AMERICAN PROBLEMS by WILLIAM E.BORAH 1924

POLITICAL PRISONERS 303
fortable, or at least endurable.
But the average
man or woman, the man of limited means,
or circumscribed influence, finds security only
and alone in the great Charter itself—a Charter
binding alike upon the courts and the Congress,
upon majorities and minorities, and upon
the rich and the poor. Newspapers of
great prestige, I observe, always publish,
whatever the occasion, whatever they please
to publish. Men of great power will, as they
did during the war, say whatever they choose
to say. It is the less influential or the less
feared politically, it is the less powerful, who
lie in jails or purchase their freedom by becoming
the intellectual slaves of those temporarily
in control. The Constitution however in its
guarantees makes no distinctions, it knows no
class, it recognizes neither prestige nor poverty—under
its terms all stand upon a plane of
equality.
All therefore who prize human liberty
will be jealous to see the Constitution administered
according to its letter and its spirit.
That is the price of free government.
The framers of the Constitution were the
most practical of men. They were not intellectual
adventurers. They were not dreamers.
They knew the worth of that concrete thing
called liberty and they knew how to secure it.