Page 90 - The Interest of America in Sea Power Present and Future

The Isthmus and Sea Power. 71

with which the natural forces are allowed to
act, and to reach their own equilibrium without
extraneous interference. Nor are such periods
confined to the early days of mere lawlessness.
They recur whenever a crisis is reached in the
career of a nation; when old traditions, ac-
cepted maxims, or written constitutions have
been outgrown, in whole or in part ; when the
time has come for a people to recognize that
the limits imposed upon its expansion, by the
political wisdom of its forefathers, have ceased
to be applicable to its own changed conditions
and those of the world. The question then
raised is not whether the constitution, as writ-
ten, shall be respected. It is how to reach
modifications in the constitution — and that
betimes — so that the genius and awakened
intelligence of the people may be free to act,
without violating that respect for its fundamen-
tal law upon which national stability ultimately
depends. It is a curious feature of our current
journalism that it is clear-sighted and prompt
to see the unfortunate trammels in which cer-
tain of our religious bodies are held, by the
cast-iron tenets imposed upon them by a past
generation, while at the same time political