The reader must be again reminded that it is not,

simply and abstractedly, because these Commissions

^i^are a violation of certain laws of the land that they

are pronounced to be illegal and pernicious. Nicely

^ phrased ordinances might have been promulgated

^within a month past with every pomp and ceremony

s as fundamental laws. But that promulgation could

i] not constitute them such ; nor would any violation of

laws so promulgated, though positively illegal, neces-

arily be pernicious. Nor, on the other hand, are

[githese violations protested against simply because the

o^aws and institutions which they violate are of untold

antiquity. The aim of the foregoing pages has been

, to show to the unbiassed mind of every honest man

\ that the laws and institutions which are thus violated

y^e not arbitrary and capricious, but that they have

v^^ieir foundations laid in the noblest principles of hu-

j man nature, of progress, and of truth. It is because

J their foundations are there laid that it has been felt

i to be a work of the utmost importance to show, truly,

I what their structure is. Their far antiquity is not

; the ground of the reverence due to them. But their

f^r antiquity, their endurance unchanged through the

roll of many centuries, still adaptable, and adapted,

with continually increased good results, to the varying



168 CHARACTERISTICS OF

circumstances of the nation and of human progress,
are most trustworthy tests of their soundness and their
truth. It has been also shown that they contain in-
trinsic marks of changeless truth, and of the import-
ance, therefore, of maintaining them constantly re-
spected and ever un violated. Hence the importance
of fixing attention upon them as moral landmarks.
