Stoux City Academy of Science and Letters. 117 
THE OUTLOOK FOR CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS 
IN THE UNITED STATES. 
By J. HERBERT QUICK. 
The above title might be capable of being interpreted 
in a much broader way than I use it. I do not wish to 
be understood as using the word “constitutional” in the 
sense in which it might be taken by the student of 
English history, meaning the entire body of laws and 
institutions, but in its narrower American sense with 
reference to our written constitution, and the body of 
adjudications related to it. I exclude also all consider- 
ation of the written constitutions of the states, confining 
myself to the Constitution of the United States, and the 
present probability of its amendment. 
Our Federal Constitution is in many respects unique 
among the written constitutions of the world. It was 
the first of them in point of time. It has been a splendid 
success in binding together the states adopting it, and 
their later-born sisters, into one of the greatest nations 
of any age. It endured for some eighty years in about 
the form in which it was adopted, during which time it 
was the model on which the world formed analogous 
instruments while written constitutions were becoming 
the fashion. Thus it has been the mother constitution 
among the nations. 
These considerations, as well as the inherent excel- 
lence of the great document itself, have inspired for it 
the highest respect and veneration. For more than a 
generation the storms to which its earlier years sub- 
jected it have been stilled and it has had well-nigh uni- 
versal acceptance as the great code of finalities for the 
people of these United States. The original uncertainties 
in it were made certain by amendment and judicial inter- 
pretation. Those who clung to the idea that it was a 
mere pact between sovereignties, which, as it was en- 
