It will be sufficient, in case our practical proposals seek to
accomplish some small measure both of political and economic
reconstruction, and in case they occupy some sort of a family relation
to plans of the same kind with which American public opinion is already
more or less familiar.
In considering this matter of institutional reform, I shall be guided
chiefly by the extent to which certain specific reforms have already
become living questions. From this point of view it would be a sheer
waste of time just at present to discuss seriously any radical
modification, say, of the Federal Constitution. Certain transformations
of the Constitution either by insidious effect of practice, by
deliberate judicial construction, or by amendment are, of course, an
inevitable aspect of the contemporary American political problem; but
all such possible and proposed changes must be confined to specific
details. They should not raise any question as to the fundamental
desirability of a system of checks and balances or of the other
principles upon which the Federal political organization is based.
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