The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-10-29
An Absent President.


 Editor The Advertiser:
 Mention has been passing through the press of a constructive constitutional inhibition of the President of the United States to be bodily absent from the territory of the government. The only foundation for the question is. per haps, in the proviso of Article 2, Sec tion 1, contemplating the removal of death. resignation or inability to dis charge the duties of his office" In any of these events, the Wee -Presi- dent shall perform the duties,' etc.
 The inability" is not more fragrant when the President is on the high seas, for twenty-four hours, as of late, than when he is hunting bear in the wilds, ianccessible to postoffice or telegraph.
 The question comments itself to public interest and is wholesome study. We. have in Alabama accepted the inn portance of. the presence of the State Chief Executive by requiring him to the territory. Some consequences of Inability" in the Governor came up for consideration in the case of Gov ernor Sanford and the matter was set Jelks made some appointments of a decisive kind in that status of events. Suppose Vice-President Fairbanks should construe the inaccessibility of the President as inability" to perform the duties of his office and thereupon appoint a federal judge to a vacancy, would the appointment hold? Could he call special session of Congress If he adjudged an emergency to be pre- sent?
 As to the inability of Mir. Roose- welt the Constitution makes the Presi- and navy" He is now on a vessel of the navy that is as near shore as the ship may safely sail; and he is under the flag, which makes the high seas a part of the country. to the extent of water about the ship.
 The Constitution Is elastic. The phenomenon in our federal system is. based has gained nothing of adaptation in no years use by formal amendment, save in the amendments made by the generation that prepared and adopted the original. For example, Alabama of her own act abolished slavery in Sep tember, 1865, and ratified the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing the institution in December following. The Four teenth and Fifteenth Amendments leave the State Constitution we now have exactly where 1t would have been, in regard to negro suffrage, had those amendments been mrecorded and un- known. Take another instance: MT. Roosevelt now is the active leader of a movement to arrest and turn back the palpable and morally exhausting effects upon government and society of Section of the Fourteenth Amend ment. This Section 1 confiscates the debt of the Confectionery and the debts of States that composed 1t and of thou sands of millions of private property in those States, while it virtually fixes for ever upon the country the debt of the United States This latter feature of the Section was put in with utmost deliberation and is the rock bottom foundation of a kind of commercial eX- pansiqR that Is abnormal, developing it's power to create trusts and other evidences of feudalistic conditions as- soclated with irresponsible political in luence. Pay the government debt and leave commerce to Its own char acter. then Section 4 has no place in the system.
 The Federal Constitution, unamended, save as those amendments that came from the frnmers of the original docu- ment, is fully competent to evolve the vauuted glory of the Fourteenth Amendment to wit. feoeral citizenship The necessities of society. treated by the courts within their legitimate sphere. without the citizenship. Sec tions of the Fourteenth Amendment, would before this day have created q practical Federal citizenship on founda- tion as firm as the privilege requires for enjoyment.