We All Know What Has Been The Fate Of
The Constitutions Which Were Written Throughout The French
Revolution For The Use Of France.
We all, here in England, have the
same ludicrous conception of Utopian theories of government framed
by philosophical individuals who imagine that they have learned from
books a perfect system of managing nations.
To produce such
theories is especially the part of a Frenchman; to disbelieve in
them is especially the part of an Englishman. But in the States a
system of government has been produced, under a written
constitution, in which no Englishman can disbelieve, and which every
Frenchman must envy. It has done its work. The people have been
free, well educated, and politically great. Those among us who are
most inclined at the present moment to declare that the institutions
of the United States have failed, can at any rate only declare that
they have failed in their finality; that they have shown themselves
to be insufficient to carry on the nation in its advancing strides
through all times. They cannot deny that an amount of success and
prosperity, much greater than the nation even expected for itself,
has been achieved under this Constitution and in connection with it.
If it be so, they cannot disbelieve in it. Let those who now say
that it is insufficient, consider what their prophecies regarding it
would have been had they been called on to express their opinions
concerning it when it was proposed in 1787. If the future as it has
since come forth had then been foretold for it, would not such a
prophecy have been a prophecy of success?
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