e object justified. A very good illustration
of this is to be found in the Federal Employer's Liability Act which
was carelessly drawn and passed by Congress in 1906 and was declared
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but which was carefully drawn and
passed by Congress in 1908 and was declared constitutional by the same
court.

Insistence upon hasty and violent methods rather than orderly and
deliberate methods is really a result of impatience with the slow methods
of true progress in popular government. We should probably make little
progress were there not in every generation some men who, realizing evils,
are eager for reform, impatient of delay, indignant at opposition, and
intolerant of the long, slow processes by which the great body of the
people may consider new proposals in all their relations, weigh their
advantages and disadvantages, discuss their merits, and become educated
either to their acceptance or rejection. Yet that is the method of progress
in which no step, once taken, needs to be retraced; and it is the only way
in which a democracy can avoid destroying its institutions by the impulsive
substitution of novel and attractive but impracticable expedients.

The wisest of all the fathers of the Republic has spoken, not for his
own day alone but for all generations to come after him, in the solemn
admonitions of the Farewell Address. It was to us that Washington spoke
when he said:

"The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make
and to alter their constitutions of government; but the Constitution
which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic
act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all.... Towards
the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present
happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance
irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you
resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however
specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the
forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of
the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In
all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and
habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments
as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard