vided with all necessary powers for carrying the country. through a most fearful contest. But it taught also, that principles of allegiance to government are not measured by interests or by hope and fear simply, that such dangers as were then brought on us are met by what ordinary politicians do not feel and do not understand. A constitution is something good in itself, but the possibility that under it the best feelings may be ready to appear when they are needed, is something better. Here we go beyond the line of political thought into a region which some politicians hardly visit.

tegration.

But the

As for new possibilities of disintegration, we cannot deny Danger of disin- them, nor can we tell what new tendencies may appear in the system, when the states already large in number shall become still more numerous. late attempts at separation have shown an unexpected strength in the regard for the constitution and the determination to uphold it. The great cause of division, slavery, being removed, the combinations against the present order of things among contiguous states can never arrange themselves with so much advantage again. And there is a cause for keeping the states together which nowhere else, it would seem, has had so much efficacy. The east cannot flourish without the west, nor that without the east. The mouth of the Mississippi can never be left in the hands of a power which could oppose the inland states for which that greater river is the outlet. The states on the Pacific have no motive to live by themselves, nor could they seek a divorce from the eastern seaboard and from Europe. Family ties, especially on eastern and western lines, bind the country together. It seems as if the country had been made on purpose to be one.

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The rise and destiny of the leading confederations that General remarks have appeared in the world's history show that cafederations. they have begun in the interests of mutual protection, and are not held together without difficulty. They are not a stage through which a nation passes by natural deVOL. 11-17

velopment, nor does anything show that a unitary state can break up into a confederation. A confederation is a union of bodies politic that have certain resemblances and certain differences, tendencies to come together and tendencies to remain apart. If they have a community of language, law and general civilization, similar political views and a similar experience, together with interests that can be reconciled, they can form a close union, which alone after a lapse of time ensures the perpetuity of their political forms. If one or more of these are wanting or should in time come to be wanting, a loose union is all they can hope to form, or if they succeed in forming a close union, it will scarcely be able to continue. History shows especially the dangers attending any union where one member is vastly greater or more favorably situated for action than the others; it cannot fail to swallow them up. Something depends also on the national character, if the conservative forces of a union are to prevail over destructive forces. Thus individualism, a want of deference and of the spirit of concession, lawless self-assertion, must be an isolating, disruptive force in confederations as well as in states. In the former, the bond of union is the weakest point and gives way first before opposing powers; in the latter, violence in society is the great evil, but cannot destroy a state, unless civil confusion opens the road to a conqueror from without.

The danger of consolidation is a very possible one, but it supposes either violent conquest from within or the obliteration of differences that existed before the union. If the former be supposed to take place, it must be due to great evils, to degeneracy and corruption, and the conquest will be a violent irregular relief from unendurable evils; if the latter, it will be a gradual, natural process, a substitution for more complicated machinery.

We only add that confederation is limited to states under certain constitutions. Two or more absolute states cannot enter into a union which is a perpetual limitation of human will; and the freer states are, other things being equal, the more easily do they coalesce.

CHAPTER IX.

DEPARTMENTS OF GOVERNMENT IN A STATE.

sion of power in a

state.

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THE political community, independent and sovereign, canNecessity of divi- not act directly except when it meets in general assembly in a state of small area. Even then it would need agents to do the greater part of the political work. The whole community cannot be generals in war, or collectors of revenue, or presidents of courts. If there is to be a senate together with an assembly of the citizens, a small part only can belong to such a body. Are there now any departments or kinds of agency, into which the various activities. of the state ought to fall? The common division of powers has been into the executive, legislative, and judicial departments. In every polity, says Aristotle, there are three parts (or departments), the suitable form of each of which for a given polity the wise lawgiver ought well to consider. When these three departments are well organized, the state as a whole will be well organized, and states differ from one another by reason of the difference of these three departments. The first of the three is that which deliberates on public affairs. The second is the body of magistrates, where the points deserving consideration are what they ought to be, over what they should have power, and how they ought to be chosen. The third is the judging department. (Pol., vi. or iv., 11, 1.) He then proceeds to speak of these departments at some length. (Chaps. 11-13.)

When a state spreads over a large territory, it is impossible for the inhabitants, supposing them to have passed out of the condition of small self-governing communities into that of a consolidated body, to meet together any longer. Hence

it would happen (unless some political device were found out to prevent the evil) that the outlying districts would lose their political status, and become unfree. The state also, probably, would suffer in its constitution from its size. The old general assembly, being unable to attend in person to its large duties, would need to put power in the hands of agents; and these executive officers might, ere long, become holders of power in their own right. Thus, Rome with its old organization could not keep the empire together; either a breaking up or a more continuous and autocratic administration would be a necessity. As a remedy for such evils the representative system has grown up in the world, suggested perhaps, by delegates to church councils, and by deputies from independent bodies acting together. By this great political contrivance it is possible for a large state to be a free state, for a popular constitution not to fall into the hands of the executive; not to speak of other most important advantages which will presently appear. But when the representative system is developed, the people is no longer an active holder of power, as in the ecclesia or the comitia ; in the making of laws, as in administration and justice, it has intrusted direct power to its vicars. Hence the greater necessity of defining and limiting their power, of declaring in constitutions what the functions of the several powers are, in order that the agents may not dethrone or enslave the now inactive political community.

is supreme?

The inquiry has been made, which of these three, the Which department executive, the legislative, or the judicial department, is the sovereign or the principal agent of the sovereignty? In theory we may say that the department which lays down general rules binding on the rest, which in the few words of a law commands or forbids without excep tion of person or limit of time, stands above the rest and is the truest vicar of the sovereign community. And this wi be more evidently the position of the legislative department if it provide for the wants of the state, not by general legis'a tion, as by a tax-bill continuing until repealed, but by laws

or bills which are valid for short periods only, so that the department which has to spend money or control the army is kept in a certain sort of dependence. So also at the commencement in a new state, unless the legislature puts the wheels of the constitution in motion, it cannot act. Neither executive nor court can do the work for which it was intended without some preparatory legislation. But, practically, the departments which have to do with special and particular actions, are as truly invested with the public sovereignty as the law-making department. The connection with physical might, through the command of armies and of an army of policemen, and the immediate control over foreign relations, are in the hands of the executive; it is natural, therefore, that this should strike the eyes as having the principal attributes of sovereignty. When it draws also the other powers into its circle, making laws and appointing dependent judges, it is, indeed, the sovereign de facto. But when the three powers are divided, it may happen that the judiciary which is physically the weakest, may, by a decision which asserts. and defends law, show itself at certain crises to be the strongest arm of the state, simply because of its moral authority. The true opinion then is that none of these powers represents the sovereign more than another; that the executive, owing to the physical force which must be put into its hands, is the most dangerous and encroaching of the three; that in reality neither of them is sovereign except by catachresis, so that for once Rousseau is right in holding that the political community never gives up and transfers its powers, but always. remains sovereign. Yet the large political community under a constitution never acts directly, except ir. the extremes of resistance to usurpation, or of revolution, or when, according to its own provisions, the constitution is altered.

There is in theory, as we have seen, a distinction and Essential distine necessity of a division between certain departbon of departments, ments of state, on which the safety and right action of the movements of the state depend. The legislative action is mainly general and prospective; that of the judiciary