ABSTRACT
Energy in government is essential to that security against external and internal danger, and to that prompt and salutary execution of the laws which enter into the very definition of good government. Stability in government is essential to national character. The Continental Congress had confronted the paradox with little expectation of solving it, in practice or in theory. The reply made to Rhode Island's objection to an import duty relates the via media of good government to the opposing extremes, but does not boast that the via media has been found. In the debates of the Convention there were more frequent references to the constitutional practices and common law of England than to Montesquieu or Bolingbroke or Locke. The new nation, with its Constitution and its responsible leaders channeling new traditions out of the inherited traditions of the past, creates and confirms its own traditions. The attitude toward tradition probably furnishes the most accurate shibboleth for distinguishing conservatives from liberals.
