ecting the
proposed plan of government, a bitter controversy at once ensued between
two political parties, then in process of formation, one called the
Constitution ratified without controversy. In the remaining ten the
struggle was long and arduous, and nearly a year passed before the
requisite nine States gave their assent. Two of the States refused to
become parts of the new nation, even after it began, and three years
passed before the thirteen States were re-united under the Constitution.

It could not have been ratified had there not been an assurance that
there would be immediate amendments to provide a Bill of Rights to
safeguard the individual. Thus came into existence the first ten
amendments to the Constitution, with their perpetual guaranty of the
fundamental rights of religion, freedom of speech and of the Press, the
right of assemblage, the immunity from unreasonable searches and
seizures, the right of trial by jury, and similar guarantees of
fundamental individual rights.

Distrustful as the American people were of the new Constitution, they
yet had the political sagacity to prefer its imperfections, whatever
they imagined them to be, to the mad spirit of innovation; and in order
that the great instrument should not, through the excesses of party
passion or the temporary caprices of fleeting generations, speedily
become a mere "scrap of paper" they very wisely provided that no
amendment should, in the future, be made unless it was proposed by at
least two-thirds of the Senate and the House of Representatives and
ratified by three-fourths of the States through their legislatures or
through special conventions. This was only one of many striking
negations of the principle of majority rule. As a result of this
provision, if we count the first ten amendments as virtually part of the
original document, only nine amendments have been adopted in 185 years,
and of these, excepting the amendments which ended slavery as the result
of the Civil War, only the last three, passed in recent years partly
through the relaxing influence of the world war, mark a serious
departure from the basic principles of the Constitution.

This stability is the more remarkable when we recall the profound and
revolutionary change that has taken place in the social life of man
since the Constitution was adopted. It was framed at the very end of the
pastoral-agricultural age of humanity. The industrial revolution, which
has more profoun