Walter Bagehot

All Federal Government is, in truth, a case in which what I have called the dignified elements of government do not coincide with the serviceable elements.

But a cry was got up that this wisdom would create a tyranny and impair freedom, and with that help, local jealousy triumphed easily.

The wisest of them were anxious to get as much power for the central Government, and to leave as little to the local governments as they could.

The primary element in a free government--the determination how many people shall have a share in it--in America depends not on the Government but on certain subordinate local, and sometimes, as in the South now, hostile bodies.

By another clause of the Federal Constitution the States fix the electoral qualification for voting at a Presidential election.

One of its clauses provides that the suffrages for the Federal House of Representatives shall be, in each State, the same as for the most numerous branch of the legislature of that State; and as each State fixes the suffrage for its own…

The Federal Constitution deputed one of the main items of its structure to the subordinate governments.

Their ultra-democracy is not a result of Federal legislation, but of State legislation.

The sovereignty of the principal matters of State has rested not with the highest Government, but with the subordinate Government.

And the whole recent history of the Union--perhaps all its history--has been more determined by that enactment than by any other single cause.

But in truth the English Constitution is the type of the opposite species; it has only one authority for all sorts of matters.

The Americans thought that they were imitating the English in making their Constitution upon the last principle--in having one ultimate authority for one sort of matter, and another for another sort.

In one the supreme determining power is upon all points the same: in the other, that ultimate power is different upon different points--now resides in one part of the Constitution and now in another.

Hobbes told us long ago, and everybody now understands, that there must be a supreme authority, a conclusive power, in every State on every point somewhere.

It appears to me that the functions of our executive in dissolving the Commons and augmenting the Peers are among the most important, and the least appreciated, parts of our whole government, and that hundreds of errors have been made in…

But I proved likewise that the temper, the disposition, and the faculties then needful to fit a constitutional monarch for usefulness were very rare, at least as rare as the faculties of a great absolute monarch, and that a common man in…

I ascertained that it was a mistake to fancy that at such times a constitutional monarch had no rule and no duties.

I showed that at the formation of a Ministry, and during the continuance of a Ministry, a really sagacious monarch might be of rare use.

Recent experience seems, however, to show that in all great administrative departments there ought to be some one permanent responsible head through whom the changing Parliamentary chief always acts, from whom he learns everything, and to…

Why should not the rest of our administration be as good if we did but apply the same method to it?

We have, by unequivocal admission, the best budget in the world.

The more a man knows himself, the more habituated he is to action in general, the more sure he is to take and to value responsible counsel emanating from ability and suggested by experience.

If he has to renew Exchequer bills, or operate anyhow in the City, he takes the opinion, oral or written, of the ablest and most responsible person at the National Debt Office, and the ablest and most responsible at the Treasury.

There ought to be on record skilled evidence on the subject before a person without any specific experience can to any purpose think about it.

Any of these varied Constitutions may be right, but all of them can scarcely be right.