tes. Thirdly,
the struggle with the South, which for the first time, and definitely,
decided that to the Union, through its Federal organization, and not to
the State governments, were reserved all the questions not decided and
disposed of by the express provisions of the Constitution itself.[11]
The great _arcanum imperii_, which with us belongs to the three branches
of the Legislature, and which is expressed by the current phrase,
"omnipotence of Parliament," thus became the acknowledged property of
the three branches of the Federal Legislature; and the old and
respectable doctrine of State independence is now no more than an
archaeological relic, a piece of historical antiquarianism. Yet the
actual attributions of the State authorities cover by far the largest
part of the province of government; and by this division of labor and
authority, the problem of fixing for the nation a political centre of
gravity is divested of a large part of its difficulty and danger, in
some proportions to the limitations of the working precinct.

Within that precinct, the initiation as well as the final sanction in
the great business of finance is made over to the popular branch of the
Legislature, and a most interesting question arises upon the comparative
merits of this arrangement, and of our method, which theoretically
throws upon the Crown the responsibility of initiating public charge,
and under which, until a recent period, our practice was in actual and
even close correspondence with this theory.

We next come to a difference still more marked. The Federal Executive is
born anew of the nation at the end of each four years, and dies at the
end. But, during the course of those years, it is independent, in the
person both of the President and of his Ministers, alike of the people,
of their representatives, and of that remarkable body, the most
remarkable of all the inventions of modern politics, the Senate of the
United States. In this important matter, whatever be the relative
excellencies and defects of the British and American systems, it is most
certain that nothing would induce the people of this country, or even
the Tory portion of them, to exchange our own for theirs. It may,
indeed, not be obvious to the foreign eye what is the exact difference
of the two. Both the representative chambers hold the power of the
purse. But in America its conditions are such that it does not operate
in any way on behalf of the Chamber or of th