taken its place. The French abolished monarchy by a frontal attack upon the citadel, involving serious loss. Not such the policy of the colder Briton. He won his great victory, losing nothing, by flanking the position. That the king "could do no wrong," is a doctrine almost coeval with modern history, flowing from the "divine right" of kings, and, as such, was quietly accepted. It needed only to be properly harnessed to become a very serviceable agent for registering the people's will. It was obvious that the acceptance of the doctrine that the king could do no wrong involved the duty of proving the truth of the axiom, and it was equally obvious that the only possible way of doing this was that the king should not be allowed to do anything. Hence he was made the mouthpiece of his ministers, and it is not the king, but they, who, being fallible men, may occasionally err. The monarch, in losing power to do anything has gained power to influence everything. The ministers hold office through the approval of the House of Commons. Members of that house are elected by the people. Thus stands government in Britain "broad-based upon the people's will." All that the revolutionists of Watt's day desired has, in substance, been obtained, and Britain has become in truth a "crowned republic," with "government of "the people, for the people, and by the people." This steady and beneficent development was peaceably and attained. The difference between the French and British methods is that between revolution evolution. In America's political domain, a similar evolution has been even more silently at work than in Britain during the past century, and is not yet exhausted— the transformation of a loose confederacy of sovereign states, with different laws, into one solid government, which assumes control and insures uniformity over one department after another. The centripetal forces grow stronger with the years; power leaves the individual states and drifts to Washington, as the necessity for each successive change becomes apparent. In the regulation of interstate commerce, of trusts, and in other fields, final authority over the whole land gravitates more and more to Washington. It is a beneficent movement, likely to result in uniform national laws upon many, subjects in which present diversity creates confusion. Marriage and divorce laws, bankruptcy laws, corporation charter privileges, and many other important questions may be expected to become uniform under this evolutionary process. The Supreme Court decision that the Union was an indissoluble union of indissoluble states, carries with it finally uniform regulation of many interstate problems, in every respect salutary, and indispensable for the perfect union of the American people. |