You think that we ought to have proposed two
Chambers. The great use of two Chambers is to strengthen the Executive
by enabling it to play one against the other; but we felt that our
Executive was dangerously strong, and we believed, I think truly, that a
single Chamber would resist him better than two could do. The provision
which required more than a bare majority for the revision of the
Constitution was one of those which we borrowed from America. It had
worked well there. In the general instability we wished to have one
anchor, one mooring ring fixed. We did not choose that the whole
framework of our Government should be capable of being suddenly destroyed
by a majority of one, in a moment of excitement and perhaps by a
parliamentary surprise.
'With respect to your complaint that, there being no power of
dissolution, there was no means of taking the opinion of the people, the
answer is, that to give the President power of dissolution would have
been to invite him to a _coup d'etat._ With no Chamber to watch him, he
would have been omnipotent.
'I agree with you that the Constitution was a detestable one. But even
now, looking back to the times, and to the conditions under which we made
it, I do not think that it was in our power to make a good one.
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