the central authority, in the vast variety of our concerns, from breaking down under its own weight. Our states, each with her historic background and supported by the loyal sentiment of her citizens, afford opportunity for the essential activity of political units, the advantages of which no artificial terrtiorial arrangement could secure. If our checks and balances sometimes prevent the speedy action which is thought desirable, they also assure in the long run a more deliberate judgment. And what the people really want, they generally get. With the ultimate power of change through amendment in their hands they are always able to obtain whatever a preponderant and abiding sentiment strongly demands. We not only praise individual liberty but our constitutional system has the unique distinction of insuring it. Our guaranties of fair trials, of due process in the protection of life, liberty, and property which stands between the citizen and arbitrary powerof religious freedom, of free speech, free press, and free assembly, are the safeguards which have been erected against the abuses threatened by gusts of passion and prejudice which in misguided zeal would destroy the basic interests of democracy. We protect the fundamental rights of minorities, in order to save democratic government from destroying itself by the excesses of its own power. The firmest ground for confidence in the future is that more than ever we realize that, while democracy must have its organization and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty. I am happy to be here as the representative of the tribunal which is charged with the duty of maintaining, through the decision of controversies, these constitutional guaranties. We are a separate but not an independent arm of government. You, not we, have the purse and the sword. You, not we, determine the establishment and the jurisdiction of the lower federal courts and the bounds of the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. The Congress first assembled on March 4, 1789, and on September 24, as its twentieth enactment, passed the Judiciary Act-to establish the judicial court of the United States a statute which is a monument of wisdom, one of the most satisfactory acts in the long history of notable congressional legislation. It may be said to take rank in our annals as next in importance to the Constitution itself. In thus providing the judicial establishment, and in equipping and sustaining it, you have made possible the effective functioning of the department of government which is designed to safeguard with judicial impartiality and independence the interests of liberty. But in the great enterprise of making democracy workable we are all CHECKS AND BALANCES 677 partners. One member of our body politic cannot say to another"I have no need of thee." We work in successful cooperation by being true, each department to its own function, and all to the spirit which pervades our institutions-exalting the processes of reason, seeking through the very limitations of power the promotion of the wise use of power, and finding the ultimate security of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and the promise of continued stability and a rational progress, in the good sense of the American people. The VICE PRESIDENT. Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States. ADDRESS OF HONORABLE FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT MR. VICE PRESIDENT, Mr. Speaker, Gentlemen of the Supreme We near the end of a three-year commemoration of the founding of the government of the United States. It has been aptly suggested that its successful organizing should rank as the eighth wonder of the world-for surely the evolution of permanent substance out of nebulous chaos justifies us in the use of superlatives. Thus, we may increase our oratory and please our vanity by picturing the period of the War of the Revolution as crowded with a unanimous population of heroes dramatized by the admitted existence of a handful of traitors to fill the necessary role of villain. Nevertheless, we are aware today that a more serious reading of history depicts a far less pleasing scene. It should not detract from our satisfaction in the result to acknowledge that a very large number of inhabitants of the thirteen revolting colonies were opposed to rebellion and to independence; that there was constant friction between the Continental Congress and the Commander in Chief and his generals in the field; that inefficiency, regardless of the cause of it, was the rule rather than the exception in the long drawn out war; and finally that there is grave doubt as to whether independence would have been won at all if Great Britain herself had not been confronted with wars in Europe which diverted her attention to the maintenance of her own existence in the nearer arena. We can at least give thanks that in the first chapter all was well that ended well, and we can at least give thanks to those outstanding figures who strove against great odds for the maintenance of the national ideal which their vision and courage had created. THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES ADDRESSING THE CONGRESS Vice President John N. Garner and Speaker William B. Bankhead are seated at the Speaker's desk. To the left of the President are Senator Alben W. Barkley of Kentucky, Representative Sam Rayburn of Texas, and Representative Sol Bloom of New York PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S ADDRESS 679 The opening of the new chapter in 1783 discloses very definitely that assurance of continued independence could be guaranteed by none. Dissension and discord were so widely distributed among the thirteen new states that it was impossible to set up a union more strong or permanent than that loose-end, shaky debating society provided for under the Articles of Confederation. That we survived for six years is more a tribute to the ability of the Confederation Congress gracefully to do nothing, and to the exhaustion that followed the end of the war, rather than to any outstanding statesmanship or even leadership. Again, we can properly say of the period of confederation that all was well that ended well. Those years have rightly been called "the critical period of American history." But for crisis-in this case a crisis of peacethere would have been no union. You, the Members of the Senate and the House; you, the Chief Justice and Associate Justices; and I, the President of the United States, would not be here on this 4th of March, a century and a half later. It is well to remember that from 1781 to 1789 the Thirteen Original States existed as a nation by the single thread of congressional government and without an executive or a judicial branch. This annual assembly of representatives, moreover, was compelled to act not by a majority but by states, and in the more important functions by the requirement that nine states must consent to the action. In actual authority the Congresses of the Confederation were principally limited to the fields of external relations and the national defense. The fatal defect was, of course, the lack of power to raise revenue for the maintenance of the system, and our ancestors may be called, at the least, optimistic if they believed that thirteen sovereign republics would promptly pay over to the Confederation even the small sums which were assessed against them for the annual maintenance of the Congress and its functions. Furthermore, the effect of the existing methods of transportation and communication retarded the development of a truly national government far more greatly than we realize today-and that was true throughout the first half century of our Union. You have heard the phrase "the horse and buggy age." We use it not in derogation of the men who had to spend weeks on the rough highways before they could establish a quorum of the Congress, not in implication of inferiority on the part of those who perforce could not visit their neighbors in other states and visualize at first hand the problems of the whole of an infant nation. We use it rather to explain the tedious delays and the local antagonisms and jealousies which beset our early paths, and we use it perhaps to remind our citizens of today that the automobile, the railroad, the airplane, the electrical impulse over the wire and through the ether leave to no citizen an excuse for sectionalism, for delay in the execution of the public business, or for a failure to maintain a full understanding of the acceleration of the processes of civilization. Thus the crisis which faced the new nation through its lack of national powers was recognized as early as 1783, but the very slowness of contacts prevented a sufficient general perception of the danger until 1787, when the Congress of the Confederation issued a call for the holding of a Constitutional Convention in May. We are familiar with the immortal document which issued from that convention; of the ratification of it by sufficient states to give it effect; of the action of the Confederation Congress which terminated its own existence in calling on the First Federal Congress to assemble on March 4, 1789. We know of the month's delay before a quorum could be attained, of the counting of the ballots unanimously cast for General Washington, of his notification, of his triumphal journey from Mount Vernon to New York, and of his inauguration as first President on April 30. So ended the crisis. So from a society of thirteen republics was born a nation with the attributes of nationality and the framework of permanence. I believe that it has been held by the Supreme Court that the authority of the Articles of Confederation ended on March 3, 1789. Therefore, the Constitution went into effect the next day. That Constitution was based on the theory of representative government, two of the three branches of its government being chosen by the people, directly in the case of the House of Representatives, by elected legislatures in the case of Senators, and by elected electors in the case of the President and the Vice President. It is true that in many states the franchise was greatly limited, yet the cardinal principle of free choice by the body politic prevailed. I emphasize the words "free choice" because until a very few years ago this fundamental, or perhaps I should call it this ideology of democracy, was in the ascendant throughout the world, and nation after nation was broadening its practice of what the American Constitution had established here so firmly and so well. The safety of the system of representative democracy is, in the last analysis, based on two essentials: First, that at frequent periods |