The Short ConstitutionWade, Martin J. (Martin Joseph)
History
The Short Constitution
Wade, Martin J. (Martin Joseph)
United States. Constitution
“There can be no doubt that the minimum expectation of the framers
of this amendment to the Constitution was that it would make the
first eight amendments to the Constitution binding upon the states,
as they already were upon the Federal Government, and that it should
be susceptible not only of negative enforcement by the courts but
also of direct positive enforcement by Congress.”—_Cyclopedia of
American Government_, Vol. II, p. 41.
79 Constitution of the United States, Amendment XV.
80 “By a series of decisions the most important of which were those in
the Slaughter House cases (16 Wallace 36) and in the Civil Rights
Cases (109 U.S. 3) the United States Supreme Court established the
following principles: (1) that the prohibitions of the fourteenth
amendment are addressed to the states as such and not to private
individuals; (2) that these prohibitions contemplate only positive
state acts and not acts of omission; (3) that the amendment
recognizes a distinction between state citizenship and United States
citizenship; (4) that it protects from state abridgement only ‘the
privileges and immunities’ which the Constitution by its other
provisions bestows upon ‘citizens of the United States’ as
such.”—_Cyclopedia of American Government_, Vol. II, p. 41.
The nineteenth amendment which is now ratified by the States,
provides that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State
on account of sex.”—Constitution of the United States, Amendment
XIX.
81 “The good citizen must in the first place, recognize what he owes
his fellow citizens. If he is worthy to live in a free republic he
must keep before his eyes his duty to the nation of which he forms a
part. He must keep himself informed, and he must think of himself as
well as of the great questions of the day; and he must know how to
express his thoughts.”—Theodore Roosevelt.
82 In receiving applications for the many appointments which it was his
duty to make, President Taylor said: “I shall make honesty, capacity
and fidelity indispensable requisites to the bestowal of office; and
the absence of any one of these qualities shall be deemed sufficient
cause for removal.”
83 “The American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck
off at a given moment by the brain and purpose of man.”—William E.
Gladstone.
“It will be the wonder and admiration of all future generations and
the model of all future constitutions.”—William Pitt.
“Our fathers by an almost divine prescience, struck the golden
mean,” when they made the Constitution.—Pomeroy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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