with the tacit recognition of the courts and the people, through which the sphere of the national government has been enlarged. The purchase of Louisiana from France by President Jefferson is an instance. It may indeed be said that the Constitution as it now stands is the result of a long process of development; and that process is still going on. In 1901 the Supreme Court delivered several judgments in cases arising out of the annexation of Porto Rico, which handled, though they did not fully settle, divers points of novelty and of importance, and still more recently questions of great intricacy affecting the respective legislative rights of the Federal and the state governments have come before it.
§ 27. It is not, however, only by way of interpretation that the Constitution has been developed. A great many matters Development of the Constitution by Usage. which it passed over have become the subject of legislation by Congress; and there has also sprung up a large mass of usages regulating matters not touched either by the Constitution or by any express enactment. These usages have in many cases lasted so long and become so generally accepted, that they may be regarded as parts of the actual or (so to speak) “working” Constitution, although of course they could be at any moment changed. Among the matters that are now thus settled by usage the following may be mentioned:—
The president practically is limited to two continuous terms of office. The presidential electors are expected to vote for the candidate of the party which has chosen them, exercising no free will of their own. The Senate always confirms the nominations to a cabinet office made by the President.
It may be added that in respect of one matter assigned by the Constitution to the states a momentous change has taken place since the enactment of the Constitution. This matter is the electoral franchise in Federal elections. In 1789 property qualifications were general, but now in all the northern and western states these have been long since abolished, and the electoral suffrage is practically manhood suffrage. In Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Washington universal adult suffrage prevails. Down till 1890 manhood suffrage had prevailed in all the Southern states also (as to some Southern states now see ante, § 5). As the electoral suffrage for state legislature elections is also that for Federal elections (including the election of presidential electors), the working of the Federal Constitution has thus been affected without any change in the Constitution itself.
§ 28. Besides these changes which have been brought about by judicial interpretation and by usage, the Constitution has Amendments to the Constitution. also been altered in the regular and formal way which its own provisions permit (see ante, § 14). This has happened four times. Ten amendments were enacted immediately after the adoption of the Constitution itself, in order to meet certain objections which had been taken to it. These may be described as a sort of bill of rights. Another, the eleventh, was enacted in 1794-1798 to negative the construction which the Supreme Court had put upon its own powers in holding that it could entertain a suit by a private person against a state. Another, the twelfth (1803-1804), corrected a fault in the method of choosing the president; and three more (1865-1870) confirmed and secured some of the results of the victory of the North in the War of Secession (1861-65). In 1909 Congress proposed an amendment for enabling the national legislature to impose an income tax. But few amendments pass beyond the first stage of a formal proposal. This is due not merely to the respect of the Americans for their fundamental law, but also to the difficulties which surround the process of change. It is hard to secure the requisite majorities in Congress, and still harder a majority in three-fourths of the states. The obstacles placed in the way of amendment, which are greater than in the case of almost any other Constitution, may be reckoned among the causes which led to the War of Secession.
§ 29. As compared with the cabinet system of Great Britain, of the British self-governing colonies, and of such European countries as France, Italy, Holland and Belgium, the characteristic features of the scheme of the American national government are the following:—
a. The legislature and the executive are independent and General character of the Frame of National Government. disjoined. The executive does not depend upon the legislature, but holds its powers by a direct commission from the people. No member of the executive sits in the legislature, nor can the legislature eject any one from office save by impeachment.
b. Both the legislature and the executive sit for fixed terms.
c. No method is provided for getting rid of deadlocks, either between the legislature and the executive or between the two branches of the legislature. Should action be needed which cannot be legally taken without the concurrence of these different authorities, and should they be unable to concur, the legal situation must remain in statu quo until by a new election the people have changed one or more of the conflicting authorities, and so brought them into harmony.
d. The judiciary holds a place of high importance, because it is the proper interpreter of the will of the people expressed in the supreme law, the Federal Constitution, which the people have enacted.
It will be noted that the structure of the Federal Government is less democratic than that of the state governments. The only posts in the former conferred by popular election are those of the president and the members of the legislature, and while the two houses are a check on each other, the president is a check upon both.
The defects which have been remarked in this system are, broadly speaking, the following: There is a danger that prompt action, needed in the interests of the nation, may fail to be taken owing to a deadlock between legislature and executive, or between the two branches of the legislature. There may be a difficulty in fixing responsibility upon any person, or small group of persons, because cases may arise in which the executive, being unable to act without the concurrence of the legislature, can hardly be blamed for failing to act, while yet it is unable to relieve itself by resigning; while on the other hand the legislature—which consists of two bodies, each of them numerous, and in neither of which are there recognized leaders—contains no person on whom responsibility can be fixed. On the other hand, the characteristic merits of the system may be summed up as consisting in the safeguards it provides against the undue predominance of any one power or person in the government, and therewith against any risk there may be that the president should become a despot, and in the full opportunities it secures for the due consideration of all important measures. It is a system amply provided with checks and balances; it recognizes and enforces the principle of popular sovereignty, while subjecting that principle to many checks in practice; and it is well calculated to maintain unchanged the relation of its component parts each to the other. There has been, in point of fact, no permanent shifting of weight or strength from any one organ of government to any other. At some particular epoch the president has seemed to be gaining upon Congress, at other epochs Congress has seemed to be gaining upon the president. Much depends on the personal qualities of the president and his power of inspiring the people with trust in his courage and his uprightness. When he possesses that power he may overawe Congress, and make them follow, even reluctantly, in the path he points out. Now and then the Senate has been more influential than the House, now and then it has fallen back, at least so far as the confidence of the people in it is concerned. The part played by the judiciary has at some moments been of special importance, while at others it has been little noticed. But, taking the history of the republic as a whole, that equilibrium between the several organs of the government which the Constitution was intended to secure has been substantially maintained.
VI.—The Party System.
§ 30. The actual working of the government of the Union and of the governments of the several states cannot be properly
