almost every point. This is not Constitutional Government; it is usually either a sop to the Diplomatic Cerberus, or a net in whose meshes Diplomacy has caught itself by reason of its over-cleverness. Sometimes, but more rarely, it is, as was the case, we think, with Midhat Pasha's celebrated Ottoman Constitution, the best attempt that can be made by a falling State to save itself from utter collapse. In Midhat Pasha's case we have always believed the attempt to have been an honest one. That it could succeed, we very much doubt whether its author himself believed possible. But although the Constitution itself is for all practical purposes defunct, and its author, if still alive, is in exile, we believe that the work done will not be so wholly lost as it may at the present moment appear. For we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the day for the lowering of the Ottoman Standard on the European side of the Bosphorus is ever nearer and nearer at hand, and we must perforce think of what is to take its place. With us, from our present point of view, it is rather a question of Government than of Standards. If justice could be done equally to all men, of all creeds, under the Ottoman Government, we should not desire to hasten the day of its removal. But nothing that we have been able to see in the conduct of the present Commander of the Faithful gives us any hope of so peaceful a solution of the Byzantine portion of the Eastern Question. Therefore we think that when the changes comes to pass, the Power, whatever its name, that takes up the inheritance of the New Rome, will have to consider what are the existing local elements of Self-Government, to be fostered and developed with the Phoenix-like new life that must yet dawn for Byzantium. In that day it is almost certain that recourse must be had to the old law, and the new Constitution,-to the old law which the seven-hilled city of the Bosphorus gave to the Roman World, and to the new Constitution which Midhat Pasha

devised for all that remained of the Roman World under the rule of the Ottoman Padishah. But it is not in the Old World alone that Constitutionalism is an important factor in the life of the peoples of the earth. Beyond the worldencircling Ocean of Homer, in an Atlantis which draws kings of men "from the Log Cabin to the White House," Constitutional Government prevails, and Constitutional questions are debated in the Courts as well as in the Senate. And the problems with which American Constitutionalism has to deal are full of instruction for us, different in many respects as are our conditions of life. The entire framework of the American Constitutional machinery, it seems to us, is of a nature that must necessarily often give rise to such problems, and they will, no doubt, in the Future as in the Past, often be very difficult of solution. All we can say is that we trust the internal peace of the Union will never again be disturbed as in the Past. But the Past, if we read it carefully, contains warnings for the Future. State Rights are not a figment, nor are they in themselves opposed to Federal Rights: rather are they, we should argue, the necessary basis of Federal Union. Of course, many and various views have been and continue to be propounded on the nature of the conception which underlies the Federal Government, and the language of American writers and of American Courts has not always been consistent. We doubt whether it could well have been otherwise. For the problems which the framers of the Constitution of the United States had to solve lay far deeper than the surface controversy, which, in these days, it has pleased some English writers to make merry over, as to the President's honorary designation, and whether it should be "His Excellency," or "His Highness." In this matter, as in other and weightier matters, the common sense of the nation prevailed, for in truth the name of the office itself should be held to be the President's highest title to honour. He

has not needed the Royal designation of "Highness. in order to wield, during his tenure of office, a power in many respects greater and more uncontrolled than that of most European kings. Under such circumstances, it could matter little what his fellow-citizens called him. His real power could not fail to make itself felt. To an ordinary English eye it would probably seem strange to read the title of one of the last contributions to Political Science made by a distinguished American jurist, the late Hon. W. Beach Lawrence. Writing in the North American Review for November, 1880, the subject which he proposed to himself for discussion was the "Monarchical Principle" in the Constitution of the United States. The article is one full of valuable matter for the student of comparative Constitutional History, if we may so term that branch of Political Science with which we are here concerned. It should be read side by side with an article in the Southern Law Review of slightly earlier date (Aug.-Sept., 1880), by Mr. W. T. Brantley, on the "Influence of European Speculation in the formation of the Federal Constitution." For the two articles treat the same subject from different points of view. Mr. Beach Lawrence marshals the various features in the Constitution, which show forth the magnitude of the Presidential office, and says, probably with great truth, that "all testimony concurs in assuring us that an office of this magnitude would not have been created unless Washington had been intended to fill it." But then it should, we think, be remembered that it must have been quite clear to the minds of those who drew up the Constitution that Washington could not live for ever, here below. We are therefore compelled, it would seem, to leave a margin, which the mere insistence upon the fact of Washington's dominant personality would not bear, for a something intentionally left vague in the declarations of the American Constitution regarding the Presidential office. There were, doubtless, as

Mr. Beach Lawrence points out, many persons in the revolting Colonies, who, although going with the revolt on abstract Legal and Constitutional principles, not only had no objection to a Monarchical Government in itself, but even actually favoured it. And the seeming contradiction in the position of such persons we should hold to be apparent only, and not real. But it rather cuts, at least to our mind, at the root of anything like a "Monroe doctrine," that such a favourable attitude towards Monarchy should have existed in the very earliest days of the separation from the mother country. For it would certainly go far to show that in the minds of the Fathers of American Independence, that Independence was so far from being opposed to Monarchy in the eternal fitness of things, that it was quite a question whether the Monarchical form might not have been adopted in the new Federation. The President would then have been, we suppose, a sort of "Kaiser in America," enjoying a perhaps somewhat ill-defined preeminence over the rulers of the several sovereign States of the Union, much as the "Kaiser in Deutschland" exercises his pre-eminence over the remaining sovereign States of Germany, whose separate existence is a fact side by side with the other fact of their union in the German Empire. But, from whatever cause, this is not what actually was done in America. On the whole, however, what was done does seem to have been loosely done, with what we may perhaps call a studied carelessness. Had any other man than Washington been the probable, or rather the destined, first holder of the Presidential office, we agree with Mr. Beach Lawrence and John Quincy Adams, the passages of the Constitution declaratory of the President's powers would probably have been framed in much more definite language. "The establishment of justice," Adams observes, in his discourse on the Jubilee of the Constitution, "in the intercourse between the nation and foreign powers was thus pre

eminently committed to the custody of one man, but that man was George Washington." This was, under the circumstances, very natural; whether it was equally wise may be a question. For the vagueness originally written in the Constitution has remained in it to cause much conflict of opinion in later times. It is matter for congratulation that so little advantage has been taken of it during the past century. Else the liberties which the Colonies were in arms to preserve might have been lost to them in subsequent years through their own want of care, or, to put it differently, through their too great trust in human nature. Foreign critics saw the danger which the Americans, perhaps designedly, did not see. The Duc de la Rochefoucald, says Mr. Beach Lawrence, wrote to Franklin in 1789, expressing his surprise, in view of the attempts then being made to restrain the powers of the Monarch in France, that the Americans should have given such unlimited scope to an elective Chief Magistrate, especially to one whose re-election for life was possible. Franklin defended the re-eligibility of the President. Mr. Beach Lawrence significantly notes that the elder Adams regarded the Constitution of the United States as forming a Government "more properly to be classed among monarchical than democratic governments." Perhaps after his visit to the United States, Mr. Freeman may be induced to take up the thread of his unfinished work on Federal Government, and tell us what he thinks on this subject. Mr. Beach Lawrence, it is evident, held strong views on the point, for he says plainly that "in determining to create a national government, to consist of an Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary, the [American] Convention seem to have gone back for precedents, as to the first-named, to the times of the Plantagenets and Tudors, without regard to any of the modifications of the royal authority in modern times." The reason for this strong language may