than as a permanent institution, and the Constitution was framed with reference to its gradual and final extinction.
Indeed, the political philosophy that underlay the American revolution, embraced not simply the freedom of this nation, but the rights of human nature. This was the animating spirit of the movement, as directly opposed to the evil we are considering as light is opposed to darkness.
Alexander Hamilton directed against the odious stamp act the authority of British law, as he found it written down by Blackstone.
Then, as if disdaining to stand on any mere human authority, however high, the framer of the American Constitution declared:
Lafayette closed his review of the Revolution, when returning to France, with this beautiful and glowing apostrophe: