Without their help there might not have been any American nation at all, or it might have been born under a far darker cloud of political suspicion and animosity.

The instrument which they created, with all its faults, proved capable of becoming both the organ of an efficient national government and the fundamental law of a potentially democratic state.

It has proved capable of flexible development both in function and in purpose, and it has been developed in both these directions without any sacrifice of integrity.
Its success has been due to the fact that its makers, with all their apprehensions about democracy, were possessed of a wise and positive political faith.

They believed in liberty.

They believed that the essential condition of fruitful liberty was an efficient central government.