From an essay in the Nineteenth Century.

SIR HENRY MAINE, in an admirable essay which, though not signed, betrays him for its author by its rare and characteristic qualities of mind and style—Sir Henry Maine in the Quarterly Review adopts and often reiterates a phrase of M. Scherer, to the effect that “democracy is only a form of government.” He holds up to ridicule a sentence of Mr. Bancroft’s “History,” in which the American democracy is told that its ascent to power “proceeded as uniformly and majestically as the laws of being, and was as certain as the degrees of eternity.” Let us be willing to give Sir Henry Maine his way, and to allow no magnificent claim of this kind on behalf of the American democracy. Let us treat as not more solid the assertion in the Declaration of Independence, that “all men are created equal, are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Let us concede that these natural rights are a figment; that chance and circumstance, as much as deliberate foresight and design, have brought the United States into their present condition; that moreover the British rule which they threw off was not the rule of oppressors and tyrants which declaimers suppose; and that the merit of the Americans was not that of oppressed men rising against tyrants, but rather of sensible young people getting rid of stupid and overweening guardians who misunderstood and mismanaged them.

  All this let us concede, if we will; but in conceding it let us not lose sight of the really important point, which is this: that their institutions do in fact suit the people of the United States so well, and that from this suitableness they do derive so much actual benefit. As one watches the play of their institutions, the image suggests itself to one’s mind of a man in a suit of clothes which fits him to perfection, leaving all his movements unimpeded and easy. It is loose where it ought to be loose, and it sits close where its sitting close is an advantage. The central government of the United States keeps in its own hands those functions which, if the nation is to have real unity, ought to be kept there; those functions it takes to itself and no others. The State governments and the municipal governments provide people with the fullest liberty of managing their own affairs, and afford, besides, a constant and invaluable school of practical experience. This wonderful suit of clothes, again (to recur to our image), is found also to adapt itself naturally to the wearer’s growth, and to admit of all enlargements as they successively arise. I speak of the state of things since the suppression of slavery, of the state of things which meets a spectator’s eye at the present time in America. There are points in which the institutions of the United States may call forth criticism. One observer may think that it would be well if the President’s term of office were longer, if his ministers sat in Congress or must possess the confidence of Congress. Another observer may say that the marriage laws for the whole nation ought to be fixed by Congress, and not to vary at the will of the legislatures of the several States. I myself was much struck with the inconvenience of not allowing a man to sit in Congress except for his own district; a man like Wendell Phillips was thus excluded, because Boston would not return him. It is as if Mr. Bright could have no other constituency open to him if Rochdale would not send him to Parliament. But all these are really questions of machinery (to use my own term), and ought not so to engage our attention as to prevent our seeing that the capital fact as to the institutions of the United States is this: their suitableness to the American people and their natural and easy working. If we are not to be allowed to say, with Mr. Beecher, that this people has “a genius for the organization of States,” then at all events we must admit that in its own organization it has enjoyed the most signal good fortune.