new forces set in motion, which inevitably tend to reunite it. Moreover, the work of governing, as it increases, demands a continually increasing number of departments, boards, and officers, to perform the routine and other duties mapped out by the law-making power. At the outset, when the United States contained about four millions of inhabitants, it was found sufficient in organizing the government to create only three departments: one for foreign affairs, another for war, and a third for the treasury. Now there are eight principal, and several minor departments. There are the departments of State, of the Treasury, of the Interior, with its subordinate divisions into the General Land Office, Pension Office, Patent Office, Indian Office, Bureau of Education, Census Office, besides various minor offices; there are also the departments of War, of the Post-Office, of the Navy, of Justice, and of Agriculture. In addition to these, there is attached to the Treasury Department an elaborate system of offices for the collection of internal revenue. Not only are the departments more numerous, but there has also been an enormous increase in the number of persons employed in them, and, moreover, a more specialized division of duties. This has all occurred with us in less than a century, the specialization being all in the direction of the details of labor. In all legislative bodies, there has also been a division of labor through committees, and through the growth of a complex system of forms. In the original assembly of the people, the body acted directly in making the law, but now, a bill introduced into Congress must go through certain readings, be referred to certain committees, and be acted upon in certain prescribed ways, before it can be published as the law of the land. It is one of the results of social specialization that men accomplish their ends by indirect expenditures of their individual forces. We see this prominently illustrated in the economical relations; how men labor at one thing, in order to accomplish another. In the political relations also there is a division of labor, and the national as well as the individual force expends itself through various devious and intricate channels before it reaches its object. What is popularly sneered at as "red tape" becomes really inevitable. The differentiation of government from its simpler forms into distinct executive, legislative, and judicial branches is a natural process, as governments become popularized; that is, as the number of those increases who have a voice in saying how the government shall be conducted, and as the work for the government to do enlarges. The increase in the number of those who can decide how the government shall be conducted means, of course, that the supreme directing power is not exclusively in the one, or more than one who may have originally possessed it, but is shared by many. Under these circumstances, the laws producing a division of labor will operate, and one function will be exercised by one person, and another by another. If a hundred men set about the accomplishment of a given task, they will very soon divide the work into convenient parts, and though all may at the outset be on an equal footing as to the methods of reaching the desired end, it will very soon result that the directing will will be lodged in one, or a specific number of the body. So those social ends which can be accomplished only through government are reached in very much the same way. As all cannot, from day to day, assist in the making of laws and the execution of them, the work is naturally divided and assigned to different persons; but if, in this distribution, the supreme directing power is also divided, then there is, according to the degree of division, an abnormal political condition, which in the healthy vigorous community, naturally tends to become normal again through concentration of this supreme, controlling power. At the time our Constitution was framed, the balance of power had not completely gone over to the House of Commons, as has since been the case. There was still much of the "personal government" of the king. The Cabinet had not become so entirely the pivot of affairs as now. There was supposed to be, by the admirers of the British constitution, a happy balance of powers which kept the whole scheme of administration in a beautiful poise, neither inclining too much to absolutism nor too much towards democracy. Impressed with these beliefs, the makers of our Constitution attempted to make firm and stable by positive, written law, what in truth was in the mother country in a transition stage. Consequently one of the political tasks of the century has been, and continues to be, to twist and construe and practically work the Constitution, so as to concentrate the directing power in the House of Representatives. The separation of the departments of government into legislative, executive, and judicial has, at bottom, no other significance than as a convenient working scheme for the administration of the complex affairs of a complex society; and in so far as the attempt in separating them is also to distribute among them the law-making-power, which is the final expression of the supreme national will, to that extent are the occasions of strife introduced, leading to more or less open conflict between the departments, which will end only with the final concentration of this supreme power in one or another. CHAPTER XVII. THE TENDENCY OF POWER IN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. A CONFEDERATION of states is necessarily short-lived; if it does not go to pieces, it can be considered only as a transition stage between smaller single states and a larger single one. In like manner also the federal state represents merely a further stage of development toward the single state. Thus far the analysis has been confined to the single, complete, or, as it is usually denominated, sovereign state; and the nation has been treated as embracing such a state. The aim has been always to keep in mind a single, organic, political body, and to discover, if possible, the elementary forces which are operating in every such body. The special manifestations of these forces in particular forms of administration have been only incidentally adverted to, and by way of illustration, because, if we can make clear to our minds the general principles upon which all governments are constructed, we are in a position to study properly any particular gov ernment. We must now go a step farther, and examine the character of the governmental relations which arise when two or more states join themselves together and form a new government. It is not within our scope to consider the maxims of international law, which furnish rules of conduct and bind sovereign states together into a worldcommunity. These maxims belong to the domain of positive morality, and the rights and obligations which arise under international law are moral rather than jural. Nor is it proposed here to consider those temporary alliances of states, which are the result of treaties, but rather those permanent alliances through which the governments of the individual states are more or less affected. There may be merely a personal union, as where a prince becomes, by descent or other means, the governmental head of states permanently allied. We have examples of this personal union in the Empire of Charles V.; also in the cases of William III., King of England and Stadtholder of Holland; and of George I., King of England and Elector of Hanover. Or, at the other extreme, there may be the federal state, like the United States. Between these, there may be, as there have been at various times, several forms of federations. They have even been carefully classified, as alliances, confederacies of states, federal states, real unions, personal unions, and incorporations; but it is impossible to put in definitions the precise differences. One shades off into the other, and a combination of states may present the characteristics of two or more of these classes. German writers, for purposes of analysis, distinguish among them two kinds: the Staatenbund (confederacy of states), and the Bundesstaat (federal state). This is probably the most comprehensive and best classification. We cannot expect, even as to these, accurate definitions. In a general way, it may be said that both, as to other states, in external relations, or foreign affairs, present the form of unity. There must be a central organ which speaks for the entire body, as one political being. It is in the relations between the central power and the citizens that the essential distinction manifests itself. In |