The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1898-01-28
L. n. Perkins Talks on a Subject He
Thoroughly Understands.

thoroughly UNDERSTANDS.
The address of L. H. Perkins of Law
! renee, as published in full below, was
one of the most scholarly of the prodHc-
| lions presented to the State Bar aSsO-
citation Mr. Perkins is an able attOr-
ney, with a big practice along financial
lines and in connection with real estate
loans. He has made a special study of
English constitutions and spent three
years as a resident of London and stu
dent of English law. He said:
A Study in the English Constitution.
1t was a wise saying of a great teach
er of philosophy in my college days,
who, when we complained that we could
not understand Carlyle, in his great
prose poem, was wont to say: Young
men, do you know the French ReVoIu-
derStand Carlyle?"
No man who is not a student of his
tory viii ever understand the spirit of
a constitution.
No man who conceives that history
IS the story of kings and ministers and
1ntrigueS and cOnquests in war and
peace, or even the rise and fall of en-
pres, viii ever understand the spirit of
a constitution.
He who would interpret a constitution
must first know history and then be-
come imbued with the philosophy of
history. The roots of the present are
buried so deeply in the past that to
comprehend the fruit one must know
the food it fed on.
We are joint heirs of all that has
been. 1t and we compose The Now.
What a marvellous inheritance is the
accumulated wisdom of the ages! And
what great luck not to have been born
too soon!
I had rather live in Lawrence under
Pop administration than to have been
cast out of the Garden of Eden with
Adam; or to have gone down into Per
STA with Alexander; or to have been
burned at the stake between Latimer
and Ridley.
Facts, events, the things that came
to pass are the warp, causation in the
wool of history.
Constitutions are the residuum of ex-
perience. They should represent the
combined wisdom of all the people past
and present. They flow from the peo-
pie to the people. They are the aggre-
gate voice of the people.
In the main, the old saw, ''Vox Pop
uh NoX Der will be true; with certain
notable exceptions as ''VOx POpulisti
VOX DiabOH''
We are so prone to think of a Constf-
tuition as a sacred writing, numerously
sign, formally adopted, fixed in form,
firm in foundation and interchangeable as
the everlasting hills, that we are at first
lost when we approach the English
constitution.
We have grown used to the unwrit-
ten common law, but an unwritten con-
stitution presents obstacles. numerous,
weighty, well-nigh insurmountable to
a foreigner.
How shall we come at it? Where
nize it? What manner of thing is this
gradual growth of fourteen hundred
years, which men call the English con-
Stitution?
As there were men before there were
manners, so there were manners before
there were human laws.
Constitution is the name of the ultf-
mate or fundamental law to which all
other laws must conform. Hence the
roots Of the constitution of a primitive
people must be sought in the primitive
manners and customs of that people.
Old England is not the fatherland of
Englishmen. The ancient Briton saw
age or ROmanized, concerns US little in
the study of the English constitution
AS the Indian retreated before the
Pilgrim Fathers, so did the ancient
Briton give over his birth-right to the
cOnquerOr, and Angleland became his
hencefOrth no more forever.
One of the most remarkable migra-
lions in history was the movement of
the Angles from the peninsula of
Schleswig, where authentic history first
finds them. to the island of Britain. They
moved with their wives and children,
their tangible belongings, and their
household gods, their manners, their
customs and their laws, and left a des-
ert behind them.
Standing the cliffs at Ramsgate
the eaStern-mOSt extremity of England
looking over the German ocean toward
the rising sun, we may, in fancy, see the
coming of Hengist and Horsa and their
landing at EbbSfieet and witness the
dawn of English history in merry Eng
land in the year of grace 449.
This IS holy ground which first felt
the thrill of the tread of Englishrnen
Pirates and rowing adventurersi do you
say? Heather Worshipers of Wooden