Walter Bagehot

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…

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

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.

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.

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

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.

At the beginning of every league the separate States are the old Governments which attract and keep the love and loyalty of the people; the Federal Government is a useful thing, but new and unattractive.

It must concede much to the State Governments, for it is indebted to them for motive power: they are the Governments which the people voluntarily obey.

When the State Governments are not thus loved, they vanish as the little Italian and the little German potentates vanished; no federation is needed; a single central Government rules all.

The Congress rules the law, but the President rules the administration.

One means of unity the Constitution does give: the President can veto laws he does not like.

The American Constitution has a special contrivance for varying the supreme legislative authority in different cases, and dividing the administrative authority from it in all cases.

One most important part of administration is international policy, and the supreme authority here is not in the President, still less in the House of Representatives, but in the Senate.

The sovereignty therefore for the greatest international questions is in a different part of the State altogether from any common administrative or legislative question.

Again, the Congress declares war, but they would find it very difficult, according to the recent construction of their laws, to compel the President to make a peace.

The authors of the Constitution doubtless intended that Congress should be able to control the American executive as our Parliament controls ours.

In truth money was wanted in the late war, and the administration got it in the readiest way; and the nation, glad not to be more taxed, wholly approved of it.

But the fact remains that the President has now, by precedent and decision, a mighty power to continue a war without the consent of Congress, and perhaps against its wish.

Against the united will of the American PEOPLE a President would of course be impotent; such is the genius of the place and nation that he would never think of it.

The consequence is that the most obvious evils cannot be quickly remedied; that the most absurd fictions must be framed to evade the plain sense of mischievous clauses; that a clumsy working and curious technicality mark the politics of a…

The practical arguments and the legal disquisitions in America are often like those of trustees carrying out a misdrawn will--the sense of what they mean is good, but it can never be worked out fully or defended simply, so hampered is it…

They feared that it would generate tyranny; George III. had been a tyrant to them, and come what might, they would not make a George III.

The most difficult of problems is how to change late foes into free friends.

A race, too, formerly enslaved, is now at the mercy of men who hate and despise it, and those who set it free are bound to give it a fair chance for new life.

The progress of the military art is the most conspicuous, I was about to say the most SHOWY, fact in human history.