PROFESSOR BENJ. F. SHAMBAUGH (introducing Professor Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin): — The address of this evening opens a four days' program commemorative of the fiftieth anniversary of the formation and adoption of the Constitution of Iowa. It is fitting that this anniversary of our Constitution should be held at Iowa City, the historic capital of Iowa and the birthplace of all our instruments of fundamental law.

It is also proper that the program should be presented under the auspices of The State Historical Society of Iowa. For it was during the sessions of the Constitutional Convention of 1857 that our State Historical Society was founded. And so, in presenting a program commemorative of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Constitution of Iowa, The State Historical Society incidentally celebrates its own semi-centennial anniversary.

Conspicuous in the events of the memorable year of 1857 is the name of James W. Grimes. He was the Governor of the Commonwealth; he was the prime mover in the revision and adoption of the new Constitution; and he was the first President of The State Historical Society. It is, therefore, both fitting and proper that his name be mentioned on this occasion.

To-night we will listen to an address by one of the leading historians of America, who comes to us from the University of Michigan, by way of the University of Chicago. Professor Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin will speak on A Written Constitution in Some of its Historical Aspects.

A WRITTEN CONSTITUTION IN SOME

OF ITS HISTORICAL ASPECTS

That an institution of government, like an institution or practice of society, is a growth and not a creation is now an accepted proposition. No one seeks to argue for it; no one endeavors to deny it. The introduction of this idea into our political thinking markedly influenced our methods and our ideas. In no field of study has the evolutionary idea shown itself more strongly than among workers in history and political science. And yet occasionally one is surprised by seeing how recently this idea has manifested itself in the examination of some historical problems. Until a short time ago, the Constitution of the United States was commonly spoken of as if it was created by some two score men who debated and wrangled in the old State House at Philadelphia during the anxious and trying summer of 1787. Of course it is true that all things are new; and the Federal Constitution was in one sense a new product of the past. But the historian sees its fullest meaning only when he studies the long period during which the fundamental ideas and master prin

ciples of the instrument were being worked out. The idea that the Constitution was not in all its essential features made at Philadelphia was successfully attacked only a few years ago, when the labors of scholars disclosed the fact that large portions of it were borrowed from the State constitutions which were themselves the heirs of colonial practices. Irrespective of the conscious adaptation of old institutions to a new situation, the Constitution was of course the deposit of experiences, the result of longworking historical forces.

But this notion that at given moments, at trying crises, inspired geniuses arise to fashion wondrous entities out of preceding nothingness has played in all our affairs a conspicuous rôle. The American people, who but yesterday were a European people, casting aside the trammels of old world life, and breaking their way into the new atmosphere of an untried continent, forced to shift for themselves and to adapt themselves to strange conditions, believed actually that they were sufficient in their strength at any moment to create what they needed or desired. This absence of historical perspective was perfectly natural, and there was something inspiring in the enthusiasm and assurance with which problems were solved or at least valiantly

attacked. Possibly this easy self-confidence was quite as useful and more effective than would have been any serious contemplation, any sober reflection over the forces, the successes and blunders of the past. And yet the readiness to go ahead blindly in answer to the promptings of the moment is not the characteristic of the wisest statesmanship; it is not the nature of the freest state; for the highest freedom must come from right thinking; the best statesmanship must come from self-knowledge a knowledge of the real state of which the statesman and the law-maker is himself a part, a knowledge to be gained by a study of the state's growth and not simply from the little space of one's own forgetful experience.

This introduction is not, I think, inappropriate on an occasion when we celebrate the founding of a Constitution which has lasted half a century. We are pausing here to look back for fifty years, to do honor to the men who were instrumental in bringing into existence the fundamental law of this great State, to realize that under that law a people has grown in numbers, in strength, and in prosperity, and to be thankful for the wisdom of the statesmen who wrought so wisely and so well. But we need not think that the Constitution of Iowa was made here

fifty years ago, or that we can understand its significance, if we limit our view to the debates of the Convention, the decisions of the courts, or the prosperity of the people. This Constitution, like all others, has a long and interesting history, reaching far back of the days when these men met here. Some of its provisions can be clearly known, only if we follow their courses through centuries.

Students of American constitutional history begin at least with the Charters that were issued at the end of the fifteenth century. In fact the colonies that sprang from feudal beginnings, like Maryland or Pennsylvania, demand for their understanding a knowledge of feudal principalities; Maryland takes us back to the time of William of Normandy, if not eleven hundred years to the time of Charles the Great. A colony like Massachusetts, founded as a corporation, calls for an understanding of the early trading companies of half a millenium ago. And thus we see that the modern State Constitutions have an honorable lineage; instead of being struck off in a moment of inspiration to suit an emergency or a temporary exigency, they are the products of effort and struggle and experience; they are molded and fashioned by the needs of passing generations. Such a thought as this