U. S. JAYCEES' GOVERNMENTAL SEMINAR 667

Its relevance has persevered because its authors recognized that, while
institutions will change, great principles will endure. Therefore, they
confined their efforts to an expression of great principles, confident
that the righteousness of these principles would suffice to provide
security and direction for all future generations.

What were and are these great principles? First, to secure and sus-
tain the sovereignty of the people. Second, to protect and perpetuate
the rights of the individual. Third, to create a political structure
which safeguards the citizen by a series of checks and balances among
— but not within — our three traditional branches of government.
Fourth, to develop that superstructure for government most conducive
to efficient administration, effective legislation and impartial adjudi-
cation.

Finally and above all, a philosophy prevailed which recognized the
constitutional imperative that omission produces as significant an im-
pact as inclusion. It was the restraint of our founding fathers that
has permitted the U. S. Constitution to endure. By avoiding detail,
they assured flexibility and by eliminating all unnecessary specifics,
they preserved the essence.

In contrast to the spirit of the U. S. Constitution, where political
passions were surrendered to logic and compromise, stand the con-
stitutions of many of our states. I have no doubt that those who
framed the constitutions of our states sought — like those immortalized
federalists who wrote the fundamental law of our nation — to rise
above the parochial and write true to principle. Yet they rose too
little and wrote too much. Consequently, our state constitutions were
cluttered with detail that was destined to obstruct rather than to
guide inevitable institutional evolution.

Yet we must not be too harsh with our states' constitutional fore-
bears for they could not foresee the phenomenal socio-economic
changes of the future. Maryland's century-old Constitution epitomizes
this failure to envision the future, a failure caused by historical cir-
cumstances at the time it was framed. In 1867 Maryland had not yet
recovered from the agonizing impact of the Civil War — the wounds
of conflict ran deep — and the memories of martial law and political
abuses were still vivid. At that time Maryland was a rural, complacent
state with barely a half million residents, who sought little from their
State government but to restore the peace and to permit them to
recover in peace from the exhausting war.

It is not surprising that Maryland's 1867 Constitution was unable
to surmount the transition between the ages of the clipper ship and