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Show GOOD ENOUGH AS IT IS. Let the Constitution alone!" was the essence of the sentiment of the meeting of the American Bar Association, which has just closed its forty-seventh annual convention in Philadelphia, under the presidency pres-idency of Robert E. Lee) Saner of Dallas, Texas. Mr. Saner noted that in the last Congress there were a hundred proposals to amend the fundamental law of the land, most of them looking towards making of the national government a sort of super-beaurocracy super-beaurocracy of wholly paternalistic tendency. It is generally understood and agreed by all of us that the national government, within the laws made and provided and nuder the Constitution, is all powerful. Because the Constitution provides a means by which it may be amended, the national and state legislatures legis-latures have the right, the power, the ability to amend it. But it should be most carefully noted tNat because a man may do something is no reason why he must do it, and that there is a social obligation which prevents the exercise of many rights either given or implied by law. No statute compells a man to wear a coat or collar in public, remove his hat in church, or forbids him to paint his house pink with green dragons on it. A sane observance of decency and neighborli-ness neighborli-ness prevents him from doing that which would make others uncomfortable uncom-fortable merely because he has a right to do it. That same sane observance ob-servance of the unwritten rights of us all, must be encouraged to prevent pre-vent law makers from doing what they have a right to do, merely because they have it. The Constitution is the underlying force: which has made the United States great. We know what is can do, because we know what it has done. We do not know what it may do if repeatedly amended. Neither this nor any statements by the great lawyers of the American Bar Association are intended to mean that the Constitution Consti-tution should nevir be amended, but only that it should be amended but slowly, and not until absolute necessity of that amendment is clearly and unequivocally shown to exist. If every Congress passed a hundred amen dments to the Constitution, and every year saw those one hndured enactments ratified by three-fourths of the States, the great and fundamental law of this land would lose its character in half a decade. "We, the people of the United States" would then find ourselves living, not under the republic fonuded and cherished by the forefathers; 'fought, bled and died for our patriots, loved and protected pro-tected by Lincoln, and held up as a god among governments by the oppressed of all the earth, but under a new, untried and doubtful form of roveihment which, because it could not do bette r than the constitu tional government has done would inevitably do far worse. Let the Constitution alone!" mi;ht well be coupled with "Honor the flag!" as a basic American crr. |