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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

THE most remarkable document in the world's history is the Constitution of the United States. This is not because, as is often alleged, the Constitution came hot-forged from the brains of those intrusted with the task of drawing up a form of government for the federated States, for not so did the Constitution come into existence. Nor because among the great documents adjusting human differences and binding together diversified interests the Constitution stands unique in its provisions, for upon analysis its constituent parts will be found to rest upon well defined and frequently expressed principles. The reason why we rank the Constitution so high among governmental monuments lies in the simple fact of its present existence, or, in other words, because of that quality of elasticity by which a document intended for one purpose has been made to serve another. The Constitution in its original form was a compact between thirteen quarrelling colonies; but so well was it formulated and so nicely were its parts adjusted that it has endured the stress of expansion until to-day, with comparatively slight alteration either by direct legislation or by conventional alteration, it binds together forty-seven strong States even more firmly—and this regardless of the Civil War than it united the weak colonies. It is for this quality of flexibility and expansiveness that we designate the Constitution of the United States the most remarkable document in the world's history.

Though we are forced to deny the statement of eminent historians that the Constitution is an original creation for whose conception those who formed it owe no thanks to aught beyond their own intellects and the conditions of material and political circumstances, and that in its provisions we find unique conceptions of the political rights of man or of the forms for foreseeing these rights, we are forced to commend the wisdom with which materials at hand were used and theories and forms borrowed from France and England were availed of; and we ascribe to the great body of the Constitution a larger merit than we are willing to concede to any other instrument of government.

In the volume to which these words are an introduction, Professor Moran has with skill and accuracy set forth the proof that makes for this thesis. He has given in convincing statement the record of those years in which the loose-bonded and ineffectively ruled confederation gave way to the strongly welded and firmly self-governing federated States that now regard Union as the key to present prosperity and future greatness. Professor Moran has been singularly fortunate in his mental attitude-this has, seemingly, been dual: he has regarded the participants in the great movement that culminates in the Constitution as impersonally as it is possible for an author to regard a subject in which his interest is deep; but at the same time he has, because of adequate knowledge of the period treated by him, been able to go behind the veil that the past too often drops between the motives of men and the eyes of their successors, and gives not only the conventional account of the occurrences in the sequence that led to the Constitution but the motives of the men and the influences brought to bear upon them in that time of stress, when the Articles of Confederation were proving their defectiveness and men were demanding a firmer and stronger government, and yet insisting that the sovereignty of the several States be preserved.

There is in the volume before us a worth that transcends even the clarity of style, the wealth of interesting incident,

and the swift movement of events with their momentous consequence. The period of the making of the Constitution is filled with lessons for Americans-lessons that have had important bearing upon our country's history-lessons that have been well learned by the great statesmen who have made the government of the United States what it is to-day.

We may say then of this volume in THE HISTORY OF NORTH AMERICA: It sets forth the environment by which the makers of the Constitution were influenced, placing before the reader in terse and illuminating phrases the conditions, material and political, that faced the "Fathers"; it details the occurrences of those pregnant years that intervened between the close of the Revolution and the definite establishment of the Federal government, and it also contains the key to the policy that for more than a century has guided the United States; further, it describes not only the manner in which the compact of government was ratified, but it gives an account of the steps by which it became not only a symbol of union but an effective working plan for federative action. It is, therefore, a pivotal volume in its series, and one that every student of American history may profitably study. GUY CARLEton Lee.

Johns Hopkins University.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

AN attempt has been made in this volume to set forth the defects of the Articles of Confederation, to note the causes leading up to the forming of a more perfect Union, to trace the steps in the formation and ratification of the Constitution and in its interpretation and development under Federal and early Republican control. The period with which the volume deals is distinctly constitutional, but an attempt has been made to give an adequate treatment to other phases as well. The period covered possesses both importance and unity. It is important because at the time of the narrative the permanent form of government under which we are now living was formulated and adopted; and it possesses unity because it witnessed the failure of one form of government and the formation, ratification, inauguration, interpretation, and development of another. The period is, comparatively speaking, complete in itself, since it begins with the inception of the Federal Constitution, and closes when that form of government is in good working condition; and yet the reader will observe that the treatment of the epoch is not complete in every respect. There are some phases of the subject which have been dismissed with a scanty treatment because of extensive elaboration in other volumes of the series.

It does not seem to be feasible even to mention at this time the names of all of those who have rendered assistance in the preparation of this volume, but the writer wishes to make grateful recognition of the many courtesies which he

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