New Publications
image 1
image 2
image 3
image 4
cropped image 1
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
HISTORY OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. By Geo. Ticknor Curtis.1 Two vols. New York: Harper & Brothers.
In these two large and handsome volumes we have a complete history of the origin, formation and adoption of the great charter of our liberties, together with notices of its principal framers. The work is one not to be lightly dismissed, but to be examined with that careful attention and spirit of candor to which the author is justly entitled after having bestowed years of patient and conscientious research upon the preliminary studies necessary to his theme. And such an examination will satisfy the intelligent reader, we imagine, that the book will not only be warmly welcomed by the publicist and the student of law, but that eventually it will take its rank among the text-books of our political literature.
Before the issue of Mr. Curtis’s volumes, we believe that no special history of the origin and establishment of the Constitution, worthy of the name, had found a place in our libraries. The present work was commenced many years ago and the author set out, to use his own language, “with the purpose of exhibiting the deep causes which at once rendered the Convention of 1787 inevitable and controlled or directed its course and decisions; the mode in which its great work was accomplished; and the foundations on which our national liberty and prosperity were then deliberately settled by the Statesmen to whom the American Revolution gave birth and on which they have rested ever since.” For a series of years the author enjoyed the encouragement and aid of Daniel Webster, who had himself contemplated a similar task, but was prevented by the engrossing toils and cares of public life. The author gives us in his preface a brief but kindly note from the illustrious Statesman relating to this very subject, and inviting him to talk over the book beneath the pleasant shades of Marshfield. But not long after, the great heart grew faint and slow in its pulsings and the shades of Marshfield grew dark and solemn, and the last of the Titans was summoned to face the inevitable Fate from which all men are but too willing to turn their eyes.
The plan of the present volumes is easily explained. The first embraces the Constitutional History of the United States from the commencement of the Revolution to the assembling of the convention of 1787, and the second is devoted to the description of the process of forming the Constitution, in which the author has, of course, mainly followed the ample record of the debates preserved by Mr. Madison and the official journal of proceedings. The history of the formation of that great code is clearly and accurately traced and the circumstances of the time and country out of which it grew are lucidly explained. The narrative throughout is clear and interesting and the materials have been put together with so much artistic skill that the reader’s sense of completeness is perfect.
A brief extract may not be uninteresting as an example of the author’s style. He writes as follows of the position in which the framers of the Constitution stood in relation to
THE SLAVE TRADE.
"A question in relation to the extent of the commercial power was destined to arise out of the relations of the different State to the Slave trade. If the power to regulate commerce that might be conferred upon the general government was to be universal and unlimited it must include the right to prohibit the importation of slaves. If the right to sanction or tolerate the importation of slaves, which like all other political rights, belonged to the people of the several States as sovereign communities, was to be retained by them as an exception from the commercial power which they might confer upon the national legislature, that exception must be clearly and definitely established. For several reasons the question was necessarily to be met, as soon as the character and extent of the commercial power would come into discussion. While the trade had been prohibited by all the other States, including Virginia and Maryland, it had only been subjected to a duty by North Carolina, and was subjected to a similar discouragement by South Carolina and Georgia. The basis of representation in the national legislature, in which it had been agreed that the slaves should be included in a certain ratio, created a strong political motive with the Northern States to obtain for the general government a power to prevent further importations. It was fortunate that this motive existed, for the honor and reputation of the country were concerned to put an end to this traffic. No other nation, it was true, had, at that time, abolished it, but here were the assembled States of America engaged in framing a Constitution of Government that ought, if the American character was to be consistent with the principles of the American Revolution, to go as far in the recognition of human rights as the circumstances of their actual situation would admit. What was practicable to be done, from considerations of humanity, and all that could be successfully done was the measure of their duty as statesmen admitted and acted upon by the framers of the Constitution, including many of those who represented slave holding constituencies, as well as the representatives of States that had either abolished both the traffic in slaves or the institution itself or were obviously destined to do it.
This just and necessary rule of action, however, which limited their efforts to what the actual circumstances of the country would permit, made a clear distinction between a prohibition of the future importation of slaves and the manumission of those already in the country.
The former could be accomplished if the consent of the States could be obtained without trenching on their sovereign control over the condition of all persons within their respective limits. It involved only the surrender of a right to add to the numbers of their slaves by continued importations.
But the power to determine whether the slaves then within their limits should remain in that condition, could not be surrendered by the people of the States, without overturning every principle on which the system of the new government had bee rested, and which had thus far been justly regarded as essential to its establishment and to its future successful operation.
It is not, therefore, to be inferred, because a large majority of the Convention sought for a power to prohibit the increase of slaves by further importation, that they intended by means of it to extinguish the institution of Slavery within the States. So far as they acted from a political motive, they designed to take away the power of a State to increase its congressional representation by bringing slaves from Africa; and so far as they acted from motives of general justice and humanity, they designed to terminate a traffic which never has been and never can be carried on without infinite cruelty and national dishonor. That the individuals of an inferior race already placed in the condition of servitude to a superior one may by the force of necessity, be rightfully left in the care and dominion of those on whom they have been cast, is a proposition of morals entirely fit to be admitted by a Christian statesman. That new individuals may be rightfully place in the same condition, not by the act of Providence through the natural increase of species, but by the act of man in transferring them from distant lands, is quite another proposition. The distinction between the two, so far as a moral judgment is concerned with the acts of the framers of the Constitution upon the circumstance before them, defines the limits of duty which they intended to recognize."
We should like to quote a few paragraphs from Mr. Curtis’s graphic sketches of the members of the Great Convention of Washington, facile princeps—of Hamilton, the leading Statesman of the Revolution—of Madison, afterwards our fourth President—of the venerable Franklin, then President of the State of Pennsylvania and in his eighty-second year—of the brilliant, energetic and patriotic Gouverneur Morris—of Rufus King, celebrated as a jurist, a Statesman, an Orator and a Diplomatist—of the gallant Pinckney, of South Carolina, distinguished both a soldier and a civilian—of Wilson, the Jurist, and Edmund Randolph, the “child of the Revolution.” But want of space forbids. We can only say, in conclusion, that no gentleman’s library should be considered complete without a copy of this very valuable and compendious History.
BLACKWOOD2 for April has been received from the American publishers, Leonard Scott & Co., No. 79 Fulton street. Its articles are, as usual well-digested and thoughtful. The paper on the Derby Administration will be read with interest, and also the very clever “Letter to John Bull by John Company.” The article on “Food and Drink,” is continued and will be found to contain much valuable information presented in a popular shape. The sketches of travel which form a feature in “Blackwood” are entertaining and lively as ever, and Bulwer’s interminable novel “What will he do with it?” drags its slow length along. The author of Pelham has lost nothing of the storyteller’s art, but as the years creep upon him the ars celare seems to desert him. He is the most artificial of novelists, and with all his undoubted genius must soon give place to the fresher, more spontaneous, more natural school.
Notes:
1. [back]
2. Blackwood's Magazine, or Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, was a monthly magazine created by William Blackwood in 1817. Though it was published in Scotland it quickly attracted a wide readership in Great Britain and the U.S., especially for its fiction offerings. For more information, see David Finkelstein, The House of Blackwood: Author-Publisher Relations in the Victorian Age? (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002). [back]