But the division of the sovereign authority in the American Constitution is far more complex than this.  The part of that authority left to the Federal Government is itself divided and subdivided.  The greatest instance is the most obvious.  The Congress rules the law, but the President rules the administration.  One means of unity the Constitution does give:  the President can veto laws he does not like.  But when two-thirds of both Houses are unanimous (as has lately happened), they can overrule the President and make the laws without him; so here there are three separate repositories of the legislative power in different cases:  first, Congress and the President when they agree; next, the President when he effectually exerts his power; then the requisite two-thirds of Congress when they overrule the President.  And the President need not be over-active in carrying out a law he does not approve of.  He may indeed be impeached for gross neglect; but between criminal non-feasance and zealous activity there are infinite degrees.  Mr. Johnson does not carry out the Freedman’s Bureau Bill as Mr. Lincoln, who approved of it, would have carried it out.  The American Constitution has a special contrivance for varying the supreme legislative authority in different cases, and dividing the administrative authority from it in all cases.

But the administrative power itself is not left thus simple and undivided.  One most important part of administration is international policy, and the supreme authority here is not in the President, still less in the House of Representatives, but in the Senate.  The President can only make treaties, “provided two-thirds of Senators present” concur.  The sovereignty therefore for the greatest international questions is in a different part of the State altogether from any common administrative or legislative question.  It is put in a place by itself.

Again, the Congress declares war, but they would find it very difficult, according to the recent construction of their laws, to compel the President to make a peace.  The authors of the Constitution doubtless intended that Congress should be able to control the American executive as our Parliament controls ours.  They placed the granting of supplies in the House of Representatives exclusively.  But they forgot to look after “paper money”; and now it has been held that the President has power to emit such money without consulting Congress at all.  The first part of the late war was so carried on by Mr. Lincoln; he relied not on the grants of Congress, but on the prerogative of emission.  It sounds a joke, but it is true nevertheless, that this power to issue greenbacks is decided to belong to the President as commander-in-chief of the army; it is part of what was called the “war power”.  In truth money was wanted in the late war, and the administration got it in the readiest way; and the nation, glad not to be more taxed, wholly approved of it.  But the fact remains that the President