Hints on Slavery Founded on the State of the Constitution, Laws, and Politics of Kentucky, Thirteen Years Ago Classic Reprint

Excerpt from Hints on Slavery: Founded on the State of the Constitution, Laws, and Politics of Kentucky, Thirteen Years Ago

Our constitution is an excellent one. In addition to the vener-v ation which I feel for it as the organic law of my state, under which I have lived and was born; and the hardly inferior regard which it challenges as a very high effort of intellectual power, for the time in which it was formed, and the opportunities of those who gave it birth; there are personal recollections which commend it in a peculiar manner to my admiration. That the lapse of more than thirty years, during which the human race has made very great advances, should have exhibited some considerable errors of theory, and some practical inconveniences in our system, is no disparage ment to those who formed it under a state of things somewhat dif ferent from the present. In the declaration of our national inde pendence (an authority we all bow to) it is asserted E' that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing forms to which they are accustomed. Acting upon this principle, and clinging with parental fondness to the instrument they had produced, the gentlemen who formed our present constitution, while they recognized the right in every com munity to alter or even to abolish its government, interposed the most intricate machinery for the execution of any such projects; and by the provision for its amendment have provided effectually against any alteration. Let any one consult article 9th, and he will see no reason why the most nervous admirer of that instrument should dread its fate. If the whole commonwealth with one accord were to demand its alteration, it could not be effected in much less than three years (a period as long as the cycle of some politicians,) from the meeting of that General Assembly which should set vigo orously and successfully about its accomplishment. If to this we add the repeated votes of the people and the Legislature, twice of one, three times of the other, a majority of all who are entitled to vote being required at every step, and those who do not vote count ed in the negative, and other obstacles that interfere, it may be safely said there is no probability that a convention will be speedily called to amend the constitution of Kentucky.

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