At the early day when this
question was settled, and, indeed, at the several periods when it has
subsequently been agitated, the success of the Constitution of the
United States, as a new and peculiar system of free representative
government, was held doubtful in other countries, and was even a subject
of patriotic apprehension among the American people themselves. A trial
of nearly eighty years, through the vicissitudes of foreign conflicts
and of civil war, is confidently regarded as having extinguished all
such doubts and apprehensions for the future. During that eighty years
the people of the United States have enjoyed a measure of security,
peace, prosperity, and happiness never surpassed by any nation. It can
not be doubted that the triumphant success of the Constitution is due
to the wonderful wisdom with which the functions of government were
distributed between the three principal departments--the legislative,
the executive, and the judicial--and to the fidelity with which each
has confined itself or been confined by the general voice of the nation
within its peculiar and proper sphere.
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