and some American writers--is that it was
emphatically _not_ a copy of the British Constitution in any sense
whatever. It is built on wholly different principles, drawn mostly from
the French speculations of that age. Especially one notes, alongside of
the careful and wise separation of the judiciary from the executive, the
sound principle enunciated by Montesquieu and other French thinkers of
the eighteenth century, but rejected and contemned by England (to her
great hurt) as a piece of impracticable logic--the separation of the
executive and legislative powers. It was this principle which made
possible the later transformation of the Presidency into a sort of
Elective Monarchy.

This result was not designed or foreseen; or rather it was to an extent
foreseen, and deliberately though unsuccessfully guarded against. The
American revolutionists were almost as much under the influence of
classical antiquity as the French. From it they drew the noble
conception of "the Republic," the public thing acting with impersonal
justice towards all citizens. But with it they also drew an exaggerated
dread of what they called "Caesarism," and with it they mixed the curious
but characteristic illusion of that age--an illusion from which, by the
way, Rousseau himself was conspicuously free--that the most satisfactory
because the most impersonal organ of the general will is to be found in
an elected assembly. They had as yet imperfectly learnt that such an
assembly must after all consist of persons, more personal because less
public than an acknowledged ruler. They did not know that, while a
despot may often truly represent the people, a Senate, however chosen,
always tends to become an oligarchy. Therefore they surrounded the
presidential office with checks which in mere words made the President
seem less powerful than an English King. Yet he has always in fact been
much more powerful. And the reason is to be found in the separation of
the executive from the legislature. The President, while his term
lasted, had the full powers of a real executive. Congress could not turn
him out, though it could in various ways check his actions. He could
appoint his own Ministers (though the Senate must ratify the choice) and
they were wisely excluded from the legislature. An even wiser provision
limited the appointment of Members of Congress to positions under the
executive. Thus both executive and legislature were kept, so far as
human frailty per