“Be changed? Change the laws of the United States? Tamper with the glorious Constitution that our fore-fathers left us—an immortal sacred legacy.”
He jumped up on his feet and his second-hand smile fell off. He kinder shook as if he wuz skairt most to death and tremblin’ with horrow. He did it to skair me, I knew, but I knowed I meant well towards the Constitution and our old forefathers; and my principles stiddied me and held me firm and serene. And when he asked me agin in tones full of awe and horrow:
“Can it be that I heard my ear aright? Or did you speak of changin’ the unalterable laws of the United States—tampering with the Constitution?”
“Yes, that is what I said. Hain’t they never been changed?”
He dropped that skairful look and put on a firm judicial one. He see that he could not skair me to death; an’ sez he, “Oh, yes, they’ve been changed in cases of necessity.”
Sez I, “For instance durin’ the Oncivil war it wuz changed to make Northern men cheap bloodhounds and hunters.”
“Yes,” he said, “it seemed to be a case of necessity and economy.”
“I know it,” sez I; “men wuz cheaper than any other breed of bloodhounds the slave-holders could employ to hunt men and wimmen with, and more faithful.”
“Yes,” he said, “it wuz a case of clear economy.”
And sez I: “The laws have been changed to benefit liquor dealers.”
“Well, yes,” he said, “it had been changed to enable whiskey dealers to utilize the surplus liquor they import.”
Sez he, gittin’ kinder animated, for he wuz on a congenial and familar theme, “Nobody, the best calculators in drunkards, can exactly calculate how much whiskey will be drunk in a year; and so, ruther than have the whiskey dealers suffer loss, the law had to be changed. And then,” sez he, growin’ still more candid in his excitement, “we are makin’ a powerful effort to change the laws now so as to take the tax off of whiskey, so it can be sold cheaper, and obtained in greater quantities by the masses. Any such great laws would justify a change in the Constitution and the laws; but for any frivolous cause, any trivial cause, madam, we male custodians of the sacred Constitution stand as walls of iron before it, guarding it from any shadow of change. Faithful we will be, faithful unto death.”