had a pro-slavery majority, or, at any rate, a minority so numerous as to paralyze all action. If, as is probable in this event, the President and the Senate had come into open collision, it is difficult to see how the Executive Government could have been carried on.

This hypothesis illustrates what I conceive to be the vital defect of the American Constitution. The system is so carefully poised and counterpoised that any disturbance in the political machinery stops its working ; and when the disturbance occurs, there is no undefined authority to deal with unforeseen accidents.* According to our European theory of republics, the people is the ultimate source of all power; and, possibly, Americans may assert that this is the case also in the theory of their government. Unfortunately, there is no means, no constitutional means, of appealing to the people. It is true that the Constitution may be, and has been, amended, but then it is by an appeal to the States, not to the people; and a minority of one-fourth of the States can preclude action. The truth is, the essence of the American Constitution is that it is a Federation, not that it is a Republic. If some of the States were

This defect is commented on by Patrick Henry in his celebrated speech on the British debts' case, delivered in 1791. The following words read now almost prophetical:-"Is this one of the precious fruits of the adoption of the federal Constitution, to bind us hand and foot with the fetters of technicality, and leave us no way of bursting them asunder, but by a declaration of war and the effusion of human blood?"

constitutional monarchies, others despotisms, and others oligarchies, there is no abstract reason why the Government of the United States should not remain almost unaltered, and, possibly, work better. The safety of the system lay in the conflicting interests, in the variety of Governments of the different States. Gradually State lines have grown to have less social importance, while, politically, they have become more and more powerful. Railroads, commerce, and intercourse have broken down the isolation of the separate States. From community of interests, of position, and of institutions, the New England, the Western, the Pacific, and the Southern States have severally become welded together, but every tendency to union amongst the parts promotes, for a time at least, disunion in the whole. The centripetal force which could keep one State from flying out of the orbit is not adequate to keep within its attraction masses of States. The central force must be increased; but the necessity for this change is more easily pointed out, than the mode of accomplishing it. One fact is certain, that the work of unification, essential to the maintenance of the Union, can never be carried out permanently while North and South are divided by the fatal question of slavery.

To repeat, then, what I stated before, the Constitution of the United States is, in my judgment, neither more nor less than a compromise of great ability-a political make-shift of wonderful success. The dura

tion of the Union is due not so much to the merits of the Constitution as in the practical wisdom with which it has been worked. In France, the logical absurdity of the compromise would have been demonstrated in a month, and its existence terminated in a year. In America the good sense and moderation of the people has enabled the compromise to work without breaking down for three generations. The proud boast of the "Esto perpetua" is not likely, I think, to be realized in the letter, but it may well be in the spirit. The grand preamble which heads the Constitution— We, the people of the United States, in order to form

66

66

a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic "tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote "the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty "to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish "this Constitution"-has a purport deeper than the compromise it prescribes. Such words as these are not written upon sand.

STATE CONSTITUTIONS.

THE study of the American State Constitutions is not in itself an interesting one. A government, debarred from the exercise of all imperial functions, loses the dignity which the possession of supreme power confers in itself. One defect of the whole American system of government appears to me to be, that the prizes and opportunities of State politics are not sufficiently grand to secure the services of the highest class of politicians; and yet the powers wielded by the State Governments are so enormous as to require almost the very highest class of legislators for their due execution. Moreover, the relations between the systems of the State and the Central Governments act not altogether beneficially towards the latter. Every member of Congress must, in accordance with the Constitution, "be an inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.” Whether rightly or not, the word "inhabitant" has always been interpreted as identical with citizen. Thus, if you want to enter Congress, you must enter it as

senator or as representative from the State of which you are a citizen. Two consequences result inevitably from these conditions. A man who desires to enter on public life must make his name known as a local politician-must rise to Congress through the ante-chamber of local State politics; and, even after he has obtained entrance to Congress, must study the politics of his State as the condition of his political existence. This necessity for every national politician to be also a State politician undoubtedly deters many men of education and position from entering on public life. The talents fitted for the great arena of the National Assembly are not always those best qualified to succeed in the petty struggles of local legislatures. Again, the second and more hurtful consequence is, that a public man has no career before him, unless his politics are those of the majority of his own State. A pro-slavery man, who happened to be a citizen of Massachusetts, or an antislavery man of Maryland, would have no possibility of being returned to Congress. Take a case like that of Caleb Cushing, Mr. Pierce's Attorney-General. Here is a man of really remarkable ability, of great energy, and long experience of public life. So much even his most bitter enemies-and he has many-will allow. Yet General Cushing has practically little more chance of being returned to Congress than the writer of these pages. He would be the very best representative for a State like Maryland, by which, I mean, that even in the