The American Constitution is distinctively English; this might be proved alone, as Mr. Freeman has acutely observed, by its taking two Houses, instead of one, or three, or more, as the normal structure of a legislative assembly.
It is in fact the English Constitution carefully adapted to a body of Englishmen who had never had much to do with an hereditary king and an aristocracy of birth, and who had determined to dispense with them altogether.
A more succinct and apt characterization of revolutionary American republicanism, of the governments of the American states, and of the government of the United States could hardly be asked for.
Sir Henry Maine, Popular Government. 1885.
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