CHAP. I. POLITICAL CAPACITIES OF AMERICANS. 11 tically assigned, as we shall presently see, and one with which the majority of the people are content, because it is always in the power of the majority to do as they please with it. Whether the Americans as a nation will always remain content is a question concerning which very grave doubts may be entertained, but they have at least as much reason on their side in believing, from their past history, that their government is indestructible, as other nations have in predicting its sudden downfall. There will always be a large, probably a preponderating, party ready to fight for the maintenance of the Union. There is another circumstance which in the United States lessens the ordinary risk of intrusting the controlling influence in the government to the masses. There the people are accustomed to the duties, although it would be too much to say that they are always mindful of the responsibilities, of government. If they have not explored all the byeways of political philosophy, they are used to the practical management of their own affairs. They may know little of political science, but they are generally shrewd men of business. Each State makes its own laws, and hence it is that the laws of all the States differ in material respects. The United States Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over them, except when they involve some question or privilege the treatment of which is definitively prescribed by the Constitution. Laws relating to property, marriage, education, the punishment of crime, the preservation of social order, the entire regulation of the affairs of a community, are made by the States for themselves, with the one qualification that they must not be in conflict with the Constitution. And who are the law-makers? The delegates elected by the people—and they are no more than delegates. They constantly consult the sense and wishes of their constituents; and if they frame an obnoxious law, another set of representatives are sent to the State Legislatures the following year to repeal it. It might almost be said that the people are every day of their lives engaged in practising the active duties of government. The Federal Legislature is only in plan the State Legislature on a larger scale. It is an expansion of the local principle of self-government. In America, then, as the people make their government, and know that they are responsible for it, they submit willingly to its decrees. Lord Brougham thought it a special merit of the English government that it could levy taxes, in case of need, more quietly and successfully than any other. other. "If it be said," he continued, "that the American government can as well call forth the resources `of the people, I have very grave doubt if the national representatives, and especially the President towards the end of his first three years, would inflict a heavy excise or a grinding income-tax upon the people, as our Parliament has so often done; and I have no doubt at all that such an infliction would very CHAP. I. POPULARITY OF THE GOVERNMENT. 13 speedily lead to a termination of hostilities without any very great nicety about the terms of peace." The signal manner in which this confident prediction has been falsified can never be forgotten, any more than the prediction itself can be repeated. Not only did the American people submit to unparalleled income and excise taxes, and every other kind of tax, during the civil war, but they afterwards accepted these enormous imposts quite voluntarily, paid them almost without a murmur from one end of the country to the other, and continue to pay them to this hour. Could any people do more for their government than this? And why do the Americans make these sacrifices? Because they are deeply, immoveably attached to a certain national ideal, which some believe has been realized already, and others hope to see realized in the future; because they feel that there is no part of their government in which they have not an influence and an interest; because they believe that it exists for their benefit and welfare, and that when it ceases t do so they can rapidly amend or remodel it. These vital reforms are expedient and justifiable as often as they are necessary. Washington, in his farewell address, emphatically said to the people, "the basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government." Judge Story remarks of the Constitu 7 Lord Brougham on the 'British Constitution,' chapter xvii. tion that "its framers were not bold or rash enough to believe or to pronounce it to be perfect. They made use of the best lights which they possessed to form and adjust its parts and mould its materials. But they knew that time might develop many defects in its arrangements, and many deficiencies in its powers. They desired that it might be open to improvement, and, under the guidance of the sober judgment and enlightened skill of the country, to be perpetually approaching nearer and nearer to perfection." Upon these principles the American people determined that the country should be governed after the great rebellion. There were not wanting those who contended that the Constitution was binding upon the nation for ever, and could neither be abridged nor extended, no matter what perils or difficulties arose. A decision of five judges of the Supreme Court in the case of a man named Milligan, who had been imprisoned under the order of a military commission, and who petitioned for release, gave authority and sanction to this party. judges went so far as to say of the Constitution that "no doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great emergencies of the government." But the Chief Justice and three other judges dissented from this opinion, and held that Congress, in times of 9 8 Commentaries,' § 417 (3rd edition, Boston, 1858). The CHAP. I. REPUBLICANISM IDEALISED. 15 extraordinary emergency, had the right to put in force extraordinary powers for the preservation of the country. And common sense confirms this interpretation of the law. If, of the Union or the Constitution one or other must fall, which is it for the interest of the people to abandon? Had the Southern States conquered, Union and Constitution would both have perished. The Northern people fought to save both, but a strict adherence to the Constitution was found during the struggle to be inconsistent with the preservation of the Union, and it was therefore practically disregarded. At first, indeed, it was only sought to alter it in accordance with the terms of constitutional law, that is by the consent of a majority of three-fourths of all the States; but since the Southern States would not voluntarily sign away their liberty, this provision was ignored, and the decision of the conquering States was held to be alone sufficient to recast the agreement of 1787. The light in which the Americans regard their government can never be understood unless we suppose it to have a double existence-an existence in fact and an existence in the imagination or hopes of the people. The foreign observer describes only what he sees; the American invests his government with certain fictitious qualities which he knows that it ought to possess, and would possess if the ideas of its founders were truly carried out, and which he retains a firm belief will be grafted upon it by the |