ists shall again become fellow citizens, shall again vote,
again be represented, again perhaps govern. The most difficult of
problems is how to change late foes into free friends. The safety of
their great public debt, and with that debt their future credit and
their whole power in future wars, may depend on their not giving too
much power to those who must see in the debt the cost of their own
subjugation, and who must have an inclination towards the repudiation
of it, now that their own debt--the cost of their defence--has been
repudiated. A race, too, formerly enslaved, is now at the mercy of men
who hate and despise it, and those who set it free are bound to give it
a fair chance for new life. The slave was formerly protected by his
chains; he was an article of value; but now he belongs to himself, no
one but himself has an interest in his life; and he is at the mercy of
the "mean whites," whose labour he depreciates, and who regard him with
a loathing hatred. The greatest moral duty ever set before a
Government, and the most fearful political problem ever set before a
Government, are now set before the American. But there is no decision,
and no possibility of a decision. The President wants one course, and
has power to prevent any other; the Congress wants another course, and
has power to prevent any other. The splitting of sovereignty into many
parts amounts to there being no sovereign.

[10] This was written just after the close of the Civil War, but I do
not know that the great problem stated in it has as yet been adequately
solved.

The Americans of 1787 thought they were copying the English
Constitution, but they were contriving a contrast to it. Just as the
American is the type of composite Governments, in which the supreme
power is divided between many bodies and functionaries, so the English
is the type of SIMPLE Constitutions, in which the ultimate power upon
all questions is in the hands of the same persons.

The ultimate authority in the English Constitution is a newly-elected
House of Commons. No matter whether the question upon which it decides
be administrative or legislative; no matter whether it concerns high
matters of the essential Constitution or small matters of daily detail;
no matter whether it be a question of making a war or continuing a war;
no matter whether it be the imposing a tax or the issuing a paper
currency; no matter whether it be a question relating to India, or
Ireland, or