For a number of years on the editorial page of The Deseret News this has appeared:

We stand for the Constitution of the United States with its three departments of government as therein set forth, each one fully independent in its field.

I thought it would not be amiss or out of order to say something about the Constitution, to give a little history of it perhaps briefly; for I am convinced that the people generally of the United States have not studied it. Many of them have never read it, and some know nothing concerning what it is all about.

At the close of the Revolution the several states of this American government became independent of Great Britain, but they were confronted with dangers of disintegration, or falling apart. They did not have a stable form of government. Some of the wiser statesmen among the patriots saw this danger and attempted to divert it. George Washington, in a circular letter to the state governors, wrote in June 1783, saying:

It is yet to be decided whether the revolution must ultimately be considered as a blessing or a curse.

This is the moment to establish or ruin [the colonies’] national character forever. There should be lodged somewhere a supreme power to regulate and govern the general concerns of the confederated republic without which the Union cannot be of long duration.