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. [Footnote:  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.] 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.

How important singleness and unity are in political action no one, I imagine, can doubt.  We may distinguish and define its parts; but policy is a unit and a whole.  It acts by laws—­by administrators; it requires now one, now the other; unless it can easily move both it will be impeded soon; unless it has an absolute command of both its work will be imperfect.  The interlaced character of human affairs requires a single determining energy; a distinct force for each artificial compartment will make but a motley patchwork, if it live long enough to make anything.  The excellence of the British Constitution is that it has achieved this unity; that in it the sovereign power is single, possible, and good.

The success is primarily due to the peculiar provision of the English Constitution, which places the choice of the executive in the “people’s House”; but it could not have been thoroughly achieved except for two parts, which I venture to call the “safety-valve” of the Constitution, and the “regulator”.

The safety-valve is the peculiar provision of the Constitution, of which I spoke at great length in my essay on the House of Lords.  The head of the executive can overcome the resistance of the second chamber by choosing new members of that chamber; if he do not find a majority, he can make a majority.  This is a safety-valve of the truest kind.  It enables the popular will—­the will of which the executive is the exponent, the will of which it is the appointee—­to carry out within the Constitution desires and conceptions which one branch of the Constitution dislikes and resists.  It lets forth a dangerous accumulation of inhibited power, which might sweep this Constitution before it, as like accumulations have often swept away like Constitutions.