CHAPTER VI THE CHECKS AND BALANCES OF THE CONSTITUTION Two features of this system, the difficulty of amendment and the extraordinary powers of the judiciary have been discussed at some length. Both, as we have seen, were designed to limit the power of the popular majority. This purpose is no less evident when we view the Constitution as a whole. The members of the Federal Convention had little sympathy with the democratic trend of the Revolutionary movement. It was rapidly carrying the country, they thought, to anarchy and ruin. To guard against this impending evil was the purpose of the Constitution which they framed. It was their aim to eliminate what they conceived to be the new and false and bring the government back to old and established principles which the Revolutionary movement had for the time being discredited. They believed in the theory of checks and balances in so far as the system implied the limitation of the right of popular control, and made the Constitution to this extent as complete an embodiment of the theory as the circumstances of the time permitted. In any evolutionary classification of governments the American system occupies an intermediate position between the old type of absolute monarchy on the one hand and thoroughgoing democracy on the other. Following in a general way the course of political development in England, we may say that there was an early stage in the growth of the state when the power of the king was predominant. Neither the nobility nor the common people exercised any effective control over him. He was what we may call an absolute monarch. His power was unlimited in the sense that there were no recognized checks imposed upon it. He was irresponsible, since no one could call him to account for what he did. The upper classes, however, were anxious to share with the king the control of the state. Their efforts were directed first toward limiting his power by making their own consent necessary before he could enact any law, carry out any policy, or do any thing of a positive nature. But even after they had been admitted to this share in the government the negative power of the king remained unlimited. The veto power acquired by the upper classes might prevent him from enacting a particular law, or enforcing a given policy, but no one had a veto on his inaction. He might be unable to do what the classes having a voice in the management of the government forbade, but he could decline to do what they wished. The appearance of a House of Commons did not change essentially the character of the scheme, nor would it have done so, had this body been truly representative of the people as a whole. It placed an additional check on both King and Lords by giving to the representative body the power to negative their positive acts. Both the King and the Lords retained, however, their negative authority unimpaired and could use it for the purpose of defeating any measure which the Commons desired. This is what we may call the check and balance stage of political development. Here all positive authority is limited, since its exercise may be prevented by the negative power lodged for this purpose in the other branches of the government. This negative power itself, however, is absolute and unlimited. The government is in no true sense responsible to the people, or any part of them, since they have no positive control over it. This complex system of restrictions which is the outgrowth and expression of a class struggle for the control of the government must necessarily disappear when the supremacy of the people is finally established. This brings us to the next and for our present purpose, at least, the last stage of political evolution. Here the authority of the people is undisputed. Their will is law. The entire system of checks has been swept away. No irresponsible and insignificant minority is longer clothed with power to prevent reform. The authority of the government is limited only by its direct and complete responsibility to the people. Corresponding to these three stages of political evolution we have three general types of gov ernment: I. Unlimited and irresponsible. 2. Positively limited, negatively unlimited and irresponsible. 3. Unlimited and responsible. As shown in a previous chapter, the Revolutionary movement largely destroyed the system of checks. It abolished the veto power, centralized authority and made the government in a measure responsible to the electorate. The Constitution, however, restored the old order in a modified form. In this sense it was reactionary and retrogressive. It went back to the old doctrine of the separation of powers, ostensibly to limit the authority of the government and thereby make it responsible to the people as Hamilton argued in The Federalist. That this could not have been the real object is evident to any one who has carefully studied the situation. The unthinking reader may accept Hamilton's contention that the system of checks and balances was incorporated in the Constitution to make the gov ernment the servant and agent of the people; but the careful student of history can not be so easily misled. He knows that the whole system was built up originally as a means of limiting monarchical and aristocratic power; that it was not designed to make government in any true sense responsible, but to abridge its powers because it was irresponsible. The very existence of the system implies the equal recognition in the Constitution of antagonistic elements. As it could not possibly exist where monarchy or aristocracy was the only recognized source of authority in the state, so it is likewise impossible where all power is in the people. It is to be observed, then, that what originally commended the system to the people was the fact that it limited the positive power of the king and aristocracy, while the framers of the Constitution adopted it with a view to limiting the power of the people themselves. There is no essential difference between the viewpoint of the framers of the American Constitution and that of their English contemporaries. Lecky says: "It is curious to observe how closely the aims and standard of the men who framed the memorable Constitution of 1787 and 1788 corresponded with those of the English statesmen of the eighteenth century. It is true that the framework adopted was very different. . . . The United States did not contain the materials for founding a constitutional monarchy or a powerful |