of these materials nothing better can be made than the English
Constitution; but it is also believed that the essential parts of
the English Constitution cannot be made except from these materials.
Now these elements are the accidents of a period and a region; they
belong only to one or two centuries in human history, and to a few
countries. The United States could not have become monarchical, even
if the Constitutional Convention had decreed it, even if the
component States had ratified it. The mystic reverence, the
religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are
imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any
people. These semi-filial feelings in Government are inherited just
as the true filial feelings in common life. You might as well adopt
a father as make a monarchy: the special sentiment be longing to the
one is as incapable of voluntary creation as the peculiar affection
belonging to the other. If the practical part of the English
Constitution could only be made out of a curious accumulation of
mediaeval materials, its interest would be half historical, and its
imitability very confined.

No one can approach to an understanding of the English institutions,
or of others, which, being the growth of many centuries, exercise a
wide sway over mixed populations, unless he divide them into two
classes. In such constitutions there are two parts (not indeed
separable with microscopic accuracy, for the genius of great affairs
abhors nicety of division): first, those which excite and preserve
the reverence of the population--the DIGNIFIED parts, if I may so
call them; and next, the EFFICIENT parts--those by which it, in
fact, works and rules. There are two great objects which every
constitution must attain to be successful, which every old and
celebrated one must have wonderfully achieved: every constitution