REESE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY CALIFORNIA. AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. LECTURE I. The Constitution of the United States. - Twofold Sources of its Interpretation; viz., the Instrument itself, and the History of the Institutions and Events that preceded its Adoption. Its relatively long Endurance contrasted with the many recent Changes in the Government of France and with the Innovations of the past Fifty Years in England. - The Character of its Framers; Washington. - Their Conservatism. - The Essential Elements of the Constitution not devised by them, but the Result of the Experience of the Anglo-Norman race. The War of Independence not a Revolution, but a Defence of Established Rights. — The United States a Sovereign and Integral Nation, not a mere Alliance of Independent States. - Weakness of the Confederation. IN entering upon the study of the nature and origin of our government, I need not enlarge on the dignity and importance of a subject that commends itself to the attention of every American. The Constitution of the United States is, next to the English Constitution, the great monument of public law of modern times, and one of the most instructive topics that can be presented to a philosophic mind. If the formative principles were mainly derived from the mother-country, they were applied under circumstances that were to a great extent unprecedented, and gave rise to problems which are constantly growing in complexity and importance. The first and greatest of these was, How to reconcile local self-government with national sovereignty, a question of grave and increasing significance, not only here, but in Germany, in Austro-Hungary, in France, and in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; in short, wherever VOL. I.- -1 mankind seek to practise the art of freedom. The science of politics must, therefore, be every where incomplete without a knowledge of the theory and working of a republic which is at once one and multiple, national and federal; but the American lawyer has a direct and practical interest in such an inquiry. The duty which he owes to his country cannot be performed in ignorance of her organic laws, and an accurate acquaintance with their provisions is essential to success in the higher walks of his profession. Our tribunals do not, like those of other countries, simply expound the statute and customary law, but have the difficult function of interpreting the Constitution, and annulling every regulation or command which transcends its limits. The judiciary is the balancewheel which keeps the General Government and the States within their respective orbits, and prevents them from clashing with each other or infringing the constitutional rights of the citizen. This arduous task would be impracticable but for the aid of a Bar, which, though deficient in organization, and having no common centre, is still fruitful in able and upright men, who might shine with greater brilliancy if gathered at a capital, but could hardly diffuse a more useful or steadier light. This honorable charge will soon devolve on you, and it will be your duty as members of the Bar to maintain the bulwarks that were raised by the founders of the Republic, and strengthened in after years by Marshall, Webster, Pinkney, and other jurists, whose reputation will grow with time, and be cherished as long as the Republic endures. The Constitution of the United States is a statute framed for the government of a nation; and it is an established principle that the meaning of a statute must, like that of a deed, be drawn from the four corners of the instrument with little or no regard to parol or extrinsic evidence. The language used in debate may indicate the wishes and inclinations of individual legislators; but it is to the collective judgment of the assembly as finally and authentically pronounced that we must look for the law. Still, there is a legitimate aid to be derived in the interpretation of any instrument from a knowledge of the circumstances out of which it arose ; PERMANENCY OF THE CONSTITUTION. 3 and we are told on great authority that in construing statutes we may use the mischief which they were meant to obviate as a guide to the nature and extent of the remedy. We may, therefore, even in a legal and technical study of the Constitution, properly inquire by what events it was preceded, who were the parties, under what influences they acted, by what motives they were impelled. Indeed, without the aid of history we should often be wholly in the dark, because the words employed in the Constitution are not infrequently terms of art, and their explanation must be sought in the annals of the country whence we derive our law. The institutions under which we live are to a great extent an offshoot from those of England; and where the analogy fails, the difference arises from specific and well-defined causes and is hardly less instructive than the resemblance. They are in short, two successive phases in the development of the same race; their past is the germ of our present, and England is undergoing a transformation which may, at no remote period, render her political and social condition much nearer to that of the United States than it is at present. One who is unacquainted with the efforts through which English liberty was established can hardly understand the provisions by which our forefathers sought to guard their own freedom; and the pages of Hallam and Blackstone are an almost indispensable preliminary or adjunct to the study of Hamilton and Marshall.1 In turning from the history of other countries to that of the United States, we shall find nothing more remarkable than the length of time during which the Constitution has endured, giving order, prosperity, and happiness to the American people. This may seem a paradoxical assertion with regard to a frame of government that has not much exceeded the fourscore years allotted to the life of man, the foundation of which was witnessed by persons still living and who may conceivably behold its fall. But everything in this world is relative; and if all political institutions are liable to change, 1 See Munn v. Illinois, 94 U. S.; Boyd v. The United States, 116 U. S. 616, 626; Palairet's App., 67 Pa. 477, 485. |