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 1789, 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