New Britain herald., 1930-03-27
Constitution Is Living Organism Susceptible to Adaptation, Beck
 Says In Address at Philadelphia

ages to come, and, consequently. to 1 be adapted to the various crises of human affairs l quote this, lest l be accused of heresy in my sugges- tion that the Constitution is, bu usage, judicial interpretation, po- litical habits and unwritten politi- cal institutions. necessarily subject to unceasing adaptation to make it serve the necessities of the most changing nation in the world.
 The thought of an ever changing constitution is not, in all respects, q comforting one, for, if it be liv- ing organism and have within it. self the potency for development and growth, yet, like all living Or. Ganisms, it then also has within 1t the seeds of death. Such concep- ton of the constitution challengcsf the thought of each living genera ton of Americans to the great que5- ton whether this living orsanisrn is to grow in wisdom, or perish in folly.
 We separated from the mother country upon this principal that dl- rect taxes could only be imposed by the consent of the representa- | tives of the people. To confirm this conception of liberty, the frame-s of the Constitution not only ex- pressly provided that Congress, and rot the Executive. should impose | taxes, but that all revenue bills must originate in the House of Rep resentatiyes, as the more directly epresentative body of Congress, and yet the House of Representa- tiyes recently passed a law, which gave an almost unlimited discretion 1 to the President, with aid of the | Tariff Commission. to raise or low CT any duty to the extent of fifty l per cent of the statutory rasc. | What does this mean in concrete | terms? Every cent per pound that | is levied upon the importation of sugar means q burden to the Amer | ican people of approximately one hundred million dollars. Suppose the tax, as passed by the Congress, is three cents per pound. If tue flexible tariff provision, as passed by the house, shall prevail at this session, the president can make the duty either four and half cents, or one and a half cents, q differ ence of three cents a pound, and, therefore, either a diminution Of the tax burden of one hundred and fifty million dollars, or an imposi- tion of like burden upon the con- sumer, and yet, when this provision was under consideration by the house, only q few of us could See that it involved, for better or worse, an abandonment of q time -honorcd principle of English liberty. and 4 palpable violation of the constitu- tion.
 ''I appreciate that many of these changes are the inevitable results Of the impact of 8 mechanical civilization. Take, for example. the moro comprehensive question, which once agitated the American people, that of centralization. Whrl the constitution was adopted, the states had q very real conscious ness of their own sovereignty whine the conception of national unity was a very slow growth. All this is changed in our lifetime as re- suit of q mechanical civilization. Tho old struggle against centralizl- ton has largely passed away. Only lip service is longer paid by either Of the great parties 10 the rights oi the states. Tho 'indestructible union of indcstructiblc states is now little more than a rhetorical phrase. Each Of the great political parties, when in power, yies with the other m consolidating the union by multi plying bureaucratic agencies, for which no true authority can be found in the federal constitution.
 Changes Due to Greed for Power
 ITO the extent that this is tn | result of economic forces, it is ir- rcsistiblc, even if not always desir- able, but it is, in part, due to that