Jeniffer electronic book

Those
estimable gentlemen believed devoutly that the Constitution, which
created the problem of slavery and provoked the anti-slavery agitation,
was adequate to its solution. In the same spirit learned lawyers now
affirm that the existing problems can easily be solved, if only American
public opinion remain faithful to the Constitution. But it may be that
the Constitution, as well as the system of local political government
built up around the Federal Constitution, is itself partly responsible
for some of the existing abuses, evils, and problems; and if so, the
American lawyer may be useful, as he was before the Civil War, in
evading our difficulties; but he will not be very useful in settling
them. He may try to settle them by decisions of the Supreme Court; but
such decisions,--assuming, of course, that the problem is as inexorable
as was that of the legal existence of slavery in a democratic
nation,--such decisions would have precisely the same effect on public
opinion as did the Dred Scott decision.


Pages:
274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298