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The House of Representatives or Commons is elected for two years by all male citizens over twenty-one years of age who possess the franchise in their particular states. Each member must be over twenty-five years of age, and resident in the state he represents. The number of members to which each state is entitled by its population is determined by Congress on the basis of the census taken every ten years. The total number of representatives for the 4 millions of people in 1789 was 69, about one for every 50,000. There are in 1884, for the 50 millions of people, 325 members, or about one for every 150,000 inhabitants. The electoral districts, each with one member only, are as far as possible conterminous with the counties of the various states. Each senator, since 1874, receives from imperial funds a salary of 5,000 dollars, or 1,000l. per annum, with his travelling expenses besides, once up to Washington and once home again by most direct route; and each member of the Lower House has also a salary of 1,000l. per annum besides his travelling expenses. But no member of either house can hold any government office or post whatsoever in the United States, being a paid member of the legislature. They may, however, be at the same time members of their own local legislatures and of the imperial parliament."

The Imperial Houses of Parliament in Congress have power to levy and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises (all duties, imposts, and excise are uniform throughout the Union), to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States; to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states; to establish uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies; to coin money and fix the standard of weights and measures; to manage the post-office, grant patents, declare war, raise and support army and navy, to suppress insurrections and repel invasions. New states may be admitted to the Union by Congress, but may never be carved out of other states already in union without the consent of the legislatures of those states.

The district of Columbia, ten miles square (ceded by Maryland and Virginia for this purpose), on which stands the city of Washington, the centre and the seat of the Imperial Government, has no state rights, being extra-provincial.

The imperial revenue of the United States is derived chiefly from It amounts in all to 72 million two sources-customs and excise. pounds; the expenditure is only 52 millions, chiefly in army and navy, pensions, and civil service; the surplus is available for reducing the national debt incurred during the civil war of 1861 to 1865.

"The founders of the United States did not scruple to use this adjective 'imperial,' in the same way as in England we speak of the imperial parliament or the imperial pint, and in the Act of Settlement' of the imperial crown of Great Britain. Mr. Goldwin Smith objects to the term, and from a catchword makes an argument: For an empire you must have an emperor.'

There are two safeguards against any sudden change or consequence of political passion, which are peculiar to the United States' constitution. The first is, that the Supreme Court of Judicature is made the arbiter and judge in any dispute that may arise as to how far either the Congress has trenched on the states' rights or the state legislatures may have exceeded theirs. The second is, that no alteration can be made in the federal constitution simply by act of the imperial legislature. Congress may propose an alteration when twothirds of both Houses vote for it; or, on the application of the states' legislatures of two-thirds of the states in the Union, may call a convention, specially elected for that purpose, to hear and propose amendments, which however before they can be carried out, must be ratified afterwards by the states' legislatures of three-fourths of the states of the Union. Six times only in the last hundred years has any alteration been made. The original constitution was formulated in 1787; ten amendments were added in 1791, and another the following year: one in 1804, another in 1865, another in 1868, and the last in 1870. No state, without its own consent, is ever to be deprived of its equal suffrage of two members, irrespective of population, in the Senate or Upper House.

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The constitution of each of the thirty-eight different states is various and so is the qualification for franchise: the original thirteen had all been founded at different times, and in different circumstances, like our other colonies. But they all agree in their main features.

Each state has a Governor of its own, answering very much to the lord lieutenant of an English county, excepting that here he has a province or state under his sway with several counties in it. He is the head of the executive in that state, just as the President of all the states united is the executive head of the Union. In some states he holds office for two, in others for three years. He has a veto on all bills passed by the legislature of his state, but as he goes out of office at the end of three years at furthest, he can only retard a bill from becoming law for that period. He presents a scheme to the two Houses of his state every session, embodying his notion as to that which the particular state requires in the way of effective local legislation. He is the supreme magistrate in his province or state; he appoints all the justices of the peace, and has all the militia forces at his disposal. Each state has a militia, in which all men from eighteen to forty-five, capable of bearing arms, ought to be enrolled. Their sum total would be upwards of 6 millions of men.

The local legislative power of each state is vested in two Houses of Assembly; the first of which is generally called the Senate. This Upper House in some states becomes executive and nominates functionaries, in others it is judicial for certain civil and political offences as well as legislative, like the English House of Lords. The number of its members is always small, in some cases even as few as five

only constitute the Upper House of a state. The Lower House of legislature in each state is usually called the House of Representatives, or in some states the House of Commons, and has no share whatever in the administration. In Virginia, the oldest British colony, dating from 1607, the two Houses are called Senate and House of Delegates; in New Jersey, the Council and Assembly; in North Carolina, the Senate and House of Commons; in New York, the Senate and Assembly; in Connecticut and Ohio, the Legislative Council and House of Representatives; in New Hampshire, the Senate and House of Representatives; in many, as in our colonies, the Upper House is called the Legislative Council, and the Lower House is called the Legislative Assembly. As to the number of representatives in each state, or the basis of their election, there is no point on which the policy of the several states is more at variance, whether we compare the legislative assemblies directly with each other, or consider the proportions which they respectively bear to the number of their constituents. Passing over the difference between the smallest and larger states-as Delaware, whose most numerous branch consists of twenty-one representatives, and Massachusetts, where it amounts to between three and four hundred-a very considerable difference is observable among states nearly equal in population.

The franchise and mode of election and qualification of members varies in each state; in most, however, the members of the Upper and Lower Houses are chosen in the same manner in that state, the only difference being that the members for the Upper House are chosen for a longer period than those chosen for the Lower; the latter usually sit for only one year, the former for two or three years. The effect of this is, of course, that in each provincial or state legislature there is thus always a nucleus of men of business habits, as all the members of both legislatures do not change at once; and a certain continuity of effort is thus insured, as in our municipal and town councils. There is nothing aristocratic in this double House. This division of legislative power has been shown by time and experience to be a principle of the greatest necessity. Pennsylvania was the only one of the original states that tried to do with a single House, Franklin consenting; but they were soon obliged to change the law, and create two Houses.

At the election of members for the Imperial Senate, the two Houses of Legislature in each state meet together in general assembly, and elect by joint ballot the two inhabitants of the state who they think are most worthy to be their Senators or state-representatives at Washington.

Each state has home rule just like any of our own colonies; and the limits of the law-making power in each state are simply that no law can be made retrospective; no duty can be laid on

articles imported or exported from one state to another of the Union (except with the consent of Congress, and then the nett produce of such tax shall be for the use, not of that particular state thus indulging in protection, but for the treasury of the United States for imperial purposes); no treaty may be made with any foreign power; no troops or ships of war may be kept (without consent of Congress). The citizens of each state are entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states. Each state is entitled to protection by the imperial authority against invasion from without, and, on application, against domestic violence. Both personal and real property are taxed by the local parliaments for local purposes; and the local debts amount to more than 250 millions sterling.

On a comparison of the different states one with another, we find a great dissimilarity in their laws, and in many other circumstances. At present, some of the states are little more than a society of husbandmen; others of them have made great progress in branches of manufacture and industry, and have already the fruits of a more advanced population. Of the thirty-eight states, New York now contains a population as large as that of Ireland, Pennsylvania hardly less; Illinois and Ohio have each a population equal to that of Scotland; fifteen other states each a population over 1 million (which is about the population of Wales), and the remaining nineteen a population varying in each case from just short of a million down to that of the smallest (Nevada), which contains 62,000. The average population of these last nineteen may be said to be that of Liverpool or Birmingham, or about half the population of either of the colonies of Victoria or New South Wales. Illinois is the only state that has adopted as yet the 'free' vote or system of minority representation in the election of the members for its State legislature. For this purpose (since 1870) it has been divided into fifty-one electoral districts; each of these elects one member for the Upper House and three for the Lower. For the election of these last each elector has three votes, as many votes as there are vacancies, which he may distribute in any way he pleases among the candidates, even to the fraction of a vote and a half for each candidate. The system is said to work well, and other states are likely to adopt it. It is the simplest and perhaps the only practicable way of representing anything but the gross majority, and is the same as the 'cumulative vote' which is used in England at the election of the London School Board.

This league of thirty-eight countries, many of which exceed in size the smaller kingdoms of Europe, when founded, consisted of thirteen separate colonies, and each of these as late as 1782 (six years after they had severed themselves from England) looked with indifference, often with hatred, fear, and aversion on the other states.

There was but little commercial or political intercourse between them, their geographical distances apart in those days were great, and the interests of the various colonies were opposed. The central government of Congress was at first a matter of necessity, to enable them to combine against a common foe; but it was regarded as jealously by each of the separate colonies as if it was a foreign power, through fear of its encroaching on the independence of the states. The great extent of country they covered was held by many to be alone a sufficient obstacle against their ever combining into one union. It was urged by those who wished that the colonies should remain distinct political communities, and each a free and independent state, that the situation of the States of Holland and of the Cantons of Switzerland, which were closely contiguous, and the only examples of federal states that were then known or considered by the people with any detail or precision, was wholly different to that of theirs. In their resistance to Great Britain, however, they formed 'a firm league of friendship,' and afterwards, under the pressure of war, the states came to acquiesce in a single, strong, prompt, and energetic executive power, but all dreaded even then a consolidation of the Union.' A number of delegates first met from the colonies and provinces in North America, and held a 'Congress' in Philadelphia, on the 5th of September, 1774. This Congress continued to act, each member being only responsible for his own colony, till the Declaration of Independence, 1776. On the 15th of November, 1777, articles of Confederation were drawn up, but not till four years afterwards, the 1st of March, 1781, did all the states approve them-so reluctant were they to part with any portion of their powers even in face of the common enemy of their country. The imposition of any tax whatever by the Central authority for common purposes was long resisted, and Washington had to disband the army at the end of the war, and send his men to their homes actually with heavy arrears of pay, because the states would not agree together to pay the debt they owed to their liberators, and would not give the central authority a power of providing revenue for itself. Each of the thirteen colonies claimed tenaciously, and exercised for some time, the exclusive right to regulate its commerce, and each state most ungenerously and most selfishly availed itself to the utmost limit of this right. In the regulation of commerce, regard was only had to their local self-interests, and a policy was frequently followed by one state, the aim of which was to obtain. an advantage directly opposed to the welfare of the neighbouring. state. After peace had been made with Great Britain, Washington struggled on against the great disinclination each state still felt to divest itself of the smallest attribute of independence, so far that at one moment even civil war seemed imminent between them. On the 21st of February, 1787, the Congress of the Confederation determined to summon a Convention of the States, 'to consider VOL. XVI.-No. 89.

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