Republican Rome attempted to guard against excessive centralism by the tribunitial veto, or by the organization of a negative or obstructive power.Mr.Calhoun thought this admirable, and wished to effect the same end here, where it is secured by other, more effective, and less objectionable means, by a State veto on the acts of Congress, by a dual executive, and by substituting concurrent for numerical majorities.Imperial Rome gradually swept away the tribunitial veto, concentrated all power in the hands of the emperor, became completely centralized, and fell.The British constitution seeks the same end by substituting estates for the state, and establishing a mixed government, in which monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy temper, check, or balance each other; but practically the commons estate has become supreme, and the nobility govern not in the house of lords, and can really influence public affairs only through the house of commons.The principle of the British constitution is not the division of the powers of government, but the antagonism of estates, or rather of interests, trusting to the obstructive influence of that antagonism to preserve the government from pure centralism.Hence the study of the British statesman is to manage diverse and antagonistic parties and interests so as to gain the ability to act, which he can do only by intrigue, cajolery, bribery in one form or another, and corruption of every sort.The British government cannot be carried on by fair, honest, and honorable means, any more than could the Roman under the antagonism created by the tribunitial veto.The French tried the English system of organized antagonism in , as a cure for the centralism introduced by Richelieu and Louis XIV., and again under the Restoration and Louis Philippe, and called it the system of constitutional guarantees; but they could never manage it, and they have taken refuge in unmitigated centralism under Napoleon III., who, however well disposed, finds no means in the constitution of the French nation of tempering it.The English system, called the constitutional, and sometimes the parliamentary system, will not work in France, and indeed works really well nowhere.
The American system, sometimes called the Federal system, is not founded on antagonism of classes, estates, or interests, and is in no sense a system of checks and balances.It needs and tolerates no obstructive forces.It does not pit section against section, the States severally against the General government, nor the General government against the State governments, and nothing is more hurtful than the attempt to explain it and work it on the principles of British constitutionalism.The convention created no antagonistic powers; it simply divided the powers of government, and gave neither to the General government nor to the State governments all the powers of government, nor in any instance did it give to the two governments jurisdiction in the same matters.Hence each has its own sphere, in which it can move on without colliding with that of the other.Each is independent and complete in relation to its own work, incomplete and dependent on the other for the complete work of government.
The division of power is not between a NATIONAL government and State governments, but between a GENERAL government and particular governments.The General government, inasmuch as it extends to matters common to all the States, is usually called the Government of the United States, and sometimes the Federal government, to distinguish it from the particular or State governments, but without strict propriety; for the government of the United States, or the Federal government, means, in strictness, both the General government and the particular Governments, since neither is in itself the complete government of the country.The General government has authority within each of the States, and each of the State governments has authority in the Union.The line between the Union and the States severally, is not precisely the line between the General government and the particular governments.As, for instance, the General government lays direct taxes on the people of the States, and collects internal revenue within them; and the citizens of a particular State, and none others, are electors of President and Vice-President of the United States, and representatives in the lower house of Congress, while senators in Congress are elected by the State legislatures themselves.
