"Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. It shall be health to thy navel and marrow to thy bones. Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life."

THE CONSTITUTION BETWEEN FRIENDS *

THERE has been in vogue, for many years now, the story of a New York politician who was a type, an index to his class-ignorant, shrewd, vainglorious, vulgar, unscrupulous, but bluff and kind and generous withal the idol of his constituents. When it was objected that a piece of congressional legislation which he greatly desired would be unconstitutional, this practical, domineering statesman, with his fat familiar leer of ingratiating intimacy, and in the grieved tones of wounded affection, replied: "O Hell, Bill! What's the constitution between friends?"

We have laughed at this retort and have continued to laugh at it ever and anon-if not oftener; and I have recently been wondering why? What is or was the inherent, underlying absurdity in this naïve suggestion of an exponent of practical politics (that wants what it wants when it wants it ") that should strike us as so very, very funny? And what has happened that all of a sudden our classic joke seems to have lost its flavor?

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From the standpoint of history the absurdity is obvious enough, and consists of an incongruity-like some casual but horrible blasphemy uttered in good nature by one without reverence, whom we nevertheless tolerate for that same good nature. The shock to our conscience by the other's total lack of conscience *Missouri Bar Association, Kansas City, Mo., Sept. 26, 1913.

is turned into a laugh, and on the whole seems ludicrous rather than wicked. So the joke in question, with the vice contained in it, we first endured, then pitied, and have finally embraced.

But time was when our venerable joke did smack of wickedness, and was funny only because that wickedness seemed so remote, so impotent, and so absurd! The easy nonchalance with which some petty, pelting politician, to achieve a short-cut to his petty, pelting ambitions, would ignore or sidestep the fundamental law of the country-our great and sacred constitution that, serene and inviolable, stretches its beneficent powers over our land-over its mountains and plains, over its lakes and rivers and forests, over every mother's son of us, like the outstretched arm of God Himself the idea, I say, that this wonderful instrument, with its inveterate and honored sanctions, throned in the loyal will of a mighty nation, could be circumvented by any legislature at the grinning dictate of a political boss, backed by a constituency however clamorous, did seem funny in those days, didn't it?

But in those days, so near and yet so far-within our own lives, and yet close enough to the origin of things for us to appreciate with a sort of fearful joyousness—a sort of awed complacency-the dangers we had escaped and the desperate conditions out of which our government had evolved; when we were taught by our fathers what our grandfathers had done; were taught homage and fealty and veneration for their wisdom and heroic sacrifice;-in those days, my brothers, we believed in the reign of laws and not of men! We

knew our own history and the history of the human race. We knew that from the very dawn of history people had lived in spasmodic rebellion against the cruelty of a despot or the savagery of a mob. Liberty had been a torch carried in the wind-lighted, extinguished, relighted, snuffed out-again and again—always a flaring flambeau or a smoldering stench. And always, in their heart of hearts, the people had known that Liberty was not a torch to be carried in the wind, but a holy flame, to be placed on an altar and worshiped like the visible presence of Jehovah in the Tabernacle-a holy flame to be watched and guarded with jealous love and zealous devotion.

And so, on this great continent, which God had kept hidden in a little world-here, with a new heaven and a new earth, where former things had passed away, the people of many nations, of various needs and creeds, but united in heart and soul and mind for the single purpose, builded an altar to Liberty, the first ever built or that ever could be built, and called itTHE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.

Before considering any of its provisions, or the men who fashioned it, or the people who adopted it, or the necessities that subdued all passions, prejudices, jealousies, selfishnesses, and differences to its creation, consider first and foremost what the Constitution means.

First and foremost it means liberty-liberty as soberly and deliberately defined by the people themselves -liberty as dreamed by their poets, foretold by their prophets, hoped for, longed for, prayed for-liberty absolute in everything but license!

The Constitution means government, of course. Anarchy itself could not exist without some sort of government. But our government of constitutional liberty is a government by the people, for the people, and of the people-please observe that little word "of "; it grows big by emphasis.

The Constitution, therefore, means a government of law of formulated principles of action-not the rule of a particular legislature, or a pro tempore executive, or a political party, or a plurality, or even a majority of the people themselves, save only as the acts of these ephemeral rulers are subordinated to the mandates and limitations of the Constitution.

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Our government treats us as rational beings and, as Coleridge says, in his essay on Sir Alexander Ball, no body of men can for any length of time be safely treated otherwise than as rational beings." We yield obedience to the just and righteous principles of our government through what Coleridge calls "the awful power of law, acting on natures preconfigured to its influences." "Strength," he says, "may be met with strength; the power of inflicting pain may be baffled by the pride of endurance; the eye of rage may be answered by the stare of defiance, or the downcast look of dark and revengeful resolve, and with all this there is an outward and determined object to which the mind can attach its passions and purposes and bury its own disquietudes in the full occupation of the senses. But who dares struggle with an invisible combatant—with an enemy that exists and makes us know its existence-but where it is we ask in vain. No space contains it-time promises no control over it-it has no