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of earnest reasoning and solemn warning, in the endeavour to support the sound doctrine of the Constitution. He reiterates the elementary truth that "the immovability of judges is an essential element of civil liberty." He has also treated the subject very ably in a letter addressed to the German people in 1848: "Ueber die Unabhängigkeit der Justiz, oder die Freiheit des Rechts in England und in den vereinigten Staaten." Heidelberg, 1848.

CHAPTER XVI.

CONCLUDING REMARKS.

THE questions to which Mr. Justice Story devotes the few remaining chapters of his "Commentaries" are, Trial by Jury, Treason, the Bill of Rights, the Right of Petition, the Liberty of the Press, the Quartering of Soldiers, General Warrants; and upon these the law and practice of the United States are either identical with our own, or differ only in particulars which present no points of interest in a comparison between their practice and ours. The clause in the Constitution relating to slavery and fugitive slaves is touched upon very briefly, and without adding any particulars of general importance. The few other topics which he adverts to do not require spe

cific notice. But the following passages from his concluding remarks can never be read, either in that country or in this, without exciting admiration for his eloquence, sympathy with his noble aspirations, and a participation in his forebodings and fears.

"The fate of other republics-their rise, their progress, their decline, and their fall-are written but too legibly on the pages of history, if, indeed, they were not continually before us in the startling fragments of their ruins. They have perished, and perished by their own hands. Prosperity has enervated them, corruption has debased them, and a venal populace has consummated their destruction. Alternately the prey of military chieftains at home, and of ambitious invaders from abroad, they have been sometimes cheated out of their liberties by servile demagogues, sometimes betrayed into a surrender of them by false patriots, and sometimes they have willingly sold them for a price to the despot who has bid highest for his victims. They bave disregarded the warning voice of their best statesmen, and have persecuted and driven from office their truest friends They have listened to the fawning sycophant, and the base calumniator of the wise and the good. They have reverenced power more in its high abuses and summary movements than in its calm and constitutional energy, when it dispensed blessings with an unseen and liberal hand. They have surrendered to faction what belonged to the country. Patronage and party, the triumph of a leader, and the discontents of a day, have outweighed all solid

principles and institutions of government. Such are the melancholy lessons of the past history of republics down to

our own.

"If these Commentaries shall but inspire in the rising generation a more ardent love of their country, an unquenchable thirst for liberty, and a profound reverence for the Constitution and the Union, then they will have accomplished all that their author ought to desire. Let the American youth never forget that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors, and capable, if wisely improved and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence. The structure has been erected by architects of consummate skill and fidelity; its foundations are solid; its compartments are beautiful, as well as useful; its arrangements are full of wisdom and order; and its defences are impregnable from without. It has been reared for immortality, if the work of man may justly aspire to such a title. It may, neverthless, perish in an hour by the folly, or corruption, or negligence of its only keepers-the people. Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall when the wise are banished from the public councils because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded because they flatter the people in order to betray them.": *

Some considerations, which may not be

* Story, §§ 1910-1914.

without their value in this country, are suggested by what has been exhibited of the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and of its mode of working, as developed in the first sixty-five years of its existence.

The advocates of extreme popular opinions in this country are dissatisfied with the principle on which the House of Commons has been hitherto constructed, and require that, instead of its being composed, as it is now, of the representatives of all the interests, feelings, and opinions of the various classes and sections of society, from the highest, very nearly to the lowest, the preponderance being largely on the side of property, cultivation, high acquirements, and stable and hereditary instincts and convictions-it should be made to represent more completely and directly, if not almost exclusively, the numerical mass of the community; under the supposition that the interests of the latter would then be better cared for, and that the interests first enumerated would, in some manner or other, take care of

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