generating into ieense, and to establish a feeling of trust and repose under a beneficent government, whose excellence, so obvious in its freedom, is still more conspicuous in its careful provision for permanence and stability." Those faults on which I have laid stress, the waste of power by friction, the want of unity and vigor in the conduct of affairs by Executive and Legislature, are the price which the Americans pay for the autonomy of their States, and for the permanence of the equilibrium among the various branches of their Government. They pay this price willingly, because these defects are far less dangerous to the body politic than they would be in a European country. Take, for instance, the shortcomings of Congress as a legislative authority. Every European country is surrounded by difficulties which legislation must deal with, and that promptly. But in America, where those relics of medieval privilege and injustice that still cumber most parts of the Old World either never existed, or were long ago abolished, where all the conditions of material prosperity exist in ample measure, and the development of material resources occupies men's minds, where nearly all social reforms lie within the sphere of State action, in America there has generally been less desire than in Europe for a perennial stream of Federal legislation. People are contented if things go on fairly well as they are. Political philosophers, or philanthropists, perceive not a few improvements which Federal statutes might effect, but the mass of the Nation has not greatly complained and the wise see Congress so often on the point of committing mischievous errors that they do not deplore the barrenness of session after session.

Every European State has to fear not only the rivalry but the aggression of its neighbors. Even Britain, so long safe in her insular home, has lost some of her security by the growth of steam navies, and has in her Indian and colonial posses

sions given pledges to Fortune all over the globeShe, like the powers of the European continent, must maintain her system of government in full efficiency for war as well as for peace, and cannot afford to let her armaments decline, her finances become disordered, the vigor of her Executive authority be impaired, sources of internal discord continue to prey upon her vitals. But America has lived in a world of her own, ipsa suis pollens opibus, nihil indigna nostri. Safe from attack, safe even from menace, she hears from afar the warring cries of European races and faiths, as the gods of Epicurus listened to the murmurs of the unhappy earth spread out beneath their golden dwellings,

“Sejuncta a rebus nostris remotaque longe.”

Had Canada or Mexico grown to be a great power, had France not sold Louisiana, or had England, rooted on the American continent, become a military despotism, the United States could not indulge the easy optimism which makes them tolerate the faults of their Government. As it is, that which might prove to a European State a mortal disease is here nothing worse than a teasing ailment. Since the War of Secession ended, no serious danger has arisen either from within or from without to alarm transatlantic statesmen. Social convulsions from within, warlike assaults from without, seem now as unlikely to try the fabric of the American Constitution as an earthquake to rend the walls of the Capitol. This is why the Americans submit, not merely patiently but hopefully, to the defects of their Government. The vessel may not be any better built, or found, or rigged than are those which carry the fortunes of the great nations of Europe. She is certainly not better navigated. But for the present, at least it may not always be so — she sails upon a summer sea.

It must never be forgotten that the main object which the framers of the Constitution set before themselves has

been achieved. When Sieyès was asked what he had done during the Reign of Terror, he answered, "I lived." The Constitution as a whole has stood and stands unshaken. The scales of power have continued to hang fairly even. The President has not corrupted and enslaved Congress: Congress has not paralyzed and cowed the President. The legislative may have sometimes appeared to be gaining on the executive department; but there are also times when the people support the President against the Legislature, and when the Legislature are obliged to recognize the fact. Were George Washington to return to earth, he might be as great and useful a President as he was more than a century ago. Neither the Legislature nor the Executive has for a moment threatened the liberties of the people. The States have not broken up the Union, and the Union has not absorbed the States. No wonder that the Americans are proud of an instrument under which this great result has been attained, which has passed unscathed through the furnace of civil war, which has been found capable of embracing a body of Commonwealths more than three times as numerous, and with twenty fold the population of the original States, which has cultivated the political intelligence of the masses to a point reached in no other country, which has fostered and been found compatible with a larger measure of local self-government than has existed elsewhere. Nor is it the least of its merits to have made itself beloved. Objections may be taken to particular features, and these objections point, as most American thinkers are agreed, to practical improvements which would preserve the excellences and remove some of the inconveniences. But reverence for the Constitution has become so potent a conservative influence, that no proposal of fundamental change seems likely to be entertained. And this reverence is itself one of the most wholesome and hopeful elements in the character of the American people.

CRITICISM OF THE FEDERAL SYSTEM1

JAMES BRYCE

ALL Americans have long been agreed that the only possible form of government for their country is a Federal one. All have perceived that a centralized system would be inexpedient, if not unworkable, over so large an area, and have still more strongly felt that to cut up the continent into absolutely independent States would not only involve risks of war but injure commerce, and retard in a thousand ways the material development of every part of the country. But regarding the nature of the Federal tie that ought to exist there have been keen and frequent controversies, dormant at present, but which might break out afresh should there arise a new question of social or economic change capable of bringing the powers of Congress into collision with the wishes of any State or group of States. The general suitability to the country of a Federal system is therefore accepted, and need not be discussed. I pass to consider the strong and weak points of that which exists.

The faults generally charged on federations as compared with unified governments are the following:

1. Weakness in the conduct of foreign affairs.

2. Weakness in home government, that is to say, deficient authority over the component States and the individual citizens.

3. Liability to dissolution by the secession or rebellion of States.

4. Liability to division into groups and factions by the 1 The American Commonwealth (Revised Edition), part 1, chapter XXIX. Reprinted through the generous permission of The Macmillan Company.

formation of separate combinations of the component States.

5. Want of uniformity among the States in legislation and administration.

6. Trouble, expense, and delay due to the complexity of a double system of legislation and administration. The first four of these are all due to the same cause, viz., the existence within one government, which ought to be able to speak and act in the name and with the united strength of the Nation, of distinct centers of force, organized political bodies into which part of the Nation's strength has flowed, and whose resistance to the will of the majority of the whole Nation is likely to be more effective than could be the resistance of individuals, because such bodies have each of them a government, a revenue, a militia, a local patriotism to unite them, whereas individual recalcitrants, however numerous, would be unorganized, and less likely to find a legal standing ground for opposition. The gravity of the first two of the four alleged faults has been exaggerated by most writers, who have assumed, on insufficient grounds, that Federal Governments are necessarily weak. Let us, however, see how far America has experienced such troubles from these features of a Federal system.

I. In its early years, the Union was not successful in the management of its foreign relations. Few popular Governments are, because a successful foreign policy needs in a world such as ours conditions which popular Governments seldom enjoy. In the days of Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, the Union put up with a great deal of ill-treatment from France as well as from England. It drifted rather than steered into the War of 1812. The conduct of that war was hampered by the opposition of the New England States. The Mexican War of 1846 was due to the slaveholders; but as the combination among the Southern leaders which