Читать книгу Vanishing Landmarks - Shaw Leslie Mortier - Страница 9

The nature of the constitution and the dependence of the minority thereon and hence the necessity for an independent judiciary discussed and illustrated.

A constitution is little less than a firm and binding contract between the majority and the minority, entered into for the sole protection of the minority, with regularly constituted courts to enforce its provisions.

The Supreme Court of the United States, from which every root of the Judiciary Department – one of the three coordinate branches of government – derives its vitality, is our only continuing and unchanging bulwark of liberty.

The executive branch, from President down through all the departments, State, Treasury, War and Navy, is liable to radical change on the fourth day of March every four years. Either house and both houses of Congress frequently change in partisan complexion at a single election. The Supreme Court, the members of which hold by life tenure, remains, theoretically, at least, unchanged.

Unless the people undermine their liberties by “effecting in the forms of the Constitution alterations which will impair the energy of the system,” which Washington warned against, or unless some executive corrupts the personnel of the Supreme Court by filling vacancies with socialists, or other revolutionary elements, Anglican liberty, the hope of the world, is secured in America against everything except bolshevism. With respect to the courts, Washington’s famous order is pertinent: “Place none but Americans on guard tonight.”

WHO IS AN AMERICAN?

Who is an American, worthy to be placed on guard tonight? Is he American born? He may be, and he may have been born beneath any flag and under any sky. An American is one who believes in and is ready to defend this republic. To be ready to defend our territory, or even our flag, is not enough.

Though we continue our socialistic bent and either undermine or overthrow our form of government through peaceful evolution or forceful revolution, with sword or by ballot, the land will remain. The rains will water it, the sun warm it, human life will exist, the Stars and Stripes will still float, but, except from the map, America will be gone forever.

America is more than fertile fields, more than bursting banks, more than waving flags. The America in which one must believe, and for which he must sacrifice, is constitutional liberty and justice according to law, guaranteed and administered by three coordinate branches of government. Just in proportion as we weaken the energy of the system through changes in the Constitution – which Washington so earnestly warned against – we undermine what thus far no one has succeeded in overthrowing.

I repeat, three coordinate branches of government with no subordinate branch! In the America which the world knows, and which we love, laws must be enacted by the legislative branch, and not by the executive or by the proletariat. Laws must be interpreted by an independent judiciary, fearless and unrecallable except by impeachment. And these laws, whose scope is limited by the Constitution, must be administered by the executive and not by the legislative branch. Congress has no more right to direct the manner of execution of its acts than the president has to direct or coerce the nature of its acts. Let each coordinate branch keep hands off the sacred prerogatives of the other. That’s America! And the man who defends her traditions and her institutions, regardless of his nativity, is an American who can safely be placed on guard tonight.

AN ACTUAL MENACE

On February 3, 1919, an editorial writer who has testified that he has six million or more readers, quoted Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, as saying:

“I mean that the people propose to control their government and do not intend any longer to have the governing power exercised by judges on the bench.”

And the editor correctly adds:

“This is as near to an American revolutionary statement as has ever come from a man as important officially as Mr. Gompers.”

Thus the issue is sharply drawn. This organization, if its president has been correctly quoted, intends to abolish one of our coordinate branches of government, to-wit, the courts.

What have the courts done to justify such a radical change in our form of government? When the government was organized the Fathers thought wise to make express provision that no class should ever become the special favorite of legislation. The Constitution forbids class legislation and the courts enforce it. Unless labor union people demand special exemptions from obligations to which all others are amenable, or special privileges denied to others, why do they officially make the revolutionary announcement that the courts are to be abolished? Yet this very thing has the approval of this most widely known and best-paid editorial writer in the world. Pressed in a corner, I presume both would claim that their only desire is to compel the courts promptly to observe popular sentiment instead of studying legal principles and, to that end, propose to subject judges to some kind of recall. And they would doubtless justify all this by the hackneyed phrase, “the people can be trusted.”

Thus they follow Rousseau and Robespierre. The former declared, “The general will, the public will, is always right.” The latter said, “The people is infallible.”

A case that well illustrates this “popular infallibility” as taught by Rousseau and Robespierre, as well as by their present day disciples, occurred in a certain county in Iowa, not fifty miles from my home. A person charged with second degree murder sought his constitutional right of a fair and impartial trial. He made application for a change of venue, alleging that his case had been prejudged and that because of the existing prejudice he could not obtain a fair trial within that county. Five citizens, the minimum requisite number, supported his motion by their affidavits. Promptly, two hundred most reputable citizens filed counter affidavits alleging that there was no prejudice whatever. The judge believed the five. It is probable that he discerned evidence of prejudice in the eagerness with which the two hundred sought to have the case tried in their midst. A change of venue was granted, and that night these two hundred liberty-loving citizens decided they would “no longer have the governing power exercised by judges on the bench,” broke open the jail, hung the accused and would have done violence to the judge if he had not been spirited away.

If you want the opposite view of “popular infallibility,” so you may the better determine for yourself, listen to Colonel Henry Watterson, a democrat of the old school and an American always, in the Brooklyn Eagle of February 1, 1919:

“The people,” says Colonel Watterson, “en masse constitute what we call the mob. Mobs have rarely been right – never, except when capably led. It was the mob of Jerusalem that did the unoffending Jesus of Nazareth to death. It was the mob in Paris that made the Reign of Terror. From that day to this, mobs have seldom been tempted, even had a chance to go wrong, that they have not gone wrong. ‘The people’ is a fetish. It was the people misled, who precipitated the South into the madness of secession and the ruin of a hopelessly unequal war of sections. It was the people, backing if not compelling, the Kaiser, who committed hari-kari for themselves and their empire in Germany. It is the people, leaderless, who are now making havoc in Russia. Throughout the length and breadth of Christendom in all lands and ages, the people, when turned loose, have raised every inch of hell to the square inch they were able to raise, often upon the slightest pretext, or no pretext at all.”

OFFICIAL TIMIDITY AND ITS EFFECTS

In some, perhaps most of the states, candidates for either House of Congress, knowing in advance that if, by investigation and by listening to arguments pro and con, they arrive at conclusions based on knowledge that differ from the impressions of their constituents based on prejudice, they will never be returned, make more or less formal announcement that, if elected, they will study no question but, when ready to vote, will inquire of those who have had neither opportunity nor desire to inform themselves, and vote as directed. We pay congressmen and senators of this type – just the same as statesmanlike representatives – seven thousand, five hundred dollars a year, and they vote as they are told to vote. If I am correctly informed, in some states men have been found who will vote as they are instructed for considerably less money even than that.

While the bill was pending to declare war against Germany, I called upon a Congressman who, without question, is the ablest man from his state. He had written to lawyers, bankers, farmers and labor men in his district, asking how he should vote on that momentous question. He handed me a package of replies he had received. I returned them and asked: “Do you agree with the President that Germany is already making war upon the United States?” “Yes,” he replied, “she has waged war against us for more than two years.” “Do you think your constituents know better than you what should be done?” His up-to-date reply was: “My constituents know nothing whatever about it, but I want to be re-elected.”

But not every congressman is that subservient. A certain well-known representative of a strongly German district in Ohio explained his support of the declaration of war in this language:

“If I were to permit any solicitude for my political future to govern my action, I might hesitate, but, gentlemen of the House, the only interest to which I give heed tonight is the interest of the American people; the only future to which I look is the future of my country.”

A few years ago a bill was pending to revise the tariff and a member of Congress from a certain industrial district arose and informed the House that he had written to several labor men in his district and asked them how he should vote and that he had received a telegram saying, “Vote for the bill.” He obeyed. This member did not profess to vote his convictions. In fact, he did not claim to be troubled with convictions. And I submit that if a man is to vote the sentiment of his district, rather than his judgment, it is foolish to waste the time of men of judgment by sending them to Congress. It would be more appropriate and in far better taste to send men who have nothing else to do. A thousand dollars a year ought to be enough for a man who bears no responsibility except to listen well, especially if he be of a caliber willing to act as a “rubber stamp” for the people at home.

Right here I want to venture an opinion, asking no one to agree with me: The gravest danger that confronts the United States of America, or that has confronted her in the last decade, has not been the armed forces against which we sent our brave boys in khaki, but in the fact that there are hundreds of representatives, and thousands of ambitious politicians, who cannot be purchased with the wealth of Croesus, but who will vote for anything and everything if by so doing they can advance their political fortunes.