The Constitution

The Constitution

BY FREDERICK UPHAM ADAMSAuthor of “The Kidnapped Millionaires,” “Colonel Monroe’s Doctrine,” “President John Smith,” “Shades of the Fathers,” etc.

THE practical man values a house not by its antiquity, but by its conformability to modern standards of construction and equipment. If he purchases an ancient structure he is not required to pay an added price because of its lack of plumbing, its absence of gas and electric lighting fixtures, and he is not entranced that its roof leaks and that its cellar is damp and moldy.

This same man, if he gives the subject a passing thought, will likely assure you that the Constitution of the United States is a perfect document because it is more than one hundred years old. It also is likely that this is the extent of his information concerning that famous document.

The average lack of knowledge concerning our National Constitution is astounding. Like children who have been drilled to repeat the Lord’s Prayer without the faintest conception of what the petition means, we have mentally drilled ourselves to believe that our Constitution is perfect, that it was inspired by a superhuman wisdom, and that it is treason to criticize or even discuss its infallible precepts.

In this respect we are the most narrow, bigoted and prejudiced people who pretend to keep in alignment with progress. For more than one hundred years we have been proclaiming the perfection of our free governmental institutions, and calling on other nations to admire us and to follow our example.

Within the past few years the truth has been forced home on us that the officialdom of our townships, villages, cities, counties, states and of the nation is maggoty with corruption; that our local, state and national legislatures are openly controlled by mercenary private interests; that the scandals concerning our judiciary can no longer be smothered or concealed; that our citizens are powerless to pass laws demanded by the majority, or to defeat those aimed to despoil the majority; that the burdens of taxation are spurned by those who have amassed wealth by means of unfair and ofttimes purchased legislation, and that the domination of corporations and vested interests is so complete as to be apparent to the dullest of the plundered.

This language is not exaggerated. It is impossible to overstate the enormity of the depth to which we have descended in the scale of political morals. Ten years ago any one of the disclosures which now are made from week to week would have aroused the nation; today the repetition of these horrors dazes those who attempt to keep track of them. Not one crime in a hundred ever sees the light in printer’s ink. The bigger thieves are so buttressed and protected by the fortifications of wealth, and so secure behind the barbed wire entanglements woven by the courts, that their enraged dupes cannot reach them.

Great Britain is a republic in all save name, yet no such conditions prevail under its government. France is a republic, yet its people are not despoiled by official brigands, neither is the free expression of its electorate crushed beneath the massed weight of its moneyed interests.

I count it a disgrace to be an Americanso long as these degrading conditions prevail. It is a dishonor to live in a city, community, state or nation where thievery is condoned or tolerated, and it is cowardly weakness for the honest majority to assume that the problem of corruption is past their solving.

The most formidable barrier in the way of permanent redress has been erected and is maintained by those who are checked by it. It consists of the absurd assumption that our material prosperity has been the consequence of the perfect provisions of our National Constitution. It is manifested in the senseless worship of the forefathers, and the ignorant deification of the founders of the document, which for more than a hundred years has served as a model for our state, municipal and local governments.

We have come to recognize the hopelessness of honest majorities when pitted against the machinery of our municipal governments; we no longer deny that the cumbersome machinery of our state governments lends itself to the manipulation of corrupt private interests; the suspicion has dawned on us that our National Congress is more concerned with thwarting public sentiment than in conforming to it; and despite all this knowledge we steadfastly refuse to direct our gaze to the prime cause of these abuses.

With a hundred monopolies filching from us that which we have created—and doing it under the guise of law and by sanction of the Constitution; with legislatures, executives and courts scorning to put into operation those remedies for which we have legally voted—and declining to do so under the authority of the Constitution; with a system of taxation which places all the burdens on those who are poor because they are producers of wealth, and releasing from taxation those who have become rich because of their exploitation of labor and through the debauching of its representatives—this system being founded on constitutional decisions—we yet cling to the childish delusion that ours is the only perfect government ever bequeathed to mankind.

Compared with the governments of England and France we have only the semblance of self-rule, while they possess the substance. The people of Germany have more direct influence over legislation than have those of the United States. Despite an autocratic emperor, surrounded as he is by a nobility and protected by the most powerful standing army in the world, the people of Germany have made greater progress along the road of democracy within the last twenty years than we have.

If in England there is valid reason to believe that the majority of the people hold an opinion counter to that of the administration in power, Parliament is dissolved and a direct appeal is made to the voters for a new body of representatives. The new Parliament meets and proceeds to pass the laws demanded by the electorate. There is a House of Lords, but it does not dare reject a measure known to be popular. There is a king, but he has not exercised his veto power for more than a century and a half, and one need not be a prophet to hazard that he never will exercise it again. There is no supreme court in England. In that benighted monarchy when the people pass a law it is a law, and not a guess.

To all intents and purposes the same procedure obtains in France and in a score of other countries which might be named. Ours is the only country on earth where the vote of a citizen has no direct significance.

We are not permitted to vote for a President, but are allowed to help choose electors who represent not us, but the state. There is no such thing as a citizen of the United States, so far as the franchise is concerned. If you have a vote it is by grace of the state in which you reside. The Constitution does not recognize your individual sovereignty in any way. If you doubt this assertion read that document.

The state fixes your qualificationsas a voter. It might debar you because of your sex, because of your height, because you were not worth $100,000, and you would have no redress under the Constitution of the United States. Possibly you did not know this.

In practice you are privileged to vote for members of the Lower House of Congress. That is the beginning and the end of your influence so far as your national government is concerned. You have nothing to do with the selection of senators, and I doubt if you are consulted as to the composition of the Supreme Court.

As I have explained, if the Lower House of the Legislature in England passes a law, it at once becomes a law. Under our Constitution the Senate has the power to amend or defeat it. This is supposed by us to be the quintessence of all earthly legislative wisdom. This is Check Number One on the mandate of the foolish people. In passing, I desire to repeat that this is the only alleged republic or constitutional monarchy yet remaining on earth which assumes that its majorities are unfit to influence legislation.

If the measure demanded by the people be so fortunate as to pass the House and Senate, the President may veto it. This is Check Number Two on the mandate of the foolish people. If the President sign the measure the Supreme Court may declare it unconstitutional, and that is the end of it, unless a subsequent infallible Supreme Court should overrule the decision of the first infallible Supreme Court. This is Check Number Three on the mandate of a free and enlightened people. In the event that the Supreme Court should decide that a law is a law, the financial interests adversely affected may and do defeat its enforcement by legal quibbles as to details, or may and do resort to the bribery of the officials charged with the execution of the law. These are Checks Numbers Four and Five on the will of the people in this, the one perfect system of popular government ever designed in all history.

We are the most corrupt nation on earth because of “our peculiar form of Government”; because of the exactions and limitations of a Constitution which was designed to protect and conserve the interests of property rather than of citizenship. Those who are astounded or offended at this statement need only read the record of the convention which drafted the Constitution in order to satisfy themselves as to its moderation. I do not mean to insinuate that the fifty-five delegates who met in Philadelphia in 1787 had any idea of establishing a system which would foster corruption, but the records absolutely prove that they deliberately planned to suppress the rule of the majority in order that popular clamor might not menace property interests. The train of abuses from which we now suffer flow logically from the checks they then provided; checks which place selfish and corrupt wealth beyond the reach of public redress.

Those foolish persons who have been taught in school and in the public prints that the founders of our Constitution were sincerely desirous of establishing a system of government in which the will of the people should find free expression, will be shocked and undeceived when they read its debates and proceedings as recorded by James Madison, one of the delegates from Virginia. When one comes to learn of these fifty-five delegates that not more than ten are on record as voicing the slightest degree of confidence in the wisdom of the people or their fitness to rule, he is likely to take a new view of the Constitution framed by them, and he is able to account for the innumerable ills which we are compelled to suffer.

I will quote a few expressions of opinion from delegates who wielded the greater influence in the construction of the Constitution:

Roger Sherman—“The people should have as little to do as may be about the Government.”

Elbridge Gerry—“The evils we experience flow from an excess of democracy, the worst of all possible evils.”

John Dickinson—“A limited monarchy is one of the best governments in the world.”

Rufus King—“It is immaterial to the people by what government they are possessed, provided they be well employed.”

Alexander Hamilton—“The British monarchy is the best government in the world,” and he doubted if anything short of it would do in America. “Their House of Lords is a most noble institution.”

Alexander Hamilton—He acknowledged himself not to think favorably of republican government. “Inequality in property constitutes the great and fundamental distinction in society.”

Gunning Bedford—“Are we to act with greater purity than the rest of mankind? Our votes are actuated by interest and ambition.”

Gouverneur Morris—“The Senate must have great personal property; it must have the aristocratic spirit; it must love to lord it through pride. To make it independent it should be for life. Property is the main object of society.”

John Rutledge—“Property certainly is the principal object of society.”

Pierce Butler—“Slaves should have an equal representation in a government which is instituted principally for the protection of property, and is of itself to be supported by property.”

Charles C. Pinckney—“Property in slaves should not be exposed to danger in a government instituted for the protection of property.”

George Mason—“It would be as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper character for President to the people as to refer a test of colors to a blind man.”

James Madison—“In future times a great majority of the people will not only be without landed but any sort of property. If they combine, the rights of property will not be safe in their hands.”

James Ellsworth—“As population grows, poor laborers will be so plenty as to render slaves useless.”

The thirteen delegates, from whom I have quoted were the dominating characters in that convention, and it is possible to cite innumerable passages expressing the same distrust and contempt for the people. It should be understood that the great mass of the people had no representation in that secret conclave, and that half a century passed before its proceedings were made public by Act of Congress.

I have touched on these facts for the purpose of indicating clearly that the right to ignore the majority is inherent in the Constitution. The Senate was provided for the special benefit of property interests, and at one time a clause was adopted, decreeing that no one could be elected a Senator of the United States unless he was worth $50,000 or more. This cautious provision was abandoned because there were states which had no men with that amount of property. Having provided a Senate they continued to pile up checks against the people, until such aristocrats as Gerry, Randolph and Mason attempted to call a halt, declaring that the people would be so stripped of power that the last of their rights would disappear. Their warnings were disregarded, and they absolutely refused to sign their names to the document.

With these facts within access of every citizen of the United States, the vast majority of us still adhere to the myths and falsehoods contained in our school books and uttered by ignorant demagogues and editors.

It is likely that the aristocratic delegates who framed the Constitution had just reason to fear the people it was intended to hold in check. The average citizen of 1787 was a savage compared with the average voter of today. He knew of no world beyond the narrow limit of his horizon. He was ignorant, prejudiced, suspicious and envious. The builders of the Constitution regretted that it was necessary to grant him even the shadow of political power and were consumed by the dread that the Lower House of Congress would overawe all other branches of the new government.

In that day wealth had little influence as a mass, but it was strong in its instinct of self-preservation. It trembled lest the poor should combine at the polls in a crusade for the legal despoiling of the rich. Having absolute control of the convention it was free to design a document which would include every possible check against the aggressions of the dreaded masses, and it rightly conjectured that the magic of the name of Washington would induce the people to consent to the provisions aimed against them.

We of today are caught in the trap set for those who lived more than a hundred years ago. Not until after the nation had been plunged into a civil war between two factions—each of which claimed strict allegiance to the Constitution—did conditions arise which afforded a fair test of the restrictive features of that document. So long as the wealth of the nation was so distributed as to prevent the formation of conspiracies in its behalf, the masses were able to conserve their rights, despite all of the checks and restrictions in the Constitution. It was this fairly maintained state of equilibrium which half a century ago gave rise to the worship of our system of government.

When the first unscrupulous man found himself in possession of millions of dollars the Constitution became not his master but his tool. When the officials of our first great corporation found it practical to bribe legislation, the trap set by the forefathers was sprung. I do not mean to hint that the founders of the Constitution foresaw any such outcome. They constructed a device to protect themselves, and their bones had crumbled into dust before wealth was sufficiently armed and equipped to take advantage of their mistakes.

Wealth seized upon the senates, state and national. It found in the judiciary a natural ally, and it did not hesitate to invoke the aid of partisanship and the unblushing use of corrupt influences, direct and indirect, in order to subject the courts to its domination. This is a blunt statement, but the time has arrived when the courts can no longer be covered with a machine-made robe of sanctity. There are good judges and bad judges, but the decisions of the latter are as binding as those of the former. A corporation judge is not a priest; he is a low type of politician.

Our aristocratic forefathers designed a Constitution intended to protect themselves against a majority. Our modern corporations and vested interests have discovered that the same machinery oiled with bribery can be used by the minority for the purpose of plundering the majority. Our forefathers invented checks; our trusts have converted them into bludgeons. Our forefathers constructed constitutional ramparts, behind which they hoped to be safe from the attacks of the majority; our vested interests have bristled them with guns, behind which they demand and receive tribute.

Note—In the May number Mr. Adams will treat of the necessity for the revision of the Constitution, and consider how it may legally be accomplished.

Note—In the May number Mr. Adams will treat of the necessity for the revision of the Constitution, and consider how it may legally be accomplished.

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