Studies in American History 
233 
thought and became one of the chief foundation stones upon 
which our political institutions were constructed.^^ 
Another eighteenth-century idea that has played a large 
part in the American government is that of distrust. This 
idea follows logically from the theory of the separation of 
powers. Since officials could not be trusted, no group of 
officials should have sufficient power to do harm. Hence 
followed our whole system of checks and balances by means 
of which we have often been lulled into a position of false 
security, a sort of fools’ paradise, while the politicians have 
played politics at our expense to their heart’s content. When 
one considers the number of times since 1865 that Congress 
(one or both houses) has been in the hands of one political par- 
ty while the executive department has been in the hands of the 
other party, it might well make one wonder whether or not 
something might be defective in our machinery of govern- 
ment, and whether or not the system of checks and balances 
is all that it has sometimes been thought to be. Not only 
was there distrust of officials but there was distrust of democ- 
racy in the eighteenth century. Two evils which the makers 
of the United States Constitution hoped would never be visited 
upon the young nation in whose welfare and happiness they 
were sincerely interested were political parties and democracy, 
and yet both became characteristic features of American polit- 
ical history. This is an illustration of the fact that a later 
generation often regards as an achievement what an earlier 
generation regards as a danger to be avoided. 
The achievement of “responsible” government in Canada il- 
lustrates the same point. Just how colonial authorities could 
be responsible to a colonial legislature and still the district 
represented by such a legislature continue to be part of the 
British Empire was a problem which seemed to present in- 
superable difficulties. Said Lord John Russell in 1837: 
That part of the constitution which requires that the ministers of 
the crown shall be responsible to Parliament and shall be removable if 
they do not obtain the confidence of Parliament is a condition which 
exists in an imperial legislature and in an imperial legislature only. It 
is a condition which cannot be carried into effect in a colony — it is a 
condition which can only exist in one place, namely the seat of empire.®'^ 
In this discussion the writer is under constant obligation to the writings of Pro- 
fessors Dicey and Pollard. 
Quoted in William P. M. Kennedy, The Constitution of Canada (London, 1922), 177. 
