CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

The following article "About Amending the Constitution," by Hon. David A. De Armond, member of Congress from Missouri, is the second of a series written for the Intercollegiate Civic League by prominent politicians and men of affairs. These articles, which are nonpartisan in character, are aimed to encourage an active interest in politics among college men.

The first of the series, printed last Saturday, was by Jacob Riis.

About Amending the Constitution.

Is it desirable to amend the Federal Constitution? Is it desirable even to consider the subject of amending the Constitution?

I will assume, as it apears to me one may safely assume, that a majority of those who have thought about the matter at all unite in the conclusion that by amendment the Constitution could be improved.

A prerequisite to any amendment must be the opportunity to amend. There are two methods and only two for amending; the one through the initiative of the Congress; which may from time to time, with the concurrence of two-thirds of each House, propose amendments; the other, through the initiative of two-thirds of the States, upon the call of whose legislatures the Congress shall provide for a Convention to propose amendments. However proposed, no amendment can become a part of the Constitution unless ratified by three-fourths of the States, by action of Legislature or Convention in each, respectively. All this is provided in Article V of the Constitution.

No convention to propose amendments to the Constitution has ever assembled; all amendments heretofore ratified originated in the Congress. Most of them are almost as old as the Constitution itself, and were considered when the Constitution was under consideration for ratification or rejection, and were informally endorsed when it was ratified. One other amendment came as a result of the Jefferson-Burr contest for the Presidency. Three amendments--the only ones made in the last hundred years--are the Constitutional product of the war of 1861-5.

How many amendments to the Constitution have been advocated and urged in the long period since the Colonies became States under it I do not know, and if we did know, the information would be curious rather than valuable. It is enough to know that many and great changes have occurred in this country and in the world in that time--changes political, social, material. Mighty agencies unknown, not dreamed of, when the Constitution was framed are common-place now. The most momentous problems of our day had no existence for the statesmen of that earlier day. Govermental machinery almost indispensable today would have been well nigh useless then. In many respects conditions are entirely changed. If the constitution-makers of the past and widely-different age provided for the exigencies of this period, of whose many new things and new conditions they did not and could not know, happy chance or the direct agency of omniscience must have interposed.

Veneration and admiration of and for the Constitution need not and should not cause us to forget that men--great men, many of them, but yet all mere men--framed it, in the light of their day; that everyone of them is dead; that now the Constitution is for us, the living, and not for them or their generation of the dead. So, the vital question is what we believe we need rather than what they believed they and their contemporaries needed; and, if you please to speculate about that, what you think they thought we would or might need.

Why should we so completely lose ourselves in admiration of the Fathers, so glorify their wisdom and courage, by confessing that we are weak and foolish, and by demonstrating our timidity? If the Fathers had lacked the moral courage to consider even the question of the practicability and desirability of framing the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation would have been accepted as a frail bond of union. A tithe of the courage and independence required of them ought to suffice for us in the duty of considering whether there should be any amendment.

The Congress will not propose any amendment of importance--a glance at history and even a hurried view of present conditions surely must banish every doubt about that. It is a generation since the Congress proposed any amendment, and yet there has been ceaseless agitation for amendment.

There is but one way to amend the Constitution, or even to real, sooer consideration of the subject of amendment, and that is through the action of State Legislatures, moving upon the Congress for a Constitutional Convention.

No amendment can be made so long as so many--I might say rew--as twelve States withhold their endorsement. Should not this pregnant fact alone be sufficient to banish the fears of the timid, resolve the doubts of those who are undecided, and stimulate the courage and arouse the energy of those who would employ the living, instead of invoking ever and only the guidance of the dead?

Even if the Convention were to come and go without a single change in the Constitution, still it would not have been created in vain. A centring of thought upon the Constitution and upon propositions for amendment, and their serious consideration, sure to attend and follow the amendment movement, could hardly fail to be productive of great good. Perhaps but few amendments would be proposed, and fewer still would be ratified. But the entire field would be explored; existing powers and limitations would be better understood; wholesome legislation, national and state, would be stimulated; abuses would be more clearly noted; remedies would be more zealously sought and easier found; groundless complaint would measurably subside; useless, impracticable agitation would diminish; reform movements would gain in practicability and promise; and the political atmosphere generally would be materially cleared.

I submit that it is wise and patriotic to agitate for a Convention to propose Amendments to the Constitution