THE AIVIERICAN COMMONWEALTl-I 579
secretary of the treasury. Weare told also that the American of to-day regards the national institutions with a confidence sometimes grotesque. But this is a senti- ment which comes down, not from Washington and J efferson, but from Grant and Sherman. The illustrious founders \vere not proud of their accomplished work; and men like Clay and Adams persisted in desponding to the second and third generation. We have to distinguish what the nation owes to Madison and Marshall, and what to the army of the Potomac; for men's minds misgave them as to the constitution until it was cemented by the ordeal and the sacrifice of civil war. Even the claim put forward for Americans as the providers of humour for mankind seems to me subject to the same limitation. People used to know how often, or ho,v seldom, Washing- ton laughed during the war; but who has numbered the jokes of Lincoln? Although Mr. Bryce has too much tact to speak as freely as the Americans themselves in the criticism of their government, he insists that there is one defect which they insufficiently acknowledge. By law or custom no man can represent any district but the one he resides in. If ten statesmen live in the same street, nine will be thrown out of work. It is worth while to point out (though this may not be the right place for a purely political problem) that even in that piece of censure in \vhich he believes himself unsupported by his friends in the States, Mr. Bryce says no more than intelligent Americans have said before him. It chances that several of them have discussed this matter with me. One was governor of his State, and another is among the com- purgators cited in the preface. Both were strongly per- suaded that the usage in question is an urgent evil; others, I am bound to add, judged differently, deeming it valuable as a security against Boulangism-an object which can be attained by restricting the number of con- stituencies to be addressed by the same candidate. The two American presidents who agreed in saying that Whig and Tory belong to natural history, proposed a dilemma
