APRIL 29, 1934

Editor Dispatch-Herald:

Sir. In 1775, the minute men of Lexington fired the shots which set in motion a course of events that gave our country a national constitution in 1789, curbing tyranny at all points. Today, the patriotic people of Lexington, acting as minutemen of our times, fire awakening shots over the graves of those first heroes of the Revolution, challenging us seriously to inquire whether we still have a safe-guarding Constitution.

Virtually we have inverted the plan of our dual form of government. We have converted our federal government—supreme in power—within its limited sphere, but subordinate to the states and to the people—into a largely and dangerously consolidated national government, sovereign in all power and so enforced, except to the extent which it chooses to allow the states and the people of exercise sovereign power within their own borders. In principle, the constitution, the federal laws, etc., are ordained the supreme law of the land, but sovereignity [sic] is "reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." In practice today, however, that relation is largely reversed.

This wandering beyond the constitution is seen in the extension of the taxing power to non-constitutional purposes; in potential federal management of all private business; in delegation of full legislative power instead of the constitutional limit of near legislative power, to the chief executive and his administrators; in grafting an economic constitution upon the political constitution, and in proposals to deliegate [sic] in foreign trade-agreement making power without the advice and consent of the senate. This is sufficient to show the extent to which we have disregarded the limitations, the checks and the guarantees of the constitution.

H. A. K., Erie, Pa., April 21.