people," and the Tenth, already considered elsewhere (p. 350), by which all powers not delegated to the United States nor prohibited to the states are reserved to the states or to the people.

Library References. Macy, pp. 30-31; Dawes, chaps. xi-xii; Curtis, Vol. I, chaps. xxxiv-xxxv; Vol. II, chap. vi; Fiske, pp. 269– 270; Hinsdale, chap. xlvii; Montgomery, pp. 221-222; Lalor, Article on Bill of Rights; Woodburn, pp. 84-85.

QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT

1. Define "Bill of Rights."

2. What provision is there in the Constitution regarding freedom of speech and of the press? Discuss briefly the reasons for this provision. Is it likely to be abused? How?

3. State the substance of that provision of the Constitution which insures religious freedom.

4. Give in substance that provision of the Constitution that secures (1) personal liberty; (2) protection to private property. 5. What rights are secured by the Constitution to persons accused of crime?

6. What provision is made for trial by jury in civil cases? 7. What does the Constitution provide with reference to search warrants? Explain the importance of this provision.

CHAPTER XXVII

MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS

The Public Debt. We have still to consider a few miscellaneous provisions of the Constitution not studied in the preceding chapters. Of these, two concern themselves with the national debt, one forming part of the Constitution as originally adopted, the other a part of the Fourteenth Amendment. By the first it was provided that all debts contracted before the adoption of the Constitution should be as valid against the United States under the Constitution as under the Confederation. In this provision the framers of the Constitution were merely declaring their adherence to the generally accepted principle of public law that a nation does not invalidate its debts or other contracts by changing the form of its government, but the measure doubtless tended in no small degree to inspire confidence in the new government. The other provision of the Constitution dealing with the public debt grew out of the Civil War. It constitutes the fourth section of the Fourteenth Amendment and provides that "the validity of the public debt of the United States, . . . including debts incurred for payment . . . for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations, and

claims shall be held illegal and void." In other words, the United States assures the validity of all debts incurred in the suppression of the Rebellion, but refuses itself to pay and requires the states to refuse to pay any incurred in support of the insurrection.

Ratification. The seventh and last article of the Constitution proper provided for its ratification. Conventions were to be called in the various states for the purpose of ratifying the instrument, and the acceptance of nine states was to be sufficient for its establishment between those states. We have already seen something of the difficulties in the way of ratification and of its ultimate accomplishment (pp. 189-191).

Amendment. One of the conditions indispensable to the permanency of a constitution is a provision for its own amendment. States grow and change, and unless their constitutions, particularly if they are embodied in written documents, provide some means by which they can be made to conform in an orderly way to the altered conditions, the only recourse is to revolution, peaceful or otherwise. One of the chief defects of the Articles of Confederation, it will be remembered, was the practical impossibility of amending them. Profiting from their experience with them, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention attempted to provide a method of amendment which should be thoroughly practicable and should yet be difficult enough to prevent hasty and ill-considered changes.

Possible Methods. As finally provided by Article V of the Constitution, amendments may be both proposed and ratified by two methods. They may be proposed either (1) by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress or (2) by a convention summoned by Congress at the request of the legislatures of two thirds of the states. They may

be ratified either (1) by three fourths of the states through their state legislatures or (2) by three fourths of the states through conventions especially called for the purpose. It is left with Congress to propose the method of ratification to be followed. Some restrictions were laid upon this power of amendment, however. The clauses in regard to the importation of slaves and the laying of direct taxes were not to be affected by amendment, and it was further provided that no state should be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate without its own consent.

Method Used. Up to the present time all amendments to the Constitution have been proposed and ratified by the first of the two methods described above; that is, Congress has framed and proposed the amendments and the state legislatures have ratified them. No special conventions have ever been summoned for either purpose. The consent of the president to a constitutional amendment has been held by the Supreme Court to be unnecessary, on the ground that "an amendment an amendment . . . is an act in constitution-making and does not come within the provisions of the Constitution investing the president with a negative."

" 1

Existing Amendments. The number of proposed amendments that have been brought before Congress for its consideration is very large, but only twenty-one have ever received the necessary two-thirds vote and been submitted to the states. Of these, seventeen only have been ratified and become part of the Constitution. These seventeen may be divided into three groups. In the first of these groups we find the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, whose origin and purpose have been already discussed (Chap. XXVI). They are hardly to be considered as true amendments to the Constitution; they "ought to be

1 Woodburn, p. 154.

regarded as a supplement or postscript to it, rather than as changing it." In the second group we find the Eleventh, Twelfth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Amendments, which, though they deal with quite different subjects, may really be classed together, since they attempt to correct minor defects or meet the expanding needs of a growing democracy that have become apparent in the actual working of the Constitution. These four amendments have also been discussed in connection with the matters with which they deal (pp. 218, 228, 293, 332). To the third group belong the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments which grew out of the Civil War and which register in the written constitution the political results achieved by that struggle.

Thirteenth Amendment.

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments have not been considered. The circumstances under which all three were ratified were such that they cannot be regarded as the free expression of the existing desires of three fourths of the states. By the Thirteenth Amendment slavery, except as a punishment for crime, is abolished in the United States and in all places subject to their jurisdiction. By the Emancipation Proclamation, freedom had been granted to all slaves in the states then in rebellion, but that did not include all the slave-holding states, and in certain places slavery could still claim a legal right to existence. The amendment was declared a part of the Constitution in December, 1865, three fourths of the states having ratified the same. The Fourteenth Amendment was a part of the plan of reconstruction entered upon at the close of the war. proposed by Congress in 1866 and declared in force two years later. It defines citizenship by declaring that it is possessed by all persons born or naturalized in the United

It was