18 age should be fettered by the half-enlightened doings of the former. Institutions and laws will always spring from the half-developed ideas and half-learned lessons of every generation, which arc either entirely erroneous or insufficient and imperfect, which must be destroyed or corrected by the generation following. The mere literalist who clings to the dead letter of legal statement, will never accomplish this. He must grasp the spirit of the law, and execute with enlarged wisdom and expanding power the spirit and intent of the law, which lies half-uttered upon the old statute book. Thus alone can the world make progress, — by the repeal of the wrong, and liberal construction of the narrow laws. It is a respect we owe to the dead, as w7ell as a duty to the living, to bring to maturity, in our construction of the constitution and laws, the well-meant, but half-developed, thoughts of our fathers; and instead of being injured, law will be magnified in the minds of the people, wThen they behold its spirit ruling with positive power in the hearts of the rulers. It is one of our chief hindrances in the midst of existing difficulties, that part of our constitution and some of our laws exhibit maxims and principles as half understood and half believed, which are to-day axioms in the minds of intelligent republicans ; or; rather, they indicate the modifying power of popular demands upon the action of a government which meant far more perfect things. The constitution and fundamental laws of the land contemplate no such thing as the perpetuity of slavery ; on the contrary, the Fathers of the Republic, jealous of their honor in the eyes of their children, as well as jealous for their welfare, as they looked into the clouds of popular prejudice and ignorance which they were unable at once to dispel, and whose shadows must fall upon their doings,
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