"From the skill and ability of the reporter, there can be no doubt that the substance of the debates, as well as their general course, are accurately preserved."
In his preface to the third volume, embracing the North Carolina and Pennsylvania conventions, he says:
"The first of the two North Carolina conventions is contained in this volume; the second convention, it is believed, was neither systematically reported nor printed." "The debates in the Pennsylvania convention, that have been preserved, it appears, are on one side only; a search into the contemporary publications of the day, has been unsuccessful to furnish us with the other side of the question."
In his preface to the fourth volume, he says:
"In compiling the opinions, on constitutional questions, delivered in congress, by some of the most enlightened senators and representatives, the files of the New York and Philadelphia newspapers, from 1789 to 1800, had to be relied on; from the latter period to the present, the National Intelligencer is the authority consulted for the desired information."
It is from such stuff as this, collected and published thirty-five and forty years after the constitution was adopted—stuff very suitable for constitutional dreams to be made of—that our courts and people now make their constitutional law, in preference to adopting the law of the constitution itself. In this way they manufacture law strong enough to bind three millions of men in slavery.
CHAPTER X.
THE PRACTICE OF THE GOVERNMENT.
The practice of the government, under the constitution, has not altered the legal meaning of the instrument. It means now what it did before it was ratified, when it was first offered to the people for their adoption or rejection. One of the advantages of a written constitution is, that it enables the people to see what its character is before they adopt it; and another is, that it enables them to see, after they have adopted it, whether the government adheres to it, or departs from it. Both these advantages, each of which is indispensable to liberty, would be entirely forfeited, if the legal meaning of a written constitution were one thing when the instrument was offered to the people for their adoption, and could then be made another thing by the government after the people had adopted it.