e Constitution is the organic law of the nation, and stands for the
firm foundation of our national life. The indissoluble bond of the
Union, it is itself the palladium of our liberties. It is, in fine, the
grandest chart of liberty and law, of justice and political order, which
the world ever saw. The man who dares knowingly violate its provisions
merits the punishment that followed the sacrilegious touch of David's
servant to the ark of the covenant--instant death. In the midst of a
fierce conflict with traitors who set at nought its binding force, let
us beware lest in our zeal to punish them we be not guilty of an equal
crime!

We yield, then, to no one in our devotion to the Constitution. We will
not allow that any one goes before us in reverence for it. But we are of
those who think that the time has come, in the providence of God, for
an amendment to its provisions.

Indeed, the Constitution derives not the least portion of its claim upon
our tender regard from the fact that it recognizes the eternal law of
progress; and, while establishing a government whose stability should be
as enduring as the principles upon which it is based, does not assume to
declare that it has exhausted the possibilities of the future. Guarding
against any and every impulse of popular passion, it nevertheless leaves
scope for the necessary changes of time and circumstance, which may make
the politic statesmanship of one period the exploded fallacy of the
next. For of the science of politics it may be said, as in the glowing
eulogy of Macaulay upon the philosophy of Bacon: 'It is a philosophy
which never rests, which has never attained its end, which is never
perfect. Its law is progress. A point which yesterday was invisible is
its goal to-day, and will be its starting-post to-morrow.' Political
science, indeed, is only another one of those 'illustrations of
universal progress,' which the genius of Herbert Spenser has made
familiar to our literature. And therefore it is that we cannot too much
admire the sagacity of the patriots who framed our Constitution. It was
a sagacity drawing its inspiration from all history, which taught, and
teaches, that if progress is attempted to be checked, it will find vent
in volcanic revolution. Reformation is the watchword of history: anarchy
and destruction the fate of those nations which heed it not.

Thus it was that the principle of amendment found its way into the
Constitution of the United State