that students of constitutional law have begun to turn their attention from the political provisions, which were most important in English history, to the broader principles of individual rights which most concern us to-day. The reason of this is obvious. Personal freedom was established in England, substantially as we know it now, in the 12th century. It was taken almost as a matter of course by our ancestors, both in England and here, until within a very few years. It was the assertion of political power, and notably of the right to tax and impose military rule or law, that remained in question. But when our Constitution was adopted, these principles also were so engrained in the popular mind as to need hardly more than expression. Since then more than a century has gone by. Our population has grown from four millions to eighty millions, a majority with no inherited training in English institutions, and even the American minority, in their very security, forgetful of them. Two potent forces are now at work; first that of philanthropy, general benevolence, ethical amelioration, seeking results rather than liberty, traceable in theory directly back to Austin, Bentham, and Hobbes; the other the class-conscious multitude of organized labor, seeking (and for the same reason) to reimpose regulations and control upon the actions of others either through or beside the State, which was tried but only partially tried in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries in England. For the English agitations, when not mere risings of the peasants, resulted rapidly in an exclusive, almost aristocratic, trade-guild. To show how striking is the present activity of these two forces I need but to refer to the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. In all the ninety years from 1796 to 1886 they found only one thousand constitutional cases to consider, and in these declared some two hundred statutes of States or Acts of Congress to be unconstitutional. In the twenty years from 1886 to 1906 they considered more than thirteen hundred cases of this sort, more than half of which, and these much the most important, were set in motion by the two forces I have named, and probably a larger proportion than before were held unconstitutional. For State Constitutional law it is only necessary to refer to the valuable annual bulletins of the New York State Library. One hundred and four laws of the States or of the United 1 The admirable digest of Mr. Ban- present Reporter; it will then show croft Davis, at the end of 131 U. S., precisely the figures which the author has, I believe, been ordered by the Pres- can only estimate. ident to be brought up to date by the States were declared unconstitutional in the one year 1906. It is a fact not possibly unconnected with this that during the same year forty-six new constitutional amendments were adopted and thirty rejected, making the attempted output seventy-six, just about two thirds of the one hundred and six nullifications; but only about one third of these amendments found the favor of the people. If these amendments embodied in all cases the same provisions which had been declared void by the courts, one might draw the inference that in about two thirds of the cases the people sustained the courts. The true number, however, is far greater than this. Nothing is more interesting than the unanimity with which the people, as a rule, welcome the decision of their highest court declaring a law unconstitutional; that is, in conflict with their own will as permanently expressed. Of late years only do we see an ominous tendency in the other direction, due to the unfortunate fact already adverted to, that so many unconstitutional statutes embody the rash attempts of philanthropic and labor interests to impose their will upon others by law, rather than by persuasion or the legitimate powers of the trades union. In closing, a word should perhaps be said as to the form of this work. A table of the Constitutions referred to will be found before the preface; the citations are always made by numbers of chapters, sections, etc., without any other abbreviations; thus, 1, 2, 3, will mean Chapter 1, Section 2, Clause 3, or whatever other may be the division in the Constitution referred to. To have done otherwise would have been to add inconceivably to the bulk of the work. The index cites Book III by sections and not by pages in order to avoid the necessity of star pages in any future edition. Article 99, Constitutional Amendments, has been reserved for later constitutional amendments which shall be adopted after April 1, 1908 (that being the final date of publication of this work). Fortunately most of the States do not adopt Constitutions very frequently, and the amendments they adopt, though numerous, frequently relate to such matters of petty detail, the appointment of local officers, etc., as fall outside the scope of this work. Thus, Connecticut, Iowa, Oregon, Maine, Massachusetts, and several other States, have never had but one Constitution; while the amendments proposed in all are more often than not rejected. In 1903, for instance, the forty-five States then existing adopted twelve amendments and rejected twenty-six, and this is about the usual proportion. This would cease to be the case, however, if the Western States continue their present unscientific tendency of embodying all that the present majority wish to be law into the framework of the Constitution. This, however, I have discussed more fully in Book I, Chapter XI. CAMBRIDGE, MARCH 31, 1908. F. J. S. |