Book Description

Excerpt from Constitutional History of the United States Important additions have been made to the original Constitution by way of amendment, but scarcely more so than those which have come to it through the process of the gradual unfolding of its unexpressed meaning, which has naturally followed the expansion of our national domain, the development of our national re sources, the meeting of new responsibilities in govern ment, the contending with new difficulties which have confronted us in the execution of our newly acquired powers. While we have a wmtten, and therefore, in a' certain sense, a settled Constitution, it is an elastic one. Had the original Constitution of 1787 been so limited by its own terms that it could not have been construed to mean more than was actually and clearly expressed by the language in which it was clothed, our Government would soon have gone to wreck or have remained a feeble and insignificant member of the sisterhood of nations, unless by amendment of the old, or by the adoption of a new constitution new power had been given it. Fortunately it was not so framed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.