s; and then, if he had Mr.
Johnson's power as a logician, he might claim to escape all penalty by
pleading that when the law said _should not_ it meant _could
not_, and therefore he _had not_. If a four years' war, if a
half million lives, and if a debt which is counted by the thousand
million are not satisfactory proofs that somebody did contrive to
secede practically, whatever the theoretic right may have been, then
nothing that ought not to be done ever has been done. We do not,
however, consider the question as to whether the Rebel States were
constitutionally, or in the opinion of any political organization, out
of the Union or not as of the least practical importance; for we have
never known an instance in which any party has retreated into the
thickets and swamps of constitutional interpretation, where it had the
least chance of maintaining its ground in the open field of common
sense or against the pressure of popular will. The practical fact is,
that the will of the majority, or the national necessity for the time
being, has always been constitutional; which is only as much as to say
that the Convention of 1787 was not wholly made up of inspired
prophets, who could provide beforehand for every possible contingency.
The doctrine of a strict and even pettifogging interpretation of the
Constitution had its rise among men who looked upon that instrument as
a treaty, and at a time when the conception of a national power which
should receive that of the States into its stream as tributary was
something which had entered the head of only here and there a dreamer.
The theorists of the Virginia school would have dammed up and diverted
the force of each State into a narrow channel of its own, with its
little saw-mill and its little grist-mill for local needs, instead of
letting it follow the slopes of the continental water-shed to swell the
volume of one great current ample for the larger uses and needful for
the higher civilization of all. That there should always be a school
who interpret the Constitution by its letter is a good thing, as
interposing a check to hasty or partial action, and gaining time for
ample discussion; but that in the end we should be governed by its
spirit, living and operative in the energies of an advancing people, is
a still better thing; since the levels and shore-lines of politics are
no more stationary than those of continents, and the ship of state
would in time be left aground far inland,