commotion at the time, that resistance is the most sacred
of duties. There also was the theory that political power
comes from those over whom it is exercised, and depends
upon their will; that every authority not so constituted is
illegitimate and precarious; that the past is more a warning
than an example; that the earth belongs to those who are
upon it, not to those who are underneath. These are
characteristics common to both Revolutions.
At one time also the French adopted and acclaimed
the American notion that the end of government is liberty,
not happiness, or prosperity, or power, or the preservation
of an historic inheritance, or the adaptation of national
law to national character, or the progress of enlightenment
and the promotion of virtue; that the private individual
should not feel the pressure of public authority, and should
direct his life by the influences that are within him, not
around him.
And there was another political doctrine which the Americans transmitted to the French. In old colonial days the executive and the judicial powers were derived from a foreign source, and the common purpose was to diminish them. The assemblies were popular in origin and character, and everything that added to their power seemed to add security to rights. James Wilson, one of the authors and commentators of the constitution, informs us that "at the Revolution the same fond predilection, and the same jealous dislike, existed and prevailed. The executive, and the judicial as well as the legislative authority, was now the child of the people, but to the two former the people behaved like stepmothers. The legislature was still discriminated by excessive partiality." This preference, historic but irrational, led up naturally to a single chamber. The people of America and their delegates in Congress were of opinion that a single Assembly was every way adequate to the management of their federal concerns, and when the Senate was invented, Franklin strongly objected. "As to the two chambers," he wrote, "I am of your opinion that one alone would be better; but, my dear friend, nothing in human affairs and
