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It was certainly a startling novelty to have the customs of the realm drawn up in a written code to which men were required to swear obedience; but still the "Constitutions" professed to be no new legislation, but to be simply a statement of recognized national tradition. The changes that had followed on the Conquest had modified older customs profoundly.
By adopting one or another sense of the single word "free," the whole instrument is changed. Yet the word free is capable of some ten or twenty different senses. So that, by changing the sense of that single word, some ten or twenty different constitutions could be made out of the same written instrument.
In some constitutions sassafras, by its extreme fragrance, is said to produce headache: to deprive it of this effect, the decoction ought to be employed. Woodville's Mat. Med. p. 677. LEONTODON Taraxicum. N EBION. Root. L. The roots contain a bitter milky juice; they promise to be of use as asperient and detergent medicines; and have sometimes been directed in this intention with good success.
The reasons for the extensive and unconditional manner in which he swore to support the provincial charters, have been already indicated. Of these constitutions, that of Brabant, known by the title of the 'joyeuse entree, blyde inkomst', or blithe entrance, furnished the most decisive barrier against the present wholesale tyranny.
Full well did they know also that those were times when, in matters of high import, nothing was left to be "implied." The colonies were then panting from a twenty years' conflict with the mother country, about bills of rights, charters, treaties, constitutions, grants, limitations, and acts of cession.
"There we were treated worse, if possible, than on board the Jersey, and our accommodations were infinitely worse, for the Jersey, being an old, condemned 64 gun ship had two tiers of ports fore and aft, air-ports, and large hatchways, which gave a pretty free circulation of air through the ship; whereas the John, being a merchant-ship, and with small hatchways, and the hatchways being laid down every night, and no man being allowed to go on deck * the effluvia arising from these, together with the already contaminated air, occasioned by the breath of so many people so pent up together, was enough to destroy men of the most healthy and robust constitutions.
The Forty Colonies, it appears, are all pretty like rebelling just now; and are to be pacified with constitutions; luckier Constitutions, let us hope, than some late ones have been.
These are general limitations. Congress cannot do these things any where. The exact import, therefore, of the clause "in all cases whatsoever," is, on all subjects within the appropriate sphere of legislation. Some legislatures are restrained by constitutions, from the exercise of powers strictly within the proper sphere of legislation. Congressional power over the District has no such restraint.
Under the present procedure for amendment to constitutions, propositions for amendment are first considered and debated face to face in a legislature or constitutional convention by representatives of the people, and cannot be submitted to the people until after opportunity for full and free discussion by their representatives, and the people themselves have thereby been more or less prepared for its consideration.
Without any surcease of dignity they grew communicative, and passed from lands to peoples and from peoples to constitutions. Before we knew it we were embarked upon high politics. Naturally we did not differ on the war. Like me, they held it to have been a grievous necessity. They had no bitterness against England, only regrets for her blunders.
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