Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1

[375] respect; where one then filched silver from the other, each now pours gold into the other's lap; our only rivalry, which shall do most honor to the blood of Shakespeare and Milton, of Franklin and Kane.

In that glass we see the story of North and South since 1787, and I doubt not for all coming time. The people of the States between the Gulf and the great Lakes, yes, between the Gulf and the Pole, are essentially one. We are one in blood, trade, thought, religion, history; nothing can long divide us. If we had let our Constitution grow, as the English did, as oaks do, we had never passed through such scenes as the present. The only thing that divides us now, is the artificial attempt, in 1787, to force as into an unripe union. Some lawyers got together and wrote out a constitution. The people and great interests of the land, wealth, thought, fashion, and creed, immediately laid it upon the shelf, and proceeded to grow one for themselves. The treaty power sufficed to annex a continent, and change the whole nature of the government. The war power builds railroads to the Pacific. Right to regulate commerce builds observatories and dredges out lakes. Right to tax protects manufactures; and had we wanted a king, some ingenious Yankee would have found the right to have one clearly stated in the provision for a well-regulated militia. [Laughter.] All that is valuable in the United States Constitution is a thousand years old. What is good is not new, and what is new is not good. That vaunted statesmanship which concocts constitutions never has amounted to anything. The English Constitution, always found equal to any crisis, is an old mansion, often repaired, with quaint additions, and seven gables, each of different pattern. Our Constitution is a new clapboard house, so square and sharp it almost cuts you to look at it, staring with white paint and green blinds, as if dropped in the landscape, or come out to spend an afternoon* [Laughter.]