deed if our Constitution had omitted the great principles set forth in the original ten amendments. However potent the arguments of Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Madison, that the Constitution itself was a Bill of Rights and that it was unnecessary to add more on that subject, without these original amendments the Constitution would have been far different from what it is. Had not these articles been incorporated into that great instrument serious consequences might have followed, for in the absence of express provisions which guaranteed these great bulwarks of freedom, it is difficult to tell what rights the people would have had at the end of a century and a quarter of national life.

The first ten amendments were fundamental. They formulated certain great and inherent rights of the people and then embodied them into constitutional provisions. They did not create any new rights, but reduced what had previously been indefinite propositions into comprehensive maxims of constitutional law. It was not so, however, with the next two amendments which were adopted. There was a special cause for each of these. The Eleventh Amendment would probably never have been adopted but for the decision of the Supreme Court in Chisholm v. Georgia. The Twelfth Amendment grew out of the presidential contest between Jefferson and Burr. The latest amendments, being the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth, as has been already stated, grew out of the Civil War and were the logical result of that struggle. Not to have adopted them would have been wholly inconsistent with the dominant theory of American liberty. To have fought the war to a successful termination, to have overcome the rebellion and then left those who had formerly been slaves in a helpless condition and without governmental protection would have been at variance with the spirit of the federal Constitution.

Amendments adopted but not ratified.-Besides the amendments to the Constitution which were adopted, four were proposed which passed Congress but failed of ratification by the requisite number of States. Two of these were passed by the first Congress at the same time the first ten amendments were passed. The first one read: "After the first enumeration required by the first ar

ticle of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred; after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons."

The second provided: "No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives shall take effect until an election of Representatives shall have intervened."

This amendment was suggested by the Conventions of Virginia, North Carolina and New York at the time they ratified the Constitution. The object was to prevent Congress from increasing the compensation of its members at pleasure.

Various attempts have since been made to secure the adoption and ratification of such an amendment, but they were not successful.

No further amendment to the Constitution was passed by both houses of Congress, until 1810, in the Eleventh Congress, when Senator Reed of Maryland proposed the following:

"If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive, or retain any title of nobility or honor, or shall, without the consent of Congress, accept and retain any present, pension, office, or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince, or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States, and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them or either of them."

This was not an amendment which proposed to incorporate new matter into the Constitution but its object was to amend one of the original provisions of that instrument. The clause which related to titles of nobility being granted by the United States and which forbade any person holding any office of profit or trust under the United States, without the consent of Congress, ac

cepting any present, emolument, office or title from any king, prince or foreign state, was not satisfactory to many people.

The state conventions of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New York each urged a similar amendment. The amendment also proposed that the words, "without the consent of Congress" should be omitted from the Constitution. Neither of these proposed amendments was accepted. Opposition to a similar amendment arose in the first Congress when that body was considering the amendments proposed by Mr. Madison. Three attempts were made to have Congress pass an amendment on this subject, but without

success.

While Senator Reed's resolution was pending other amendments were proposed but none of them were accepted and the amendment as above given passed the Senate by a vote of nineteen yeas to five nays and passed the House with but three nays. It failed of ratification by the vote of only one State.

It is difficult to understand at this day the cause of the feeling on this subject. The Constitution prevented the granting of titles by the United States as well as the acceptance of gifts from kings and princes without the consent of Congress. Seemingly that body could have been trusted. President Jefferson, as we have seen, had accepted a bust as a present from the Emperor of Russia but that fact does not seem to have been criticized either by Congress or by the people.

Professor McMaster23 has assigned, as the reason why such an amendment was desired, the hostile sentiment in the United States towards England and in support of his opinion points to the conduct of some of the States; notably that of Kentucky, when its General Assembly passed a resolution that in the future, "No decision of any British court and no treaty on law by any British author should be cited as authority in any court of that State." Henry Clay was then Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives, and although the motion was popular and had the support generally of the members of the assembly and the people of the State, he opposed it, and leaving the Speaker's chair, spoke in opposition to it. Although Clay

23 McMaster's History, vol. 3, 417, 418.

was the idol of Kentucky, he could do no more than secure an amendment to the resolution which limited its application to legal works which had been written by British authors since the Declaration of Independence.24 The hostility to England had extended to other States. Pennsylvania was quite as demonstrative as Kentucky had been and passed a similar resolution which was in force for twenty years.

The following is the fourth amendment proposed to the Constitution which passed Congress, but failed of ratification:

"No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress, the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."

This amendment was proposed by Thomas Corwin, a representative in Congress from Ohio, on February 21, 1861. It passed the House by a vote of one hundred and thirty-three yeas to sixty-five nays. It was strongly opposed in the Senate, but that body approved it by a vote of twenty-four yeas to twelve nays-just the required number. Only three States, however, ratified it, Ohio, Maryland and Illinois, the latter State by a convention called for considering the amendment.25 This is the only instance where a State has ever ratified an amendment through a State Convention.

Nine proposed amendments have passed the Senate and failed in the House and nine have passed the House and failed in the Senate. A recent amendment authorizing the taxation of incomes has passed Congress and is pending before the States. Fifty-four amendments were proposed in the Forty-ninth Congress, forty-eight in the Fiftieth Congress and in the Fifty-second Congress there were seventy-three.26 The number proposed now exceeds two thousand.

24 Schurz, Life of Clay, 49, 50.

25 Ames on The Amendments, 196. 26 Ames on The Amendments, 300.

Appendix No. 1.

DECLARATION OF RIGHTS.

Friday, October 14, 1774. Whereas, since the close of the last war, the British parliament, claiming a power of right, to bind the people of America by statutes in all cases whatsoever, hath, in some acts, expressly imposed taxes on them, and in others, under various pretences, but in fact for the purpose of raising a revenue, hath imposed rates and duties payable in these colonies, established a board of commissioners, with unconstitutional powers, and extended a jurisdiction of courts of admiralty, not only for collecting the said duties, but for the trial of causes merely arising within the body of a county:

And whereas, in consequence of other statutes, judges, who before held only estates at will in their offices, have been made dependent on the crown alone for their salaries, and standing armies kept in times of peace: And whereas it has lately been resolved in parliament, that by force of a statute, made in the thirty-fifth year of the reign of King Henry the Eighth, colonists may be transported to England, and tried there upon accusations for treasons, and misprisions, or concealments of treasons, committed in the colonies, and by a late statute, such trials have been directed in cases therein mentioned:

And whereas, in the last session of parliament, three statutes were made; one entitled, "An act to discontinue, in such manner and for such time as are therein mentioned, the landing and discharging, lading, or shipping, of goods, wares, and merchandise, at the town, and within the harbour of Boston, in the province of MassachusettsBay, in North America;" another entitled "An act for the better regulating the government of the province of Massachusetts-Bay in New England;" and another, entitled "An act for the impartial administration of justice, in the cases of persons questioned for any act done by them