London--a new House of Commons can despotically and finally
resolve.

The House of Commons may, as was explained, assent in minor matters to
the revision of the House of Lords, and submit in matters about which
it cares little to the suspensive veto of the House of Lords; but when
sure of the popular assent, and when freshly elected, it is absolute,
it can rule as it likes and decide as it likes. And it can take the
best security that it does not decide in vain. It can ensure that its
decrees shall be executed, for it, and it alone, appoints the
executive; it can inflict the most severe of all penalties on neglect,
for it can remove the executive. It can choose, to effect its wishes,
those who wish the same; and so its will is sure to be done. A
stipulated majority of both Houses of the American Congress can
overrule by stated enactment their executive; but the popular branch of
our legislature can make and unmake ours.

The English Constitution, in a word, is framed on the principle of
choosing a single sovereign authority, and making it good; the
American, upon the principle of having many sovereign authorities, and
hoping that their multitude may atone for their inferiority. The
Americans now extol their institutions, and so defraud themselves of
their due praise. But if they had not a genius for politics; if they
had not a moderation in action singularly curious where superficial
speech is so violent; if they had not a regard for law, such as no
great people have yet evinced, and infinitely surpassing ours,--the
multiplicity of authorities in the American Constitution would long ago
have brought it to a bad end. Sensible shareholders, I have heard a
shrewd attorney say, can work ANY deed of settlement; and so the men of
Massachusetts could, I believe, work ANY Constitution.[11] But
political philosophy must analyse political history; it must
distinguish what is due to the excellence of the people, and what to
the excellence of the laws; it must carefully calculate the exact
effect of each part of the Constitution, though thus it may destroy
many an idol of the multitude, and detect the secret of utility where
but few imagined it to lie.

[11] Of course I am not speaking here of the South and South-East, as
they now are. How any free government is to exist in societies where so
many bad elements are so much perturbed, I cannot imagine.

How important singleness and unity are in political action no one, I
im