Journal of Social Science

It is the peculiar province of this Association to study those principles upon which American society is based and by which its. conditions are controlled.

Laws may be passed and repealed in quick succession; individuals may rise to positions of commanding influence, only to be swept off in a moment into political oblivion by a sudden turn of party tide; the rules of science, the inductions of philosophy, accepted for ages, may, as some new door of Nature's laboratory is unlocked, shrivel into ashes before the issuing flame. But in every land, civilized or barbaric, where a strong race has long made its home, there will be certain institutions of civil society that have grown up to slow maturity, so rooted in the soil that they form part of the nation's life, and make its history.

It is to such an institution that I desire this evening to direct your attention,― an American institution, and one that, as the centuries roll on, is destined, I believe, to exercise greater and greater power in determining our country's destiny.

Among the constitutional governments now existing in the world the United States ranks as the oldest but one. It is, indeed, fairly open to question if our place is not the first. Great Britain, since our Constitution was adopted, by her union with Ireland and the introduction of a hundred Irish members into her House of Commons, followed by the Reform Bill and the recent Franchise Acts, has essentially changed the character of that body, and transformed a monarchy into a representative democracy; while the new name of Empress of India given to her titular sovereign seems but to mark the abandonment of her ancient colonial policy, too mild for an Oriental race, too rigorous for the great English-speaking dominions that have risen up under her flag, to gain for themselves, one after another, substantial autonomy.

The United States are the offspring of a long-past age. A hundred years have scarcely passed since the eighteenth century came to its end, but no hundred years in the history of the world has ever before hurried it along so far over new paths and into unknown fields. The French Revolution and the First Empire were the bridge between two periods that nothing less than the remaking of European society, the recasting of European politics, could have brought so near.

But back to this eighteenth century must we go to learn the forces, the national ideas, the political theories, under the domination of which the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted.

There is something in that instrument that gave it coherence and vitality, something on which we have built up institutions that are real, traditions that are imperious, a national life that is organic, a national history of which no civilized man is wholly ignorant, a national power that is respected on every sea.

What is it that has brought us on so far, and given us an undisputed place among the great powers of the world? Is it a broad land and a free people, equal laws and universal education? Yes; but how are those laws administered? How are the forces of this great government that rules from sea to sea directed and applied? How and by whom?

across a continent

I think it may be fairly said that, of the leading powers of the world, two only, in our time, represent the principle of political absolutism, and enforce it by one man's hand. They are Russia and the United States.

The Czar of Russia, indeed, stands for Russia in a broader sense than that in which we can say that the President of the United States stands for them. The people of the United States have not put all their power in the keeping of all or any of their temporary rulers. They are the sleeping giant that, sleeping or waking, is a giant still. Their word is still the ultimate rule of conduct, their written word. But, when they gave their assent to the Constitution of the United States, they created in it the office of a king, without the name.

They set the key, also, by this act, for our State governments and municipal governments.

The royal prerogative of pardon, which belongs to the President without limits, except in cases of impeachment, has been

given to one after another of the governors of our States. Their appointing power is like his: their veto power is like his. Of the statutes passed this year by the legislature of the State in which we are convened,* nearly one-third—in all, over five hundredfailed of effect for want of the governor's approval.

In city governments the authority of the mayor has been continually increased. He is held personally responsible for a fair and honest administration of municipal affairs; and each department under him is coming to be under the direction, not of some non-partisan board, but of one man, removable at the mayor's will, and taking his instructions from him.

But the hour which is allotted to this address will only suffice for a brief and partial consideration of the centralization of power in the federal government.

In form, at least, there is less of national character in our executive than in our judicial department. The judges of the United States have no relation to the States except that the Senate of the States must confirm their nominations. The President, on the other hand, is chosen by the votes of local electors, appointed by each State for itself, and meeting separately in distant capitals. Three of these electoral votes are forever secured to the smallest State, so that a President may be―as, in the case of Hayes, a President was elected by a majority in the electoral colleges, when the opposing candidate received the approval of a majority of the whole people. So, again, should the electoral colleges fail to make a choice, the States come together to take their place, like so many sovereign powers in an imperial diet, each casting in the House of Representatives an equal vote.

But, once elected, the President during half the year is the United States more truly than ever Louis XIV. was France.

Our people had tried, during the Revolution and after the Revolution, the experiment of a confederacy without an executive head. They knew the evils of a weak administration, and they were determined to have an energetic one. They were ready to pay the price by submitting to a system of personal government.

Had there not been, in 1787, a person at hand, to whom all eyes were turned with unfaltering trust, it is more than doubtful whether the Constitution, as thus framed, could have been rati

* New York.

fied. Had they fully understood the great powers with which it invested the President, it is certain that it never would have been.

Hamilton and Madison in the Federalist minimized these powers, to conciliate popular support. It was, in truth, impossible to predict beforehand what they were to prove. Pinckney, at the close of the convention, spoke of the new President as an officer of "contemptible weakness and dependence." Jefferson, on the other hand, wrote from Paris that he seemed " a bad edition of a Polish king," and would contrive to hold his power by successive re-elections for life. Between these views time was to decide.

A constitutional government is not constructed in a day. A constitution may be; but it is born into the world a helpless .babe, to be nurtured and re-created by its environment and associations. Constitutions do not make history. History makes them. They may indeed be constructed in a day, but they cannot be construed in a day. The men who put such a document together do not know, cannot know, the meaning of their own work. It is what it comes to be. It is what later generations make it.

Plato tells us in his Republic that governments must change with every change in the character of those who constitute the political society, and in their relative conditions of life.

Think of the United States as they were in 1787, occupying a narrow strip of the Atlantic seacoast; engaged only in agriculture; with no city larger than Utica or Savannah now is; with capital still so far in the hands of individuals that there were probably not a hundred business corporations in the whole country; with mails carried through half the States on horseback and at irregular intervals, if at all; and tell me if the President of such a people could, except in name, be the same as the President of the United States of to-day?

There were two theories of the executive before the convention of 1787.

Sherman insisted that the executive magistracy was really nothing more than an institution for carrying the will of the legislature into effect, and, therefore, that it should be confided to one or more officials, as experience might dictate, appointed by that body and removable by that body.

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Journal of Social Science, Volumes 35-37