738 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the character and objects of which could not otherwise escape the 

 most " vulgar " eye. 



We have an example of the tendencies of the system in the Aus- 

 tralian colonies, if Australian journals may be believed. Whatever 

 laud-questions or other questions of an organic kind or of permanent 

 importance there were, having been settled, and no basis for parties 

 left, party government it seems in those countries is weltering in cabal, 

 senseless faction-fighting, and all the concomitant evils. The worst 

 arts and the worst men inevitably acquire an increasing ascendency 

 in public life. Changes of ministry, brought about for the most part 

 by mere personal intrigue, are of constant occurrence. Government 

 is almost as unstable as in Mexico, and though the mode in which the 

 revolutions are effected is less violent, they are perhaps not much less 

 injurious to the political character of the people, or less likely to pro- 

 duce a complete disintegration of authority in the end. 



Imitation of England has led the political world a strange dance. 

 The Chinese shipwrights, when desired to build a vessel in place of 

 one which had been disabled by dry-rot, produced an exact copy, dry- 

 rot and all. Montesquieu fancied that the grand secret of English 

 liberty lay in the separation of the executive and the judicial power 

 fi-ora the legislative. With their union in the same hands liberty 

 would end. This theory found general acceptance ; yet at the very 

 time when Montesquieu made this profound observation, the legisla- 

 ture had in fact got into its hands the executive, which it appointed 

 by the vote of its majority, and the judiciary, which was appointed 

 by the executive. But the effect of the notion is visible in the pro- 

 visions of the American Constitution; and the consequence is an 

 occasional dead-lock, arising from a conflict between the legislature and 

 the executive, as in the case of President Johnson, who was impeached 

 to force him into harmony with Congress. Again, the House of Lords 

 has been taken for a Senate^ and the check imposed by its mature and 

 deliberate wisdom on the rashness of the more popular House has 

 beejij supposed to be the grand safeguard of British legislation. The 

 House of Lords is not a Senate, nor a second Chamber, in the sense 

 in which the term is practically employed by the architects of new^ 

 constitutions. It is an estate of the realm : it is a privileged order 

 having an interest of its own separate from that of the nation at 

 large, and defending its own interests, which are necessarily those of 

 privilege, and therefore of reaction, by resisting every measure of 

 political change as long as it is safe to do so. Of its revising precip- 

 itate legislation in an impartial sense no instance can be found. But 

 other nations try to reproduce it in the form of a second Chamber, 

 and they find, one after another, that, compose your second Chamber 

 and appoint its members as you will, the result is either a nullity or a 

 collision between the two Houses, in which the more popvdar House 

 will probably prevail. 



