The borough system, also, concentrating power in a few hands, greatly strengthened ministries. It gave them a steady, calculable force, which in many circumstances, but especially in their foreign policy, was often of inestimable value. Fluctuations of power were less frequent, less violent, less capricious than they afterwards became. Ministers could count more confidently on persistent parliamentary support in lines of policy of which the rewards were only to be looked for in a distant future; amid the chequered fortunes and the ever-changing aspects of a great struggle.

This system of representation was supported and consolidated by a tone of political feeling which has so completely passed away that it is somewhat difficult to realise the power which it once possessed-I mean that strong indisposition to organic change, as distinguished. from administrative reform, which the best statesmen of all parties continually inculcated. They were usually ready to meet practical evils as they arose, but they continually deprecated any attempt to tamper with the legislative machine itself, except under the most imperious necessity. They believed that the system of the Constitution had grown up insensibly in accordance with the wants of the nation; that it was a highly complex and delicate machine, fulfilling many different purposes and acting in many obscure and farreaching ways, and that a disposition to pull it to pieces in the interests of some theory or speculation would inevitably lead to the destruction of parliamentary government. A great part of its virtue lay in the traditionary reverence that surrounded it, in the unwritten rules and restrictions that regulated its action. There was no definite written constitution that could be appealed to, but in no other form of government did tacit understandings, traditional observances, il

logical but serviceable compromises, bear so great a part.

We

It was claimed for this form of government that, with all its defects and anomalies, it had unquestionably worked well. I may again quote the words of Paley. Before we seek to obtain anything more,' he writes, consider duly what we already have. have a House of Commons composed of 548 members, in which number are found the most considerable landholders and merchants of the Kingdom; the heads of the army, the navy, and the law; the occupiers of great offices in the State; together with many private individuals eminent by their knowledge, eloquence, and activity. If the Country be not safe in such hands, in whom may it confide its interests? If such a number of such men be liable to the influence of corrupt motives, what assembly of men will be secure from the same danger? Does any new scheme of representation promise to collect together more wisdom or to produce firmer integrity?"

The English Constitution of the eighteenth century might also be tested in other ways. It is incontestable that under it England had enjoyed for a long space of time much prosperity, a far larger measure of steady freedom, and a far more equitable system of taxation than any of the great States of the Continent. Under this form of government she passed successfully through the dangerous internal crisis of a long-disputed succession; she encountered successfully foreign dangers of the first magnitude, from the time of Louis XIV. to the time of Napoleon; and although her history was by no means unchequered by faults and disasters, it was under this system of government that she built

Moral Philosophy, ii. 220, 221.

up her vast Indian Empire and largely extended and organised her colonial dominions.

The other great type of free government existing in the world was the American Republic, and it is curious to observe how closely the aims and standards 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. In the true spirit of Burke, the American statesmen clearly saw how useless it would be to reproduce all English institutions in a country where they had no historical or traditional basis. The United States did not contain the materials for founding a constitutional monarchy or a powerful aristocracy, and a great part of the traditional habits and observances that restrained and regulated English parliamentary government could not possibly operate in a new country with the same force. 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, as well as against the tyranny of an individual or a class; to infuse into American political life a spirit of continuity and of sober and moderate freedom, were the ends which the great American statesmen set before them, and which they in a large measure attained. They gave an elected president during his short period of office an amount of power which was, on the whole, not less than that of George III. They invested their Senate with powers considerably beyond those of the House of Lords. They restricted by a clearly defined and written Constitution the powers of the representative body, placing, among other things, the security of

property, the sanctity of contract, and the chief forms of personal and religious liberty beyond the powers of a mere parliamentary majority to infringe. They established a Supreme Court with the right of interpreting authoritatively the Constitution and declaring Acts of Congress which exceeded their powers to be null and void; they checked, or endeavoured to check, the violent oscillations of popular suffrage by introducing largely into the Constitution the principle of double election; and they made such large majorities necessary for the enactment of any organic change that these changes became impossible, except where there was an overwhelming consensus of public opinion in their favour.

In dealing with the suffrage they acted in the same spirit. Chief Justice Story has treated this subject in a book which is, in my opinion, one of the most valuable ever written on the science of politics. He argues that the right of voting, like many other rights, is one which, whether it has a fixed foundation in natural law or not, has always been treated in the practice of nations as a strictly civil right, derived from and regulated by each society according to its own circumstances and interests.' On the ground of natural right it would be impossible to exclude females from voting, or to justify the arbitrary and varying enactments by which different countries have defined the age at which males attain their majorities. If any society is entrusted with authority to settle the matter of the age or sex of voters, according to its own views of its policy, or convenience, or justice, who shall say that it has not equal authority, for like reasons, to settle any other matters regarding the rights, qualifications, and duties of voters?' The truth is that there can be no certain rule' on these subjects for all ages and for all na

tions.' The right of suffrage will vary almost infinitely, according to the special circumstances and characteristics of a nation.1

The American Legislature acted on this principle. In the colonial period no uniform rules in regard to the right of suffrage existed. In some of the Colonies

. . freeholders alone were voters; in others, a very near approach was made to universal suffrage among the males of competent age; and in others, again, a middle principle was adopted, which made taxation and voting dependent upon each other, or annexed to it the qualification of holding some personal estate, or the privilege of being a freeman or the eldest son of a freeholder of the town or corporation.' When the Revolution separated the Colonies from the mother country the same diversity was suffered to continue. In some of the States the right of suffrage depends upon a certain length of residence and payment of taxes; in others, upon mere citizenship and residence; in others, upon the possession of a freehold or some estate of a particular value, or upon the payment of taxes, or performance of some public duty, such as service in the militia or on the highways. In no two of these State constitutions will it be found that the qualifications of the voters are settled upon the same uniform basis. A proposal to establish a uniform system of voting on a common principle was brought before the Convention which framed the Constitution of 1787-88, but after full discussion it was resolved to leave the existing diversities untouched, and to confide to each State the power of regulating as it pleased the system of suffrage. All that the Convention

1 Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, ii. 55-58.