THE CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMAN 2OI 



instead, only it would not do to call it so, because 

 Americans at that time were not fond of the name. 

 The new House of Representatives could of course 

 tax the people because it represented them. For the 

 same reason it could make laws, and to enable it to 

 enforce them there was to be a federal executive and 

 a federal judiciary. To the familiar state governments 

 under which people lived Madison thus superadded 

 another government, complete in all its branches and 

 likewise coming into direct contact with the people. 

 And yet this new government was not to override the 

 old ones ; state governors are not subordinate to the 

 President, or state legislatures to Congress; each is 

 sovereign within its own sphere. This was the supreme 

 act of creative statesmanship that made our country 

 what it is; transforming it, as the Germans say, from 

 a Staatesnbund into a Bundesstaat, or, as I may trans- 

 late these terms, from a Band-of-States into a Banded- 

 State. All this seems natural enough now, but the 

 men who could thus think out the problem a century 

 ago must be ranked as high among constructive states- 

 men as Newton among scientific discoverers. It is to 

 Madison that we owe this grand and luminous concep- 

 tion of the two coexisting and harmonious spheres of 

 government, although the Constitution, as actually 

 framed, was the result of skilful compromises by which 

 the Virginia plan was modified and improved in many 

 important points. In its original shape that plan went 

 farther toward national consolidation than the Consti- 

 tution as adopted. It contemplated a national legisla- 

 ture to be composed of two houses, but both the upper 

 and the lower house were to represent population in- 

 stead of states. Here it encountered fierce opposition 



