a position to discuss the functions of a king at the end
of an administration. I may seem over formal in this matter, but I am
very formal on purpose. It appears to me that the functions of our
executive in dissolving the Commons and augmenting the Peers are among
the most important, and the least appreciated, parts of our whole
government, and that hundreds of errors have been made in copying the
English Constitution from not comprehending them.

Hobbes told us long ago, and everybody now understands, that there must
be a supreme authority, a conclusive power, in every State on every
point somewhere. The idea of government involves it--when that idea is
properly understood. But there are two classes of Governments. In one
the supreme determining power is upon all points the same: in the
other, that ultimate power is different upon different points--now
resides in one part of the Constitution and now in another. The
Americans thought that they were imitating the English in making their
Constitution upon the last principle--in having one ultimate authority
for one sort of matter, and another for another sort. But in truth the
English Constitution is the type of the opposite species; it has only
one authority for all sorts of matters. To gain a living conception of
the difference let us see what the Americans did.

First, they altogether retained what, in part, they could not help, the
sovereignty of the separate States. A fundamental article of the
Federal Constitution says that the powers not "delegated" to the
central Government are "reserved to the States respectively". And the
whole recent history of the Union--perhaps all its history--has been
more determined by that enactment than by any other single cause. The
sovereignty of the principal matters of State has rested not with the
highest Government, but with the subordinate Government. The Federal
Government could not touch slavery--the "domestic institution" which
divided the Union into two halves, unlike one another in morals,
politics, and social condition, and at last set them to fight. This
determining political fact was not in the jurisdiction of the highest
Government in the country, where you might expect its highest wisdom,
nor in the central Government, where you might look for impartiality,
but in local governments, where petty interests were sure to be
considered, and where only inferior abilities were likely to be
employed. The capital fact was reserv