James Beck

Hamilton later thought better of the Constitution, and its successful beginning is due in large measure to his genius for constructive administration.

In so doing, he fought a valorous fight, secured the acquiescence of the State of New York, and without its ratification the Constitution would never have been adopted.

Again the words of Washington suggest themselves: "If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work?

It is evident that if the framers of the Constitution had met, as similar conventions have within recent years met at Versailles and Genoa, with the world as their gallery and with the representatives of the Press as an integral part of…

I recognize that public opinion--often temporarily uninformed but in the end generally right--does often save the democracies of the world from the selfish ends of self-seeking and misguided leadership; but, given noble and wise…

Grateful as posterity must be for this inestimable gift of great human enterprise, yet even Madison's careful journal fills one with the deepest regret that this wonderful debate, which lasted for nearly four months between men of no…

In these days, when representative government has degenerated into government by a fleeting public opinion, the price we pay for such government by, for and of the Press, is too often the inability of representatives to do what they deem…

Let us raise a standard to which the wise and just can repair.

If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work?

To George Washington, soldier and statesman, is due above all men the ideal of a federated union, for without his influence--that of a noble and unselfish leader--the great result would probably never have been secured.

Washington, however, had warmly welcomed the creation of a strong central government, and his correspondence with the leading men of the colonies for some years previously had been burdened with arguments to convince them that a mere…

Leagues of States had often existed, but a league which, within a prescribed sphere, would have direct authority over the citizens of the constituent States, without, however, abolishing the authority of such States as to their reserved…

They differed, at times heatedly, but always as gentlemen of candour and honour.

They represented the spirit of representative government at its best in avoiding the cowardice of time-servers and the low cunning of demagogues.

To weld thirteen jealous and discordant States, demoralized by an exhausting war, into a unified and efficient nation against their wills, was a seemingly impossible task.

As I have already shown in my first lecture, credit was gone, business paralysed, lawlessness triumphant, and not only between class and class, but between State and State, there were acute controversies and an alarming disunity of spirit.

The Constitution is to-day, not a ruined Parthenon, but rather as one of those Gothic masterpieces, against which the storms of passionate strife have beaten in vain.

It reveals a people who, without shedding a drop of blood, calmly and deliberately abolished one government, substituted another, and erected it upon foundations which have hitherto proved enduring.

The thing is so unaccountable that I hardly know how to realize it or to persuade myself that I am not under an illusion of a dream.

It was but the other day that we were shedding our blood to obtain the Constitutions under which we now live, and now we are unsheathing our swords to overturn them.

What, gracious God, is man that there should be such inconsistency, and perfidiousness in his conduct!

From the high ground we stood upon, from the plain path which invited our footsteps, to be so fallen, so lost, is mortifying; but everything of virtue has, in a degree, taken its departure from our land....

Indeed, we are verging so fast to destruction that I am feeling that sense to which I have been a stranger until within these three months.

I have seen without despondency, even for a moment, the hours which America has styled its gloomy ones, but I have beheld no day since the commencement of hostilities that I thought our liberties in such imminent danger as at present.

By such policy as this the wheels of government are clogged, and our brightest prospects, and that high expectation which was entertained of us by the wondering world, are turned into astonishment; and, from the high ground on which we…