The Constitution is the great charter under which, and within which, the laws are made. No law that Congress may pass is worth the paper it is printed on if it is contrary to the Constitution. Such laws have been passed ignorantly, and have died.
A very simple illustration is at hand. The constitution of this College is Mr. Girard’s will. This is our charter. The laws which the Directors make must be within the provisions of the will or they will not stand. For instance, the will directs that none but orphans can be admitted here; and the courts have decided that a child without a father is an orphan. The directors, therefore, cannot admit the child who has a father living. The will says that only boys can be admitted; therefore no law that the Directors can make will admit a girl. Nor can the Directors make a law which will admit a colored boy; nor a boy under six nor over ten years of age; nor a boy born anywhere except in certain States of our country—Pennsylvania, New York and Louisiana. It would be UNCONSTITUTIONAL. I think now you see the difference between the Constitution and the laws.
Now, again, is our government better than a monarchy? and why?
Because the men of the present time make it, and are not bound by the traditions of far-off times. There are improvements in the science of government as in all other human inventions, as the centuries come and go. Man is progressive; he would not be worth caring for if he were not. If the present age has not produced a higher and better development in all essentials, it is our own fault, and is not because men were perfect in the past or cannot be better in the present or in the future. Therefore when our Constitution is believed not to meet the requirements of the present day there is a way to amend it, although that way is so hedged up that it cannot possibly be altered without ample time for consideration. As a matter of fact, the Constitution has been altered or amended fifteen times since its adoption; and it will be changed or amended as often as the needs of the people require it.
We believe our form of government to be better than any monarchy because the people choose their own law-makers. The Congress is composed of two houses or chambers: the members of the Senate, chosen by the legislatures of the States, two from each State, to serve for six years; the members of the House of Representatives (chosen by the citizens), who sit for two years only, unless re-elected. The Senate is supposed to be the more conservative body, not easily moved by popular clamor; while the Representatives, chosen directly and recently by the voters, are supposed to know the immediate wants of the people. The thought of two houses grew probably from the two houses of the British parliament.
We cannot have an hereditary legislature like the House of Lords in the British parliament, whose members sit, as the sovereign rules, by divine right, as they say, and with the same result in some instances: for the sovereign may be a mere figure-head, or only the nominal ruler, while the cabinet is the real government, and the House of Lords long ago sunk far below the House of Commons in real influence. There is no better reason for this than the fact that the people have nothing to do with the House of Lords and the sovereign, except to depose and scatter them when they choose to rise in their power and assert themselves.
We can have no orders of nobility under our Constitution. There can be no privileged class. All men are equal under the law. I do not mean that all persons are equal in all respects. Divine Providence has made us unequal. Some are endowed naturally with the highest mental and physical gifts and distinctions; some are strong and others weak. This has always been so and always will be so. Some have inherited or acquired riches, while others have to labor diligently to make a bare living. Some have inherited their high culture and gentle manners and noble instincts, which, in a general sense, we sometimes call culture; and others have to acquire all this for themselves—and it is not very easy to get it. So there is no such thing as absolute equality, and cannot be; but before the law, in the enjoyment of our rights and in the undisturbed possession of what we have, we are all equal, as we could not be under a monarchy. Here there is no legal bar to success; all places are open to all.
There can be no law of primogeniture under our Constitution. By this law, which still prevails in England, the eldest son inherits the titles and estates of the father, while the younger sons and all the daughters must be provided for in other ways. Some of the sons are put in the church, in the army or the navy, or in the professions, such as law and medicine; but it is very rare indeed that any son of a noble house is willing to engage in any kind of business or trade, for they are not so well thought of if they become tradesmen.
There can be no state church, no establishment, under our Constitution. In England the Episcopal Church, and in Scotland the Presbyterian Church, are established by law; and until within the last seventeen years the Church of England was by law established in Ireland; and it is now established in Wales; and in other countries of Europe the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church and the Greek Church are established by law. In countries where there is a national church, it derives more or less of its support from taxing the people, many of whom do not belong to it; but in this land there is no established church; and there never can be, let us hope and believe.