every suggestion based on the study of other lands as a form of disloyalty and claims that all its own established institutions are above criticism. The other is the reckless passion for copying foreign examples without regard for the history and traditions of the country in which they are to be reproduced. From each of these follies we may pray to be delivered.

If I were asked to express in a word the basic principle of the Federal Constitution in the United States, I would reply in the first place that extreme conciseness is usually only to be obtained at the expense of accuracy. With this reservation I would go on to say that the fundamental principle is that of dualism.

Unless he happens to live in the District of Columbia or in one of the outlying dependencies, every resident of the United States is under the jurisdiction of two distinct governments, the federal government of the United States and the government of the state in which he is living at the moment. Subject to the limitations contained in the written Constitution, each of these two authorities is supreme within its own sphere. If either attempts to trespass upon the field reserved to the other, its action is a mere nullity and will be so declared by the courts. Each government is equipped with its own complete set of executive, legislative, and judicial machinery. The various executive departments are differentiated in accordance with the duties entrusted to each government by the Constitution. For example, there is no Secretary

for Education in the United States cabinet, since education is one of the matters reserved to the individual states. Similarly the state government does not require any department for the handling of external affairs. On the other hand, there are certain matters in which the two governments have concurrent powers, and in these there is a duplication of the political machinery. For example, the administration of justice is divided by the Constitution between the Union and the states. Each therefore has its own attorney-general, together with a complete and independent organization for executing the civil and criminal processes of the law.

If political institutions were constructed only by philosophers, working from abstract designs without reference to particular conditions, it is inconceivable that such a federation as that of the United States could ever have come into being. The theoretical objections to such a constitution are obvious, and grave practical inconveniences have developed in its actual working. Its adaptation to changing conditions has been accomplished with great political skill, but at the same time with much suffering and loss, which greater foresight might have avoided. No power of human draftsmanship could possibly frame a federal constitution so expressed as to eliminate all possibility of dispute between the rival authorities, and the American Constitution is probably the most intricate scheme of federation that has ever been devised. Hence it is not surprising to find that its true meaning

has been a never-failing source of controversy and litigation down to the present day. We can also appreciate the reasons which led the framers of the South African Constitution to cut off this great stream of litigation at its fount by definitely enacting that the provincial councils should in all matters be wholly subordinated to the Union Parliament.

If, however, we turn from theory to history, we see at once that the American people could never have been united under any form of government that did not rest upon a dualistic basis. The Constitution as it stands represents the maximum of the concessions which Hamilton and his friends were able to wring from the opponents of federation. As subsequently in-, terpreted by Marshall in the Supreme Court it represents a good deal more, and President Van Buren was undoubtedly right when he said that the people would never have consented to the Constitution if they could have foreseen the interpretations. which Marshall would place upon its language.

The problem which faced Washington and Hamilton was the difficulty of inducing the American people to accept any form of federation which would result in a genuine union. It was obvious to the more sober-minded statesmen of the time, as it is obvious to everyone to-day, that no scheme of any kind could produce a real national unity unless the states were prepared to surrender to the national government some of the essential attributes of their separate

independence. Nevertheless it was precisely this surrender which the less well-informed opinion. of the day was unwilling to make. For us at (the present time it is difficult to realize the intensity of the passion with which the petty commonwealths of 1787 clung to a local independence that was productive of nothing but internal disorder, commercial chaos, and the contempt of foreign nations. Their obstinacy is all the more surprising, since the experiment of a partial union, involving no real surrender of state sovereignty, had already been tried with disastrous results. The Constitution as we now know it was the second attempt at organizing the United States. By the "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union," drawn up in 1781, during the war with England, it was declared that

"The said states hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever."

The cardinal difference between this scheme and the permanent Constitution was that under the former the central government was given no direct authority over the individual citizens. The only units upon which it could act were the thirteen states, and the powers reserved to the states were so large that the federal Congress

It

was little more than a consultative body. did not even possess the power of raising money, except by asking for it from the states. So long as the war lasted, the bond of necessity held together the ill-framed structure, though at a grievous cost in military efficiency and men's lives. With the return of peace the central government rapidly crumbled to pieces. It could neither maintain authority within its own borders nor honor its own engagements with foreign powers. The Constitution of 1787 came as the remedy for a state of things which Washington himself described as no better than anarchy.

When we realize the tenacity with which American opinion clung to the idea of sectional independence we shall readily understand how the Federal Constitution could only have been framed on the principle of dualism. The theory of state sovereignty had to be preserved, in name at least. Nothing could be conceded to the central government beyond the bare minimum of powers which bitter experience had shown to be necessary to its very existence. Every particle of power surrendered by the states was given grudgingly, and the enemies of federation hoped with some show of reason that the new scheme might soon prove itself unequal to the actual work of government. In this they were disappointed, and their defeat is largely due to the destiny which, at a most critical period of the nation's history, chose John Marshall to preside over the struggling Supreme