Suggested Reading
427
For, unless a strong and just government exists, it is vain to talk about
one’s rights. Without liberty, order, and justice, sustained by good government, there is no place to which anyone can turn for enforcement of
his claims to rights. This is because a ‘‘right,’’ in law, is a claim upon
somebody for something. If a man has a right to be paid for a day’s work,
for example, he asserts a claim upon his employer; but, if that employer
refuses to pay him, the man must turn to a court of law for enforcement
of his right. If no court of law exists, the ‘‘right’’ to payment becomes little
better than an empty word. The unpaid man might try to take his pay by
force, true; but when force rules instead of law, a society falls into anarchy and the world is dominated by the violent and the criminal.
Knowing these hard truths about duties, rights, and social order, the
Framers endeavored to give us a Constitution that is more than mere
words and slogans. Did they succeed? At the end of two centuries, the
Constitution of the United States still functions adequately. Had Americans followed the French example of placing all their trust in a naked
declaration of rights, without any supporting constitutional edifice to
limit power and the claims of absolute liberty, it may be doubted whether
liberty, order, or justice would have prevailed in the succeeding years.
There cannot be better proof of the wisdom of the Framers than the endurance of the Constitution.
su gge st e d re a d i ng
Walter Hartwell Bennett, ed., Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1978).
M. E. Bradford, Original Intentions: On the Making and Ratification of the United States
Constitution (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993).
Neil H. Cogan, ed., The Complete Bill of Rights: The Drafts, Debates, Sources, and Origins
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
Patrick T. Conley and John P. Kaminski, The Constitution and the States: The Role of the
Original Thirteen in the Framing and Adoption of the Federal Constitution (Madison,
Wis.: Madison House, 1988).
Saul Cornell, Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788–1828 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).