Lee's Blog

Empire of modern times would have grown out of the condition
of France? Suppose that Oliver Cromwell had
never lived. The protectorate, the system of government
which he gave to England, was the most absolute
product of the will and intellect of one man that the world
in that kind of product had ever seen; for, although the
people of England were ready for and needed that system,
and although the antecedent and the surrounding circumstances
furnished to Cromwell many materials for a political
structure that was not the old monarchy, and yet had while
it lasted all the vigor, and more than the vigor, of the old
monarchy, still, without his personal characteristics, his
ambition to found a dynasty on the wants of his country,
and his personal capacity to devise and execute such a system,
one can not believe that England would have had
what he gave her. What he could not give her was a son
capable of wielding the scepter which he had fashioned.
Here is this America of yours–a country in which, to a
certain extent, the political institutions have been influenced
by the circumstances that followed the separation of
your colonies from the English crown. Undoubtedly, your
ancestors of the Revolutionary epoch could not construct a
monarchy for the group of thirteen newly existing States,
each with its right and enjoyment of an actual autonomy.
The habits and genius of the people forbade the experiment
of monarchical or aristocratic institutions; no materials for
either existed. But within the range of republican institutions
there was a choice open, and the people exercised
that choice. They made one system of confederated States,
and found it would not answer. They then deliberately
assembled their wisest and greatest men. They gave to
them a commission that was restricted by nothing but the
practical necessity of framing a government that would
unite the requirements of power with the requirements of
liberty. The result was the Constitution of the United