the States. It is itself a commonwealth as well as a union of commonwealths, because it claims directly the obedience of every citizen, and acts immediately upon him through its courts and executive officers. Still less are the minor communities, the States, mere subdivisions of the Union, mere creatures of the national government, like the counties of England or the departments of France. They have over their citizens an authority which is their own, and not delegated by the central government. They have not been called into being by that government. They existed before it. They could exist without it.

The central or national government and the State governments may be compared to a large building and a set of smaller buildings standing on the same ground, yet distinct from each other. It is a combination sometimes seen where a great church has been erected over more ancient homes of worship. First the soil is covered by a number of small shrines and chapels, built at different times and in different styles of architecture, each complete in itself. Then over them and including them all in its spacious fabric there is reared a new pile with its own loftier roof, its own walls, which may perhaps rest on and incorporate the walls of the older shrines, its own internal plan.1 The identity of the earlier buildings has however not been obliterated; and if the later and larger structure were to disappear, a little repair would enable them to keep out wind and weather, and be again what they once were, distinct and separate edifices. So the American States are now all inside the Union, and have all become subordinate to it. Yet the Union is more than an aggregate of States, and the States are more than parts of the Union. It might be destroyed, and they, adding a few further attributes of power to those they now possess, might survive as independent self-governing communities.

This is the cause of that immense complexity which startles and at first bewilders the student of American institutions, a complexity which makes American history and current American politics so difficult to the European who finds in them phenomena to which his own experience supplies no parallel. There are two loyalties, two patriotisms; and the lesser patriotism, as the

1 I do not profess to indicate any one building which exactly corresponds to what I have attempted to describe, but there are several both in Italy and in Egypt that seem to justify the simile.

incident in the Episcopal Convention shows, is jealous of the greater. There are two governments, covering the same ground, commanding, with equally direct authority, the obedience of the same citizen.

The casual reader of American political intelligence in European newspapers is not struck by this phenomenon, because State politics and State affairs generally are seldom noticed in Europe. Even the traveller who visits America does not realize its importance, because the things that meet his eye are superficially similar all over the continent, and that which Europeans call the machinery of government is in America conspicuous chiefly by its absence. But a due comprehension of this double organization is the first and indispensable step to the comprehension of American institutions: as the eloborate devices whereby the two systems of government are kept from clashing are the most curious subject of study which those institutions present.

How did so complex a system arise, and what influences have moulded it into its present form? This is a question which cannot be answered without a few words of historical retrospect. I am sensible of the danger of straying into history, and the more anxious to avoid this danger, because the task of describing American institutions as they now exist is more than sufficiently heavy for one writer and one book. But an outline, a brief and plain outline, of the events which gave birth to the Federal system in America, and which have nurtured national feeling without extinguishing State feeling, seems the most natural introduction to an account of the present Constitution, and may dispense with the need for subsequent explanations and digressions. It is the only excursion into the historical domain which I shall have to ask the reader to make.

CHAPTER III

THE ORIGIN OF THE CONSTITUTION

WHEN in the reign of George III. troubles arose between England and her North American colonists, there existed along the eastern coast of the Atlantic thirteen little communities, the largest of which (Virginia) had not much more than half a million of people, and the total population of which did not reach three millions. All owned allegiance to the British Crown, all, except Connecticut and Rhode Island, received their governors from the Crown; in all, causes were carried by appeal from the colonial courts to the English Privy Council.1 Acts of the British Parliament ran there, as they now run in the British colonies, whenever expressed to have that effect, and could over-rule such laws as the colonies might make. But practically each colony was a self-governing commonwealth, left to manage its own affairs with scarcely any interference from home. Each had its legislature, its own statutes adding to or modifying the English common law, its local corporate life and traditions, with no small local pride in its own history and institutions, superadded to the pride of forming part of the English race and the great free British realm. Between the various colonies there was no other political connection than that which arose from their all belonging to this race and realm, so that the inhabitants of each enjoyed in every one of the others the rights and privileges of British subjects.

When the oppressive measures of the home government roused the colonies, they naturally sought to organize their resistance in

1 In Rhode Island no appeal seems to have lain to the Crown, and the power of legislation was by the charters of 1643 and 1663 left to the colony with the proviso only that the laws should be agreeable to those of England "as near as may be, considering the nature and constitution of the place and people."

common.1 Singly they would have been an easy prey, for it was long doubtful whether even in combination they could make head against regular armies. A congress of delegates from nine colonies held at New York in 1765 was followed by another at Philadelphia in 1774, at which twelve were represented, which called itself Continental (for the name American had not yet become established), and spoke in the name of "the good people of these colonies," the first assertion of a sort of national unity among the English of America. This congress, in which from 1775 onwards all the colonies were represented, was a merely revolutionary body, called into existence by the war with the mother country. But in 1776 it declared the independence of the colonies, and in 1777 it gave itself a new legal character by framing the "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union,' whereby the thirteen States (as they now called themselves) entered into a "firm league of friendship" with each other, offensive and defensive, while declaring that "each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled.”

This Confederation, which was not ratified by all the States till 1781, was rather a league than a national government, for it possessed no central authority except an assembly in which every State, the largest and the smallest alike, had one vote, and this authority had no jurisdiction over the individual citizens. There was no Federal executive, no Federal judiciary, no means of raising money except by the contributions of the States, contributions which they were slow to render, no power of compelling the obedience either of States or individuals to the commands of Congress. The plan corresponded to the wishes of the colonists, who did not yet deem themselves a nation, and who in their struggle against the power of the British Crown were resolved to set over themselves no other power, not even one of their own choosing. But it worked badly even while the struggle lasted,

1 There had been a congress of delegates from seven colonies at Albany in 1754 to deliberate on measures relative to the impending war with France, but this, of course, took place with the sanction of the mother country, and was a purely temporary measure.

* In the earlier part of last century the name "American" seems to have denoted the native Indians, as it does in Wesley's hymn "The dark Americans convert." The War of Independence gave it its present meaning.

* See these Articles in the Appendix at the end of this volume.

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and after the immediate danger from England had been removed by the peace of 1783, it worked still worse, and was in fact, as Washington said, no better than anarchy. The States were indifferent to Congress and their common concerns, so indifferent that it was found difficult to procure a quorum of States for weeks or even months after the day fixed for meeting. Congress was impotent, and commanded respect as little as obedience. Much distress prevailed in the trading States, and the crude attempts which some legislatures made to remedy the depression by emitting inconvertible paper, by constituting other articles than the precious metals legal tender, and by impeding the recovery of debts, aggravated the evil, and in several instances led to seditious outbreaks.1 The fortunes of the country seemed at a lower ebb than even during the war with England.

Sad experience of their internal difficulties, and of the contempt with which foreign governments treated them, at last produced a feeling that some firmer and closer union was needed. A convention of delegates from five States met at Annapolis in Maryland in 1786 to discuss methods of enabling Congress to regulate commerce. It drew up a report which condemned the existing state of things, declared that reforms were necessary, and suggested a further general convention in the following year to consider the condition of the Union and the needed amendments in its Constitution. Congress, to which the report had been presented, approved it, and recommended the States to send delegates to a convention, which should "revise the Articles of Confederation, and report to Congress and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as shall, when agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the States, render the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of government and the preservation of the Union."2

1 Rhode Island was the most conspicuous offender. This singular little commonwealth, whose area is 1085 square miles (less than that of Ayrshire or Antrim), is of all the American States that which has furnished the most abundant analogies to the Greek republics of antiquity, and which best deserves to have its annals treated of by a philosophic historian. A curious feature in its politics is the frequent hostility of the agricultural party in the country to the commercial population in the towns which was at its height in 1788. By making herself an alarming example of what the unbridled rule of the multitude may come to, Rhode Island did much to bring the other States to adopt that Federal Constitution which she was herself the last to accept. See the remarks of Mr. M. Smith, Elliot's Debates, ii. 335.

2 The insurrection then raging in Massachusetts may have helped to stimulate