The Constitution In Other Hands

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I heard an interesting reference in Sunday School this morning to Democracy in America by Alexis de Toqueville.  The United States Constitution as good as it is is only as good as the morality of the people who wield it.

The Constitution of the United States is like those exquisite
productions of human industry which ensure wealth and renown to their
inventors, but which are profitless in any other hands. This truth is
exemplified by the condition of Mexico at the present time. The Mexicans
were desirous of establishing a federal system, and they took the
Federal Constitution of their neighbors, the Anglo-Americans, as their
model, and copied it with considerable accuracy.  But although they
had borrowed the letter of the law, they were unable to create or
to introduce the spirit and the sense which give it life. They were
involved in ceaseless embarrassments between the mechanism of their
double government; the sovereignty of the States and that of the Union
perpetually exceeded their respective privileges, and entered into
collision; and to the present day Mexico is alternately the victim of
anarchy and the slave of military despotism.