ARTICLE II.-BRYCE'S "AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH.”

The American Commonwealth. By JAMES BRYCE, Author of the "Holy Roman Empire," M. P. for Aberdeen. In three volumes. London: MacMillan & Co. In two volumes. New York: 1888. 8vo, pp. xx. 750, 743.

IN taking up or in laying down Mr. Bryce's book, it is impossible to avoid several familiar reflections. For example, it is just sixty years since Sidney Smith, castigating our national habit of self-adulation, asked: "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? . . . Under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is every sixth man a slave, whom his fellow-creatures may buy and sell and torture?"—and here is an English book of three sturdy volumes, over 2000 octavo pages, altogether on American institutions and life, and American slavery has been by law extinct for almost a quarter of a century! Here also is a book that has the value which must have suggested the aphorism-" A foreign "A nation is a contemporaneous posterity." And this book too forces us to remember, and to contrast it with, other books written of America; most of all, with that classic for style and spirit, so fascinating to the young ambition of America, and, as we deliberately think, so philosophical,-the "Democracy in America" of Alexis de Tocqueville.

Resisting for the present the impulse to comparison, such as almost bars our way, we cannot help venturing again so far into the region of commonplace as to call to mind the wellobserved fact, that insularity is a characteristic of the general British or English mind. With but few exceptions, it is only a matter of degree between different English minds. For example, Mr. Goldwin Smith just now thinks that if woman suffrage should prevail in England, its prevalence here would be greatly accelerated, English political precedents having such influence in the United States! And Mr. Smith has lived here and in Canada for more than twenty years! Whether Mr. Bryce is

among the few admitted exceptions, or how far he is affected by the fact of his nationality, will best appear as we proceed to examine his work. Putting aside, so far as is possible, all prepossessions and prejudices--using these words in their best sense -it will be our main aim to see how truthful, how life-like, a picture Mr. Bryce has drawn and filled up, of the American commonwealth.

One welcome limitation is imposed to our task-the Article of Prof. Baldwin in the April number of this magazine. It will be neither needful nor prudent to attempt to glean in the field which he has harvested.

The plan of Mr. Bryce's work involved at least one special difficulty, which ought in justice to him to be kept in mind. His effort was to describe the American commonwealth, both in general and in detail, laying the greater emphasis apparently on the details. Such a plan, well carried out, necessarily involved much patient plodding, along with a due degree of analytical skill and philosophical observation and discussion. In such a work, one or the other quality is quite apt to stand in the way of the best result. If details, mere items of information, greatly predominate, the book may be in a sense valuable; it will hardly be readable; and a highly valuable book must be readable. If discussion or generalization, on the other hand, be undertaken, on too slender a ground-work of information or exact facts, the result can in no sense be highly valuable.

Mr. Bryce has had this problem to meet, and we think he has met it with a fair degree of success. If the saying of Carlyle be true, that the biography of any man truly told, would be interesting, there is nevertheless a wide range of varying values in matters of detail, and it certainly produces a sense of incongruity to be told in the height of grave discussion of one of the foremost features of our government, that "each senator sits in a morocco leather covered arm-chair, with a desk in front of it." The fact has value for some purposes, perhaps for historical or literary realism, but it does not quite go well with other facts which have undoubted historic and diagnostic value in presenting such a theme as Mr. Bryce has to do with. He has plainly, however, worked in the spirit of his own re

mark: "The inquisition of the forces which move society is a high matter; and even where certainty is unattainable, it is some service to have determined the facts." (vol. i., p. 14.) The vast number of facts here gathered and arranged, make one of the most remarkable features of the work. The accuracy of the statements of fact is equally remarkable. Still it is an open query whether such a book as the author tells us he first intended" a study of the more salient social and intellectual phenomena of contemporary America "*-would not have been more effective and more permanently valuable, in a literary as well as in an historical and forensic way.

The aim fixed upon by Mr. Bryce-"the picture of the American commonwealth as a whole "-made it inevitable that our political system, our system of government, should be the leading motive of the discussion, the foremost object in the picture. The result is that the present book is divided into six Parts; the first two being strictly confined to the framework of the Federal and State governments; the next two, to the forces that operate the governments-the party system, and public opinion; the next, to illustrations and reflections on the working of the governments; leaving only one of the six parts to what our author calls "Social institutions." To our mind, there is a sense of disproportion in the result, in view of Mr. Bagehot's acute and just remark: "Success in government in England, as elsewhere, is due far more to the civil instincts and capacities of our race, than to any theoretical harmony or perfection of the rules and formulæ of governmental conduct." The American people are a more important factor of the American commonwealth than the American constitution or government. Mr. Bagehot has further remarked, that "any blame cast on the American constitution is so much praise to be given to the American people." And again: "The American people 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

*

Preface, p. ix. Note. The references in this Article are to the paging of the three-volume, octavo edition.

ours, the multiplicity of authorities in the American constitution would long since have brought it to a bad end."* This is the highest praise, and praise from Cæsar, with no note of insularity. The American constitution and government may be easily criticised; the really incommunicable attribute and secret of the American commonwealth is the qualities of the American people, to which Mr. Bagehot pays this remarkable tribute.

Mr. Bryce has grasped and presented the idea of our dual or compound system of government and what it involves and implies, with all the ease and power of a master,-an effort which has baffled many foreigners. It is, of course, the key to all knowledge of our political system, as well as its most striking and pervading characteristic," the existence of a double government, a double allegiance, a double patriotism.” (vol. i., p. 16.) The brief second chapter of Part I, is, all in all, the most admirable and luminous passage of this book. Its statement of principles and conditions, its illustrations, its statements of results, are all exquisitely apt, and accurate. But Mr. Bryce has hardly been equally successful in the succeeding chapter which treats of the origin of the constitution. Throughout this chapter, Chapter III., of Part I,—admirable as in many ways it is, lurks the prime error that our constitution was, substantially and characteristically, the result of the creative power and genius embodied in the convention of 1787. Thus Mr. Bryce says, in language which reminds of Mr. Gladstone's on the same point: "The Convention had not only to create de novo, on the most slender basis of pre-existing national institutions, a national government," etc. (vol. i., p. 28.) We add, with deference, that this fallacy seems to be accompanied and interwoven with the equally fallacious notion that there is a very wide contrast, in their working and effects, between written and unwritten constitutions.

It has been made clear beyond almost any other conclusion of our history and upon evidence open to all, that the American constitution was and is the strict result of historical evolution, the fruit of experience here in America, aided to a considerable extent, by English experience, and slightly by some * English Constitution, pp. 289, 290.

general conclusions of political philosophy, particularly those presented in Montesquieu's "Esprit des Lois," published a little less than forty years before the convention of 1787, and at that time retaining undiminished its extraordinary and rightful hold on the public mind. The great general influence of this work is visible in the actual thought and discussions of the Federal convention, in the debates of the State conventions, and especially in the Federalist; and we are reminded to note here that Sir Henry Maine has been led, on this point, into almost the only remark in the whole range of his writings, which seems to us an over-statement or a seriously questionable conclusion, when he says that "it may be confidently laid down, that neither the institution of the Supreme Court nor the entire structure of the Constitution were the least likely to occur to any body's mind before the publication of the "Esprit des Lois."*

The conclusion that the American constitution is a natural historical growth is verifiable by reference both to its separate provisions and its broad scheme and outlines. This has been done, once for all, in brief, by the remarkable Article of Prof. Alexander Johnston in the New Princeton Review for September, 1887,-an Article which marks a distinct advance in our knowledge of, as well as in the only proper method of valuing, our constitution,-an Article "the virtue of which is,"-contrary to what was wittily said of one of Montesquieu's earlier works," in its facts," not less than "in its views." To the reading, study, and verification of this Article, we commend whomsoever would begin to well understand our government or the American commonwealth; and to this end we quote from it these weighty words: "The best reason for American pride in the constitution lies, not in the creative genius of its framers, nor in the beauty and symmetry of their work, but in the fact that it was and is a perfect expression of the institutional methods of its people."

The marvel of the framing of the constitution, on which Mr. Bryce so much dwells, is not diminished by this view of its origin, nor are Hamilton's words which he quotes, made less correct: The establishment of a constitution, in time of

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* Popular Government, p. 218.