The British government cannot be
carried on by fair, honest, and honorable means, any more than
could the Roman under the antagonism created by the tribunitial
veto. The French tried the English system of organized
antagonism in 1789, as a cure for the centralism introduced by
Richelieu and Louis XIV., and again under the Restoration and
Louis Philippe, and called it the system of constitutional
guarantees; but they could never manage it, and they have taken
refuge in unmitigated centralism under Napoleon III., who,
however well disposed, finds no means in the constitution of the
French nation of tempering it. The English system, called the
constitutional, and sometimes the parliamentary system, will not
work in France, and indeed works really well nowhere.
The American system, sometimes called the Federal system, is not
founded on antagonism of classes, estates, or interests, and is
in no sense a system of checks and balances. It needs and
tolerates no obstructive forces. It does not pit section
against section, the States severally against the General
government, nor the General government against the State
governments, and nothing is more hurtful than the attempt to
explain it and work it on the principles of British
constitutionalism. The convention created no antagonistic
powers; it simply divided the powers of government, and gave
neither to the General government nor to the State governments
all the powers of government, nor in any instance did it give to
the two governments jurisdiction in the same matters.
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