American Democracy

The 19th-century view from Albion of the shortcomings of the

ToúiúysHistovy

US Constitution was remarkably astute, says Frank Prochaska.

Flaws Across the Pond

‘ n assessing the character of American

government, one recalls the observation by

the historian Henry Adams that politics is ‘the

systematic organization of hatreds’. As the next

presidential election looms the United States

. seems to have entered another round of
partisan deadlock. The Founding Fathers, it is sometimes
forgotten, designed the US Constitution in a
pre-democratic age before the emergence ofa party
system, which they feared could lead, in George
Washington’s words, to the ‘unjust dominion’ of
‘unprincipled men’. If they were alive today – and as
wise as assumed – they might wish to amend the
ageing text that has failed to stem the tide of faction
and has become an obstacle to good governance.

American party politics is combative. Belligerence is
its essence. In Popular Government (\SS5) Sir Henry
Maine, the Victorian jurist and historian, argued that
the best justification for the American party system was
that it inhibited rivals from killing one another. Maine
was just one of a succession of eminent Victorian