d. The germ of a ministry responsible directly to parliament
and indirectly to the people.
e. Freedom of speech and the press.
From all which great and wholly self-derived institutions were created the instrumentalities of all political progress, both at home and abroad. Holland, it is true, had tolerations, but they were no less of native English growth.
Thus step by step can be traced the building of this great political edifice, whose architecture was so closely followed by our own American Constitution-builders.
The fundamental distinction between the English Government, as portrayed and developed in Magna Charta, the Petition of Right, and Bill of Rights, and the Constitution of the United States, {131} is that the aim of the former instruments was to define and limit the powers of the monarch; while the latter sought at once to create, specify, and restrict the authority of the Federal Government. Both attempted to define and preserve the rights of the people. The main objects are one; the divergencies are the natural result of the prevailing conditions of both countries. The distinctive aim of English political development has been to obtain its objects by enlarging the powers of Parliament, while the fundamental purpose of the American people was to make a general government so constituted as to preserve both the rights of the States and people. These correlative purposes are remarkably illustrated in the method of construction, for by Magna Charta it is provided, "It is also sworn as well on our part as on the part of the Barons that all of the things aforesaid shall be observed in good faith and without evil subtility"—and in the Constitution of the United States it is set forth in effect that the Imperium is to be created, and then that the "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution—nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people "; the States being the reservoirs of all the free principles conferred by them out of their abundance on the general government.
Substantially all the powers which were conceded to belong to the monarch by these organic instruments, and by the political records of England, were specifically conferred by the Constitution of the United States upon the President.
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Before the commencement of the War of 1776, the first volume of Blackstone's Commentaries was published and in the hands of all the American lawyers. The chapters upon the powers of Parliament and the prerogative of, and restrictions upon, kingly authority, were fully and perspicuously set forth therein. Here was the fountain from which much of the inspiration of the American Constitution makers was drawn. The influence of Blackstone and its predecessor, the Spirit of Law, by Montesquieu, both before and after the Revolution, was very great. Nor do I overlook the influence which arose from a study of Grecian history by some of its framers—although their studies were said to be somewhat superficial.[16]
Our Bill of Rights, which was not adopted until after the Constitution had been inaugurated, but which appears as the first ten amendments to that instrument, was almost literally copied from the Petition of Right, presented in the reign of Charles I., by Parliament (1628) and the Bill of Rights of 1689.
The Constitution of the United States contains new matter, especially as regards the delicate relation of the States to each other and to the newly constituted government, not to be found in Magna Charta, or in the Petition, or Bill of' Rights, growing as it did out of the necessity of providing for a new condition of affairs, but in everything fundamental and substantial relating to the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the {133} government, it has faithfully followed the principles of the English Constitution.