tionary and retrogressive. It
went back to the old doctrine of the separation of powers, ostensibly to
limit the authority of the government and thereby make it responsible to
the people as Hamilton argued in _The Federalist_. That this could not
have been the real object is evident to any one who has carefully
studied the situation. The unthinking reader may accept Hamilton's
contention that the system of checks and balances was incorporated in
the Constitution to make the government the servant and agent of the
people; but the careful student of history can not be so easily misled.
He knows that the whole system was built up originally as a means of
limiting monarchical and aristocratic power; that it was not designed to
make government in any true sense responsible, but to abridge its powers
because it was irresponsible. The very existence of the system implies
the equal recognition in the Constitution of antagonistic elements. As
it could not possibly exist where monarchy or aristocracy was the only
recognized source of authority in the state, so it is likewise
impossible where all power is in the people. It is to be observed, then,
that what originally commended the system to the people was the fact
that it limited the positive power of the king and aristocracy, while
the framers of the Constitution adopted it with a view to limiting the
power of the people themselves.

There is no essential difference between the viewpoint of the framers of
the American Constitution and that of their English contemporaries.
Lecky says: "It is curious to observe how closely the aims and standard
of the men who framed the memorable Constitution of 1787 and 1788
corresponded with those of the English statesmen of the eighteenth
century. It is true that the framework adopted was very different....
The United States did not contain the materials for founding a
constitutional monarchy or a powerful aristocracy.... It was necessary
to adopt other means, but the ends that were aimed at were much the
same. To divide and restrict power; to secure property; to check the
appetite for organic change; to guard individual liberty against the
tyranny of the multitude...."[103]

Our Constitution was modeled in a general way after the English
government of the eighteenth century. But while the English system of
constitutional checks was a natural growth, the American system was a
purely artificial contrivance. James Monroe called attention to this