been achieved. When Sieyes 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

entrapped the Nation into that conflict might have been equally successful in a unified country, the blame need not be laid at the door of Federalism. The principle of abstention from Old World complications has been so heartily and consistently adhered to that the capacities of the Federal system for the conduct of foreign affairs have been seldom seriously tried, so far as concerned European powers; and the likelihood of any danger from abroad is so slender that it may be practically ignored. But when a question of external policy arises which interests only one part of the Union (such for instance as the immigration of Asiatic laborers), the existence of States feeling themselves specially affected is apt to have a strong and probably an unfortunate influence. Only in this way can the American Government be deemed likely to suffer in its foreign relations from its Federal character.

II. For the purposes of domestic government the Federal authority is now, in ordinary times, sufficiently strong. However, as was remarked in the last chapter, there have been occasions when the resistance of even a single State disclosed its weakness. Had a man less vigorous than Jackson occupied the Presidential chair in 1832, South Carolina would probably have prevailed against the Union. In the Kansas troubles of 1855-56 the National Executive played a sorry part; and even in the resolute hands of President Grant it was hampered in the reëstablishment of order in the reconquered Southern States by the rights which the Federal Constitution secured to those States. The only general conclusion on this point which can be drawn from history is that while the Central Government is likely to find less and less difficulty in enforcing its will against a State or disobedient subjects, because the prestige of its success in the Civil War has strengthened it and the facilities of communication make the raising and moving of troops more easy, neverthe

less recalcitrant States, or groups of States, still enjoy certain advantages for resistance, advantages due partly to the legal position, partly to their local sentiment, which rebels might not have in unified countries like England, France, or Italy.

III. Everybody knows that it was the Federal system, and the doctrine of State sovereignty grounded thereon, and not expressly excluded, though certainly not recognized, by the Constitution, which led to the secession of 1861, and gave European powers a plausible ground for recognizing the insurgent minority as belligerents. Nothing seems now less probable than another secession, not merely because the supposed legal basis for it has been abandoned, and because the advantages of continued union are more obvious than ever before, but because the precedent of the victory won by the North will discourage like attempts in the future. This is so strongly felt that it has not even been thought worth while to add to the Constitution an amendment negativing the right to secede. The doctrine of the legal indestructibility of the Union is now well established. To establish it, however, cost thousands of millions of dollars and the lives of a million of men.

IV. The combination of States into groups was a familiar feature of politics before the war. South Carolina and the Gulf States constituted one such, and the most energetic, group; the New England States frequently acted as another, especially during the War of 1812. At present, though, there are several sets of States whose common interests lead their representatives in Congress to act together, it is no longer the fashion for States to combine in an official way through their State organizations, and their doing so would excite reprehension. It is easier, safer, and more effective to act through the great National parties. Any considerable State interest (such as that of the silver-miners or cattle-men, or