Hamilton was outspoken in preferring the English model, and I am not aware that Washington ever expressed a preference for the theory that, because of a written fundamental law, the court should nullify legislation.  Nor is it unworthy of remark that all foreigners, after a prolonged and attentive observation of our experiment, have avoided it.  Since 1789, every highly civilized Western people have readjusted their institutions at least once, yet not one has in this respect imitated us, though all have borrowed freely from the parliamentary system of England.[6]

Even our neighbor, Canada, with no adverse traditions and a population similar to ours, has been no exception to the rule.  The Canadian courts indeed define the limits of provincial and federal jurisdiction as fixed under an act of Parliament, but they do not pretend to limit the exercise of power when the seat of power has been established.  I take the cause of this distrust to be obvious.  Although our written Constitution was successful in its primary purpose of facilitating the consolidation of the Confederation, it has not otherwise inspired confidence as a practical administrative device.  Not only has constant judicial interference dislocated scientific legislation, but casting the judiciary into the vortex of civil faction has degraded it in the popular esteem.  In fine, from the outset, the American bench, because it deals with the most fiercely contested of political issues, has been an instrument necessary to political success.  Consequently, political parties have striven to control it, and therefore the bench has always had an avowed partisan bias.  This avowed political or social bias has, I infer, bred among the American people the conviction that justice is not administered indifferently to all men, wherefore the bench is not respected with us as, for instance, it is in Great Britain, where law and politics are sundered.  Nor has the dissatisfaction engendered by these causes been concealed.  On the contrary, it has found expression through a series of famous popular leaders from Thomas Jefferson to Theodore Roosevelt.

The Constitution could hardly have been adopted or the government organized but for the personal influence of Washington, whose power lay in his genius for dealing with men.  He lost no time or strength in speculation, but, taking the Constitution as the best implement at hand, he went to the work of administration by including the representatives of the antagonistic extremes in his Cabinet.  He might as well have expected fire and water to mingle as Jefferson and Hamilton to harmonize.  Probably he had no delusions on that head when he chose them for his ministers, and he accomplished his object.  He paralyzed opposition until the new mechanism began to operate pretty regularly, but he had not an hour to spare.  Soon the French Revolution heated passions so hot that long before Washington’s successor was elected the United States was rent by faction.