St Marys High School - Blue Mantle Yearbook (Milford, MA)

Page 23 text:

the ' constitution and a changing world NE hundred and fifty-one years ago, fifty-five of the greatest statesmen in America assembled within the nar¬ row confines of Independence Hall, Philadelphia, for the purpose of revising the content and increasing the efficiency of the Articles of Confederation. These men were fully aware of the great difficulties attendant upon such a task, the welding of thirteen jealous and discordant states, exhausted by a demoralizing war, into a har¬ monious whole. Though baffled by serious doubts as to the finhl and successful end of their labors, a common fidelity to their noble objective bound them together with the golden and indes¬ tructible links of charity -- the love of their fellow-man and their common country. Hatred Is the soil out of which labor fi¬ nally produces the shackles of tyranny. Love Is the soil out of which labor produces the benediction of freedom. It was this labor of love which gave the founding fathers the courage in the face of reverse and discouragement, despite far-reaching and apparently irreconcilable differences of opinion, to persevere to the end. They were far more than mere theorists groping blindly in the realms of the imagination for they had actually experi¬ enced the evils for which they were to provide not indeed a trans¬ cendent panacea but one of the most outstanding attacks in all history. This notable assemblage debated for four long and weari¬ some months, in the withering heat of the summer, before it pro¬ duced the remarkable document which must be acknowledged the greatest effort of its kind ever produced by the hand of mortal man. The framers of the Constitution were gifted with unusual knowledge of the human heart and almost uncanny foresight about its reaction to change, with the result that the Constitution of 1787 is, in its essential features, the Constitution of 1938. They fashioned it to endure for ages to como and consequently to be adaptable to the ever-increasing complexity of world affairs. Wonderfully wise in the powers which they delegated specifically to the government they were sagacious to the point of inspiration in what they left unprovided. The provisions of Article V auth¬ orizing the amendments concretely demonstrate their avowed unwill¬ ingness to attempt to prescribe immutable rules by which the government should cope with the unforseen exigencies of the fu¬ ture. To this consequent elasticity of the Constitution is due in no small degree its stability, since judicial interpretation and, when necessary, formal amendment have enabled it to keep pace with the ever-accelerating changes of what has been called