You must understand the American people, our history, and our
institutions, before you can understand our Constitution.
I have thus enlarged upon our institutional law to give young men a
hint of its possibilities. Before this century closes, the greatest
law book in all the literature of jurisprudence will be produced upon
the subject of our institutional law. The materials are as plentiful
as the history of our race, the demand as insistent as our daily life.
Great law books all written! Nonsense. As yet we have had only the
turgid descriptions of the toilsome and halting progress of justice
through the ages--that is all we have had, compared with the noble
volume that will be written, giving mankind the high, clear, and
simple thinking of a greater Blackstone and a wiser Kent. It may be
that this generation will produce this immortal judicial author; it
may be that you, young man, are he. At least one thing is sure--the
work is there waiting for the workman.
But if you do not feel equipped for this monumental effort, there are
other phases of the law more imminent, if not so comprehensive, in
each of which there is opportunity and demand for original work.
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