The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-24
MIR. UNDERWOOD'S SPEECH
 AT BANQUET LAST NIGHT

The feature of the evening at the Cham Der of Commerce banquet last night was the address by the guest of honor, MT. Underwood. The speaker presented a de- fense of representative government and his words will be read with interest by every man who is sincerely interested in the preservation of the constitutional safe- guards of the nation. MT. Underwood said.
 .'The world moves round in a circle. and the ancient doctrines of the distant past often become vitalized with the new life Of the twentieth century.
 ",rhis is essentially true of the science of government. There is always the temptation staring the political dreamer in the face, when he finds that justice has miscarried. to breath new life into the dead corpse of ancient law and proclaim it progressive idea UT his own creation.
 Men do not always awake to the reali- zaton that the just enforcement of the law is more essential to good government than the enactment of new statutes.
 Less than Q century and half ago the federal constitution was written; IL became the pattern in its fundamental features for our state constitution. The world had experimented with almost every conceivable method of government for thousands of years before the birth or our republic. The statesmen who created the form of the new government were essentially students of the theories of gov ernment and lovers of the liberties of the people. Most of them had offered their lives and their fortunes in the struggle for their country's independence. No man can justly charge them with either lack of %;x,, d dft1,v f11a i11 n- ciples of government, or want of honesty of purpose to create d government that would secure to themselves and their chli- dren more perfect Union, establish jus tice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the gen. eral welfare, and secure tle blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterty.
 Familiar With Repeated Failures
 They proclaimed to the world it's first written constitution, created govern ment of law, in absolute contradistinction to government of men. The framers of the federal constitution were familiar with the repeated failures of governments based on the principle of a direct democ- racy, where the people were the direct law making power and in some instances the ultimate judicial power of the coun- try.
 They knew from the history of tie past that these governments had failed in their purpose that the liberties of the people had been destroyed by the ex- trenes and excesses which marked .hc administration of a government where the laws were made in the forum by the assembled multitude. and were not the mature product of selected men especially trained for the work in hand.
 'They knew that the failure of every direct democracy was due not to the lack of honesty of purpose on the part of the aggregate citizenship assembled in the forum, but to the fact that they were often swayed by their desires, passions and prejudices and lacked intimate knowledge of the resultant effect of their actions. ssE
 "No honest man in his individual entity will controvert the Golden Rule that all men should do unto others as they would be done by, but 1t is rarely the case that the assembled populace can divorce itself from it's selfish desires and deal out ab- stract justice to those who may he tenl- porariiy in the minority.
 ''Rea'izing the danger and excesses of dirtet democracy, the framers of our constitution endeavored to establish a gov ernment that would protect the rights and liberties of tue individual, and at the same time reflect ultimately the will of the ma jority in the enactment of the law of the land. M
 Representative Form
 ITO accomplish this end they estab- lshed representative form of govern ment designed to create a law making power responsive to the will of the people. and at the same time they wrote in the constitution certain checks and balances Intended to prevent the mere brutal force of majority from destroying the liberty and property rights of the individual.
 rIt must be always born in mind that x the fran.ers of our constitution were not ' attempting to establish freedom of gov ernment. for they created government $ with usly certain delegated powers OK prexsly given to the nation by the states, s Preserving to the states the right to make most. of the laws that affected the llber- ties of the citizen. The underlying prin- cipIc of the constitution was to guasan- tee the liberty of the citizen and the pro lection of his property rights against the power of the government itself.
 'sTof guard and protect these rights an