how to change late foes into free friends. The safety of their great public debt, and with that debt their future credit and their whole power in future wars, may depend on their not giving too much power to those who must see in the debt the cost of their own subjugation, and who must have an inclination towards the repudiation of it now that their own debt the cost of their defense-has been repudiated. A race, too, formerly enslaved, is now at the mercy of men who hate and despise it, and those who set it free are bound to give it a fair chance for new life. The slave was formerly protected by his chains, - he was an article of value; but now he belongs to himself, no one but himself has an interest in his life, and he is at the mercy of the "mean whites," whose labor he depreciates and who regard him with a loathing hatred. The greatest moral duty ever set before a government, and the most fearful political problem ever set before a government, are now set before the American; but there is no decision, and no possibility of a decision. The President wants one course, and has power to prevent any other; the Congress wants another course, and has power to prevent any other. The splitting of sovereignty into many parts amounts to there being no sovereign.

The Americans of 1787 thought they were copying the English Constitution, but they were contriving a contrast to it. Just as the American is the type of composite governments, in which the supreme power is divided between many bodies and functionaries, so the English is the type of simple constitutions, in which the ultimate power upon all questions is in the hands of the same persons.

The ultimate authority in the English Constitution is a newly elected House of Commons. No matter whether the question upon which it decides be administrative or legislative; no matter whether it concern high matters of the essential Constitution or small matters of daily detail; no matter whether it

be a question of making a war or continuing a war; no matter whether it be the imposing a tax or the issuing a paper currency; no matter whether it be a question relating to India or Ireland or London, -a new House of Commons can despotically and finally resolve.

The House of Commons may, as was explained, assent in minor matters to the revision of the House of Lords, and submit in matters about which it cares little to the suspensive veto of the House of Lords; but when sure of the popular assent, and when freshly elected, it is absolute, it can rule as it likes and decide as it likes. And it can take the best security that it does not decide in vain; it can insure that its decrees shall be executed, for it and it alone appoints the executive; it can inflict the most severe of all penalties on neglect, for it can remove the executive. It can choose, to effect its wishes, those who wish the same; and so its will is sure to be done. A stipulated majority of both houses of the American Congress can overrule by stated enactment their executive; but the popular branch of our legislature can make and unmake ours.

The English Constitution, in a word, is framed on the principle of choosing a single sovereign authority and making it good: the American, upon the principle of having many sovereign authorities and hoping that their multitude may atone for their inferiority. The Americans now extol their institutions, and so defraud themselves of their due praise; but if they had not a genius for politics, if they had not a moderation in action singularly curious where superficial speech is so violent, if they had not a regard for law such as no great people have yet evinced, and infinitely surpassing ours, the multiplicity of authorities in the American Constitution would long ago have brought it to a bad end. Sensible shareholders, I have heard a shrewd attorney say, can work any deed of settlement; and so the men of Massachusetts

could, I believe, work any constitution.* But political philosophy must analyze political history; it must distinguish what is due to the excellence of the people and what to the excellence of the laws; it must carefully calculate the exact effect of each part of the constitution, though thus it may destroy many an idol of the multitude, and detect the secret of utility where but few imagined it to lie.

How important singleness and unity are in polit-V ical action, no one, I imagine, can doubt. We may distinguish and define its parts, but policy is a unit and a whole. It acts by laws, by administrators: it requires now one, now the other; unless it can easily move both it will be impeded soon; unless it has an absolute command of both its work will be imperfect. The interlaced character of human affairs requires a single determining energy: a distinct force for each artificial compartment will make but a motley patchwork, if it live long enough to make anything. The excellence of the British Constitution is that it has achieved this unity; that in it the sovereign power is single, possible, and good.

The success is primarily due to the peculiar provision of the English Constitution which places the choice of the executive in the "people's House"; but it could not have been thoroughly achieved except for two parts, which I venture to call the "safety-valve" of the Constitution and the "regulator."

The safety-valve is the peculiar provision of the Constitution of which I spoke at great length in my essay on the House of Lords. The head of the executive can overcome the resistance of the second chamber by choosing new members of that chamber; if he do not find a majority, he can make a majority. This is a safety-valve of the truest kind: it enables the popular will-the will of which the executive is

*Of course I am not speaking here of the South and Southeast, as they now are. How any free government is to exist in societies where so many bad elements are so much perturbed, I cannot imagine - B.

the exponent, the will of which it is the appointeeto carry out within the Constitution, desires and conceptions which one branch of the Constitution dislikes and resists. It lets forth a dangerous accumulation of inhibited power which might sweep this Constitution before it, as like accumulations have often swept away like constitutions.

The regulator, as I venture to call it, of our single sovereignty is the power of dissolving the otherwise sovereign chamber confided to the chief executive. The defects of the popular branch of a legislature as a sovereign have been expounded at length in a previous essay; briefly, they may be summed up in three accusations:

First, caprice is the commonest and most formidable vice of a choosing chamber. Wherever in our colonies parliamentary government is unsuccessful, or is alleged to be unsuccessful, this is the vice which first impairs it: the assembly cannot be induced to maintain any administration; it shifts its selection now from one minister to another minister, and in consequence there is no government at all.

Secondly, the very remedy for such caprice entails another evil. The only mode by which a cohesive 'majority and a lasting administration can be upheld in a parliamentary government is party organization; but that organization itself tends to aggravate party violence and party animosity. It is in substance subjecting the whole nation to the rule of a section of the nation, selected because of its speciality. Parliamentary government is in its essence a sectarian government, and is possible only when sects are cohesive.

Thirdly, a parliament, like every other sort of sovereign, has peculiar feelings, peculiar prejudices, peculiar interests; and it may pursue these in opposition to the desires and even in opposition to the well-being of the nation,-it has its selfishness as well as its caprice and its parties.

The mode in which the regulating wheel of our Constitution produces its effect is plain. It does not impair the authority of Parliaments as a species, but it impairs the power of the individual Parliament. It enables a particular person outside Parliament to say, "You members of Parliament are not doing your duty you are gratifying caprice at the cost of the nation; you are indulging party spirit at the cost of the nation; you are helping yourselves at the cost of the nation. I will see whether the nation approves what you are doing or not: I will appeal from Parliament No. 1 to Parliament No. 2."

By far the best way to appreciate this peculiar provision of our Constitution is to trace it in action; to see, as we saw before of the other powers of English royalty, how far it is dependent on the existence of a hereditary king, and how far it can be exercised by a premier whom Parliament elects. When we examine the nature of the particular person required to exercise the power, a vivid idea of that power is itself brought home to us.

First, as to the caprice of parliament in the choice of a premier, who is the best person to check it? Clearly, the premier himself: he is the person most interested in maintaining his administration, and therefore the most likely person to use efficiently and dexterously the power by which it is to be maintained. The intervention of an extrinsic king occasions a difficulty: a capricious parliament may always hope that his caprice may coincide with theirs. In the days when George III. assailed his Governments, the Premier was habitually deprived of his due authority. Intrigues were encouraged, because it was always dubious whether the king-hated minister would be permitted to appeal from the intriguers, and always a chance that the conspiring monarch might appoint one of the conspirators to be Premier in his room. The caprice of parliament is better checked when the faculty of dissolution is intrusted to its appointee,