Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-12-10
An Eighteenth-Century Constitution.
The London Outlook has this to say of

The London Outlook has this to say OF
the message:
President Roosevelt, for whom there is
a right and wrong In everything, and VINO
can hardly conceive Of a proposition hav-
ing more than two sides to 1t, Is preach
or by necessity. But II on its philosophical
side his message has an almost AUTOMATIC
familiarity of manner, its matter, the pro-
gram it outlined. and the suggestions en-
bodied in 1t were for the most part as novel
as they were striking.
I'VE refer less to any specific proposal,
though his advocacy of an inheritance tax
marks the beginning of revolution IN the
social finance of the United states, han
to the general tone of the message never
before has a President SO strongly empha-
sized the inadequacies of an eighteenth
century constitution in the face OF twen-
tieth-century conditions. and his insistence
Is all the more significant for being meas
ure oblique and unconscious-an inference
from his main thesis rather than the thesis
itself touched upon and recognized Out
now here elaborated"
We should not be too much impressed by
the phrase IAN eighteenth-century consti-
tuition" To be sure, 1t gives the impress
sion of something archaic which should
give place to something up to date-as If
one might ask, why hold on to chart
when the conditions which suggested 1t
have long since all disappeared, ana the
remedy has wrought all that was intended!
New tyrannies are to be dealt with, grow
ing out of the liberties then secured, and
why not take them up and deal with them
at the beginning of the twentieth century
as courageously as the fathers did those OF
the closing quarter of the eighteenth CEN
fury?
That might be done without any impair
ment of the spirit of the original perform
ance The men who wrought for the state.
both in England and America. in the latter
half of the eighteenth century were of
large intellectual mold, and the foremost
of them exchanged applause across the At
lantic Chatham and Burke admired their
American kinsmen greatly, and even the
men who opposed the work of the revolu-
tionary fathers praised the capacity they
exhibited for government and debate.
Washington, and Hamilton, and Adams.
and Jefferson, and Franklin, and men of
that stamp, were rated at high figure In
England.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Look how long and how well the spirit and
the performances of those men have lasted.
In England the best spirit, the imperial
spirit, is Chatham's descended to this day.
He was the biggest of all the Big England
erS, and MS country was IcSpetteO OH
around the round earth while he shaped her
policies AS for what was done on this side
the water in giving to the world a new ma
ton. and one fashioned after the ideas of
Its own designers, 1t Is still the wonder Of
men, and still performs functions encourag-
ing to men of all chimes and conditions.
The spirit of our "eighteenth-century
Constitution" is for all centuries. 1t could
not be changed except for the worse. But
this Is not to say that abuses have not
grown up under It, and at this day need cor
rection AS a matter of fact they testify
TO its strength. as the present inequalities
of the Dingley law testify to the original
strength and wisdom Of that enactment.
In the one case as in the other, revision,
not abolition, Is the need Of the times-in
many particulars the best times the country
has known.