policy? It seems almost a thing of despair to get any assurance that any vote he may cast will even in an infinitesimal degree affect the essential courses of administration. There are so many cooks mixing their ingredients in the national broth that it seems hopeless, this thing of changing one cook at a time.
The charm of our constitutional ideal has now been long enough wound up to enable sober men who do not believe in political witchcraft to judge what it has accomplished, and is likely still to accomplish, without further winding. The Constitution is not honored by blind worship. The more open-eyed we become, as a nation, to its defects, and the prompter we grow in applying with the unhesitating courage of conviction all thoroughly-tested or well-considered expedients necessary to make self-government among us a straightforward thing of simple method, single, unstinted power, and clear responsibility, the nearer will we approach to the sound sense and practical genius of the great and honorable statesmen of 1787. And the first step towards emancipation from the timidity and false pride which have led us to seek to thrive despite the defects of our national system rather than seem to deny its perfection is a fearless criticism of that system. When we shall have examined all its parts without sentiment, and ganged all its functions by the standards of practical common sense, we shall have established anew our right to the claim of political sagacity; and it will remain only to act intelligently upon what our opened eyes have seen in order to prove again the justice of our claim to political genius.
FOOTNOTES:
1 These are Mr. Bagehot's words with reference to the British constitutional system. See his English Constitution (last American edition), p. 69.
2 Works, vol. vi., p. 467: "Letter to Jno. Taylor." The words and sentences omitted in the quotation contain Mr. Adams's opinions as to the value of the several balances, some of which he thinks of doubtful utility, and others of which he, without hesitation, pronounces altogether pernicious.
3 Federalist, No. 17.
4 Cooley's Principles of Const. Law, p. 143.
5 McMaster, Hist. of the People of the U. S., vol. i., p. 564.
6 Lodge's Alexander Hamilton (Am. Statesmen Series), p. 85.
7 Lodge's Alexander Hamilton, p. 105.
8 Its final and most masterly exposition, by C. J. Marshall, may be seen in McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheaton, 316.
9 The following passage from William Maclay's Sketches of Debate in the First Senate of the United States (pp. 292-3) illustrates how clearly the results of this were forecast by sagacious men from the first: "The system laid down by these gentlemen (the Federalists) was as follows, or rather the development of the designs of a certain party: The general power to carry the Constitution into effect by a constructive interpretation would extend to every case that Congress may deem necessary or expedient.... The laws of the United States will be held paramount to all "state" laws, claims, and even constitutions. The supreme power is with the general government to decide in this, as in everything else, for the States have neglected to secure any umpire or mode of decision in case of difference between them. Nor is there any point in the Constitution for them to rally under. They may give an opinion, but the opinions of the general government must prevail.... Any direct and open act would be termed usurpation. But whether the gradual influence and encroachments of the general government may not gradually swallow up the state governments, is another matter."
10 Pensacola Tel. Co. v. West. Union, 96 U. S. 1, 9. (Quoted by Judge Cooley in his Principles of Constitutional Law.)
11 18 Stat., part 3, 336. See Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339.
12 Sect. 5515 Rev. Stats. See Ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S. 371. Equally extensive of federal powers is that "legal tender" decision (Juilliard v. Greenman) of March, 1884, which argues the existence of a right to issue an irredeemable paper currency from the Constitution's grant of other rights characteristic of sovereignty, and from the possession of a similar right by other governments. But this involves no restriction of state powers; and perhaps there ought to be offset against it that other decision (several cases, October, 1883), which denies constitutional sanction to the Civil Rights Act.
13 Principles of Constitutional Law, pp. 143, 144.
14 Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch, 137.
15 Cooley's Principles, p. 157.
16 For an incisive account of the whole affair, see an article Entitled "The Session," No. Am. Review, vol. cxi., pp. 48, 49.
17 7 Wall. 506.
18 For a brilliant account of the senatorial history of these two treaties, see the article entitled "The Session," No. Am. Rev., vol. cviii. (1869), p. 626 et seq.
19 In an article entitled "The Conduct of Business in Congress" (North American Review, vol. cxxviii. p. 113), to which I am indebted for many details of the sketch in the text.
20 No Committee is entitled, when called, to occupy more than the morning hours of two successive days with the measures which it has prepared; though if its second morning hour expire while the House is actually considering one of its bills, that single measure may hold over from morning hour to morning hour until it is disposed of.
21 Quoted from an exceedingly life-like and picturesque description of the House which appeared in the New York Nation for April 4, 1878.
22 No. Am. Rev., vol. xxvi., p. 162.
23 Id., the same article.
24 "Glances at Congress," Dem. Rev., March, 1839.
25 Autobiography, pp. 264, 265.
26 The National Budget, etc. (English Citizen Series), p. 146. In what I have to say of the English system, I follow this volume, pp. 146-149, and another volume of the same admirable series,
