fecting fundamental
rights, now how are we going to get at it?

One hundred and twenty-five years ago and more a body of men, very
wise for their day and generation, met to form the constitution. They
had just been indulging in a little direct action against England.
(Laughter). They could have sent members to Parliament up to now and
we would have still been British subjects. I don't know as we would
have been any worse off if we had been. But they got at it simply and
directly, and so they won our American independence. I don't know just
when it was lost, but they won it. (Applause). And the first thing
they did was to have a constitution.

You can't do anything without a constitution. You have got to have a
good constitution to get anywhere.

And so they got together a body of men, John Hancock and some more
penmen, and they wrote a constitution.

Now, what is a constitution? Why, it is just the same as if a boy,
twenty-one years of age, would say, "Well, now, I have become of age,
and I am wise, and I am going to write out a constitution to cover the
rest of my life, and when I am forty I can't do anything that is
unconstitutional."

There wasn't a railroad one hundred and twenty-five years ago; there
wasn't a steam engine; there wasn't a flying machine, of course, nor
an automobile. Nobody knew anything about electricity, except what
came down from the clouds and they were busy dodging it. There were
few machines; there was just a body of farmers--that's all. (Laughter
and applause). And they wrote the constitution, and there it is. It
didn't apply to the industrial conditions of today, for they didn't
know anything about the industrial conditions of today, but they
imagined that they were so wise that lest people one hundred and
twenty-five years later should think they knew more they would tie
things up so that we could not make a fool of ourselves, to the third
or fourth generation after they were dead. (Laughter). And so they
wrote down a constitution which meant that whatever the American
people wanted to do a hundred, or two hundred, or five hundred years
afterward, they could not do it unless it agreed with the constitution
that had already been written down or unless they changed it.

Well now, that was a wise piece of business so far, wasn't it? But
that is only the beginning of it.

Then they organized this government into separate states. I don't know
how many there are now, they are hatching so