They occupy in relation to the modern economic and political problem a position similar to that of the Constitutional Unionists previous to the Civil War.

Those estimable gentlemen believed devoutly that the Constitution, which created the problem of slavery and provoked the anti-slavery agitation, was adequate to its solution.

In the same spirit learned lawyers now affirm that the existing problems can easily be solved, if only American public opinion remain faithful to the Constitution.

But it may be that the Constitution, as well as the system of local political government built up around the Federal Constitution, is itself partly responsible for some of the existing abuses, evils, and problems; and if so, the American lawyer may be useful, as he was before the Civil War, in evading our difficulties; but he will not be very useful in settling them.

He may try to settle them by decisions of the Supreme Court; but such decisions,--assuming, of course, that the problem is as inexorable as was that of the legal existence of slavery in a democratic nation,--such decisions would have precisely the same effect on public opinion as did the Dred Scott decision.