The Spirit of American Government Part 15

And though it may not be so obvious, this general principle is just as true in the moral and spiritual world as in the physical. All progress, material and moral, consists in the due subordination of natural to human agencies. Laws, inst.i.tutions and systems of government are in a sense artificial creations, and must be judged in relation to the ends which they have in view. They are good or bad according as they are well or poorly adapted to social needs. Civilization in its highest sense means much more than the mere mastery of mind over inanimate nature; it implies a more or less effective social control over individual conduct.

Certain impulses, instincts and tendencies must be repressed; others must be encouraged, strengthened, and developed.

It is a mistake to suppose that the unrestrained play of mere natural forces ensures progress. Occasional advance is the outcome, but so also is frequent retrogression. There is no scientific basis for the belief in a natural order that everywhere and always makes for progress.

Compet.i.tion or the struggle for existence ensures at most merely the survival of the fittest; but survival of the fittest does not always mean survival of the best. Compet.i.tion is nature's means of adapting life to its environment. If the environment is such as to give the more highly organized individuals the advantage, progress is the result. But if it is such as to place them at a disadvantage, retrogression, not progress, is the outcome. The higher types of character, no less than the higher organic forms, presuppose external conditions favorable to their development. Compet.i.tion is merely the means through which conformity to these external conditions is enforced. It eliminates alike that which is better than the environment and that which is worse. It is indifferent to good or bad, to high or low. It simply picks out, preserves and perpetuates those types best suited to environing conditions. Both progress and retrogression are a process of adaptation, and their cause must be sought, not in the principle of compet.i.tion itself, but in the general external conditions to which it enforces conformity. Success, then, is a matter of adaptation to the environment, or the power to use it for individual ends--not the power to improve and enrich it. The power to take from, is nature's sole test of fitness to live; but the power to enrich is a higher test, and one which society must enforce through appropriate legislation.

Laws, inst.i.tutions and methods of trade which make it possible for the individual to take from more than he adds to the general resources of society tend inevitably toward general social deterioration. Compet.i.tion is wholesome only when all our social arrangements are such as to discourage and repress all individual activities not in harmony with the general interests of society. This is the point of view from which all social and industrial questions must be studied. The problem which democracy has to solve is the problem of so organizing the environment as to a.s.sure progress through the success and survival of the best.

[Footnote 1: Sebohm, English Village Community, Ch. III; Traill, Social England, Vol. I, p. 240; Ashley, English Economic History, Vol. I, p.

17.]

[Footnote 2: Lowell, Governments and Parties in Continental Europe, Vol.

I, Ch. I; Lecky, Democracy and Liberty, Vol. I, p. 265.]

[Footnote 3: Work and Wages, p. 398.]

[Footnote 4: Tyler, The Literary History of the American Revolution, Vol. I, p. 300.]

[Footnote 5: Tyler, The Literary History of the American Revolution, Vol. I, p. 301.]

[Footnote 6: Ma.s.sachusetts, New Hamps.h.i.+re, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia.]

[Footnote 7: Delaware, Maryland and North Carolina.]

[Footnote 8: Ma.s.sachusetts, New Hamps.h.i.+re, Pennsylvania and Maryland.]

[Footnote 9: Delaware, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.]

[Footnote 10: Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, New York and Delaware.]

[Footnote 11: Ma.s.sachusetts, New Hamps.h.i.+re, Maryland, Delaware, South Carolina and Pennsylvania.]

[Footnote 12: Ma.s.sachusetts, New Hamps.h.i.+re, New York, Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.]

[Footnote 13: Macdonald's Select Charters, Vol. I, pp. 94-101.]

[Footnote 14: Schouler's Const.i.tutional Studies, pp. 70-78, Macdonald's Select Charters, Vol. I.]

[Footnote 15: "Who would have thought, ten years ago, that the very men who risked their lives and fortunes in support of republican principles, would now treat them as the fictions of fancy?" M. Smith in the New York Convention held to ratify the Const.i.tution, Elliot's Debates, Second Edition, Vol. II, p. 250.]

[Footnote 16: Simeon E. Baldwin, Modern Political Inst.i.tutions, pp. 83 and 84.]

[Footnote 17: Critical Period of American History, p. 226.]

[Footnote 18: S.F. Miller, Lectures on the Const.i.tution of the United States, pp. 84-85.]

[Footnote 19: McMaster, With the Fathers, pp. 112-113.]

[Footnote 20: "They [the framers of the Const.i.tution] represented the conservative intelligence of the country very exactly; from this cla.s.s there is hardly a name, except that of Jay, which could be suggested to complete the list." Article by Alexander Johnston on the Convention of 1787 in Lalor's Cyclopaedia of Pol. Science, Pol. Econ. and U.S. Hist.]

[Footnote 21: Elliot's Debates, Vol. V, p. 557.]

[Footnote 22: Ibid., p. 138.]

[Footnote 23: "By another [rule] the doors were to be shut, and the whole proceedings were to be kept secret; and so far did this rule extend, that we were thereby prevented from corresponding with gentlemen in the different states upon the subjects under our discussion.... So _extremely solicitous_ were they that their proceedings should not transpire, that the members were prohibited even from taking copies of resolutions, on which the Convention were deliberating, or extracts of any kind from the Journals without formally moving for and obtaining permission, by a vote of the Convention for that purpose." Luther Martin's Address to the Maryland House of Delegates. Ibid., Vol. I, p.

345.

"The doors were locked, and an injunction of strict secrecy was put upon everyone. The results of their work were known in the following September, when the draft of the Federal Const.i.tution was published. But just what was said and done in this secret conclave was not revealed until fifty years had pa.s.sed, and the aged James Madison, the last survivor of those who sat there, had been gathered to his fathers."

Fiske, The Critical Period of American History, p. 229. McMaster, With the Fathers, p. 112.]

[Footnote 24: Elliot's Debates, Vol. I, pp. 119-127.]

[Footnote 25: Elliot's Debates, Vol. II, p. 470.]

[Footnote 26: Elliot's Debates, Vol. I, p. 422.]

[Footnote 27: Ibid., p. 450.]

[Footnote 28: Book 5, Ch. I, Part II.]

[Footnote 29: Elliot's Debates, Vol. V, p. 160.]

[Footnote 30: Ibid., p. 137.]

[Footnote 31: Elliot's Debates, Vol. I, p. 450.]

[Footnote 32: Ibid., pp. 421-422.]

[Footnote 33: Ibid., p. 475.]

[Footnote 34: No. 10.]

[Footnote 35: In Ma.s.sachusetts and New Hamps.h.i.+re the const.i.tutions framed during the Revolutionary period were submitted to popular vote.

The Virginia Const.i.tution of 1776 contained the declaration "that, when any government shall have been found inadequate or contrary to these purposes [the purposes enumerated in the Bill of Rights], a majority of the community hath an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal." The Revolutionary const.i.tution of Pennsylvania contained a similar declaration. Poore, Charters and Const.i.tutions.]

[Footnote 36: Elliot's Debates, Vol. III, pp. 48-50.]

[Footnote 37: Ames, Proposed Amendments to the Const.i.tution of the United States. This book gives a list of the amendments proposed during the first one hundred years of our history under the Const.i.tution.

During the fifteen years from 1889 to 1904, four hundred and thirty-five amendments were proposed. These figures are taken from a thesis submitted for the LL.B. degree at the University of Was.h.i.+ngton by Donald McDonald, A.B.

It is interesting to observe that this is one of the few important features of the Const.i.tution not copied by the Confederate States at the outbreak of the Civil War. The const.i.tution which they adopted provided an easier method of amendment. Any three states could suggest amendments and require Congress to summon a convention of all the states to consider them. To adopt a proposed amendment ratification by legislatures or conventions in two-thirds of the states was necessary.]

[Footnote 38: Political Science and Const.i.tutional Law, Vol. I, p. 151.]

[Footnote 39: The American Commonwealth, Vol. I, Ch. III.]

[Footnote 40: Second Edition, Vol. I, Appendix, Note on Const.i.tutional Conventions.]