In closing his great commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, Mr. Justice Story admonished the American people that, although the whole structure of our constitutional liberty was erected by architects of consummate skill and fidelity, with its defences impregnable from without, it might nevertheless perish in an hour by the folly or corruption or negligence of its only keepers, the people. It cannot, indeed, be too often declared that, if constitutional government and fundamental rights are to endure, they must be maintained and preserved by competent leaders and representatives of the people constantly teaching the value of the traditions of Magna Carta and the necessity of adhering to constitutional principles and observing constitutional morality. The members of this Convention are not likely to disregard the living spirit of the Great Charter of English Liberties and its enduring value to Americans. It was Lincoln who said that "as a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide." But we shall perpetuate free government and civil liberty only as we adhere to two essential conditions: the one, that our fundamental rights shall continue to be inviolable by the state, the other, that they shall be equal. "If not inviolable, they are not rights, but only enjoyments on sufferance; if not equal, they are but the privileges of a class, whatever that class may be."[4] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Address before the Constitutional Convention of the state of New York at its celebration of the seven-hundredth anniversary of Magna Carta, Albany, June 15, 1915.] [Footnote 2: Guesses at Truth, 1st series, 3d ed. (1847), pp. 324-325.] [Footnote 3: W.S. McKechnie, _Magna Carta_, 2d ed. (1914), p. 159.] [Footnote 4: Edward J. Phelps, Orations and Essays (1901), p. 127.] THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT[5] Wherever Americans gather, at home or abroad, those who can claim the proud heritage of descent from the Pilgrims on the Mayflower are accustomed annually to join in thanks-giving for all that they owe to their ancestors. The spirit which prompts these celebrations is singularly wholesome, and indeed holy. Among the natural instincts of the heart, common to all races, is a longing for communion with the past, which manifests itself in the worship of ancestors. That this spirit of reverence has been from the earliest ages a most powerful religious and patriotic force is a fact familiar to us in the history of the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans. We readily recall the beautiful ceremonial of pagan Rome on the _dies parentales_, when violets and roses and wine, oil and milk were offered and _aves_ were chanted to the spirits of their dead.