeachment trial Of Andrey
d | johnson, one Of the managers Of th
prosecution described the presiden
Ms nothing but the constable of con
/ gress.' Had that impeachment bee
successful. the contemptuous tauu
n might have seemed simple truth.
was not successful. because all homes
men. not blinded by party passion. fel
that the president held great constitt
i;onal functions. which made him. i
DIS sphere, little short of the dictator
The republic.
Is II am glad that we have SO great a
nnicer. The foe that threatens Amer
can institutions to-day is not absolu
ism. but anarchy; not the tyranny {
man. but the Tyranny Of the mol
A To meet it we need the strong hand {
70 power II we were not nation b.
fore the civil war. we have been sine
A nation must have a head. ha'
no fear that the president of the Unite
~ States, absolute as be is. within h
D. sphere. will ever act the part Of Caesa
ol The foundations of American liberi
re are laid too deep. The checks of u
p. constitution. backed by the seutimel
to Of free and intelligent people. "a
ample for any strain.
H. Proudly and safely rides the ship
=, state into the opening harbor of II
- twentieth century: prouder and SAT
because one hand. aud one hand onl
~ is on the wheel"-Yale Law journal.