"Your complex system of government needs and will receive reconstruction or remodeling. When we emerged from the revolutionary struggle, and came to give the fruits of our hard earned victory some definite shape in the formation of a government for the new nation, we adopted the articles of confederation as the best we could then devise. It required but a short time to teach us that they were defective, and that prudence and wisdom dictated something different and better. The constitution was consequently fashioned and superseded the confederation, and there has never been any disagreement as to the superior wisdom of the constitutional form of government, at least, as an improvement on the original confederation form. When this had been accomplished we were fully persuaded that the reorganization of the government under the constitution was the apex of statesmanship and the acme of the science of governmental construction, and were consequently happy and content. But alas, for poor human foresight. It very soon became evident that the new arrangement was imperfect, if not absolutely defective, and twelve amendments to the new constitution were proposed by Congress and ratified by the states. After and as the result of the late unhappy conflict between discordant states, or, rather, rebellion of certain states by secession against the rightful authority and sovereignty of the federal government, several additional amendments became necessary and imperative, and they were accordingly incorporated and ingrafted upon the already amended constitution. And now others are earnestly talked of and advocated; and does this not teach you the plain lesson that your system is still imperfect? "The trouble is found to be that statesmanship is without foreknowledge, and is either blind to or oblivious of the requirements of the future. In other words, that the ceaseless mutations of human affairs, the ever acting and onward march of the law of change and progression, fail to strike the consciousness of statesmen or to secure their recognition. Of one thing you may be assured, your plan of government will be revised and remodeled to its vast betterment. When the time comes this will be most vehemently resisted by those who on all questions affecting the interests of the race and the happiness of mankind persist in remaining with the bats and owls of past ages rather than to be baptized in the light of the present and the foregleams of the future. But they must get out of the way of the car of progress or be crushed beneath its merciless and continually revolving wheels." June 30, 1882: