dment are, of course, an
inevitable aspect of the contemporary American political problem; but
all such possible and proposed changes must be confined to specific
details. They should not raise any question as to the fundamental
desirability of a system of checks and balances or of the other
principles upon which the Federal political organization is based. Much,
consequently, as a political theorist may be interested in some ideal
plan of American national organization, it will be of little benefit
under existing conditions to enter into such a discussion. Let it wait
until Americans have come to think seriously and consistently about
fundamental political problems. The Federal Constitution is not all it
should be, but it is better than any substitute upon which American
public opinion could now agree. Modifications may and should somehow be
made in details, but for the present not in fundamentals. On the other
hand, no similar sanctity attaches to municipal charters and state
constitutions. The ordinary state constitution is a sufficiently
ephemeral piece of legislation. State and municipal political forms are
being constantly changed, and they are being changed because they have
been so extremely unsatisfactory in their actual operation. The local
political machinery becomes, consequently, the natural and useful
subject of reconstructive experiments. A policy of institutional reform
must prove its value and gain its experience chiefly in this field; and
in formulating such a policy reformers will be placing their hands upon
the most palpable and best-recognized weakness in the American political
system.

A popular but ill-founded American political illusion concerns the
success of their state governments. Americans tend to believe that these
governments have on the whole served them well, whereas in truth they
have on the whole been ill served by their machinery of local
administration and government. The failure has not, perhaps, been as
egregious or as scandalous as has been that of their municipal
institutions; but it has been sufficiently serious to provoke continual
but abortive attempts to improve them; and it has had so many dangerous
consequences that the cause and cure of their inefficiency constitute
one of the most fundamental of American political problems. The
consequences of the failure have been mitigated because the weakness of
the state governments has been partly concealed and redeemed by the
compa