Page:The Federalist (Ford).djvu/9

Rh tion is one of the most remarkable examples of self-control in history, and constitutes its chief claim to preeminence. The explanation of its origin can only be obtained by a history of the years preceding its framing.

In the colonial period the law-making power in the provinces was placed in the hands of popular assemblies; the execution of those laws, or their negation, in the hands of colonial governors appointed by Great Britain, with a second veto by the king in council; and the construing of those laws was confided to judges, likewise for the most part named by the sovereign, with a final appeal from the local courts to the courts of the Privy Council. Thus the people were from early times accustomed to popular legislation, controlled first by a negative of their local executive and courts, and ultimately by a supreme national executive and courts. The laws of parliament overrode a colonial statute, the king's veto killed a law assented to by the king's governor; and the courts of the Privy Council reversed the decisions of the provincial courts.

The American Revolution destroyed this system and brought into existence in its stead government by popular committees or conventions; and as the cities were mostly loyal to the crown, and during the war were largely held by the British,—thus excluding their citizens from influence in these popular bodies,—the provisional governments were controlled by the landholding classes. Remembering with hatred the alien checks on the popular will which the king's negative and courts had so often, and sometimes with cruelty, imposed on the people, when these representative bodies came to frame new governments they practically lodged all powers in the legislative department,—hitherto the only one which had approximated to the people's will,—and made the executive and judicial branches its creatures.

Unchecked by the balance usually supplied by manufacturing or commercial interests, the landholding classes, by their legislatures, in turn unchecked by coordinate departments, ran riot. Paper money and tender