The Online Library of Liberty

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• Introduction
• Publisher’s Note
• Preface to the First Edition
• Preface to the Edition of 1910
• Note to Edition of 1914
• List of Presidents
• Dates of Some Remarkable Events In the History of the North American Colonies and United States
• Area, Population, and Date of Admission of the States
• Chapter 1: Introductory
• Part I: The National Government
• Chapter 2: The Nation and the States
• Chapter 3: The Origin of the Constitution
• Chapter 4: Nature of the Federal Government
• Chapter 5: The President
• Chapter 6: Presidential Powers and Duties
• Chapter 7: Observations On the Presidency
• Chapter 8: Why Great Men Are Not Chosen Presidents
• Chapter 9: The Cabinet
• Chapter 10: The Senate
• Chapter 11: The Senate As an Executive and Judicial Body
• Chapter 12: The Senate: Its Working and Influence
• Chapter 13: The House of Representatives
• Chapter 14: The House At Work
• Chapter 15: The Committees of Congress
• Chapter 16: Congressional Legislation
• Chapter 17: Congressional Finance
• Chapter 18: The Relations of the Two Houses
• Chapter 19: General Observations On Congress
• Chapter 20: The Relations of Congress to the President 1
• Chapter 21: The Legislature and the Executive
• Chapter 22: The Federal Courts
• Chapter 23: The Courts and the Constitution
• Chapter 24: The Working of the Courts
• Chapter 25: Comparison of the American and European Systems
• Chapter 26: General Observations On the Frame of National Government
• Chapter 27: The Federal System
• Chapter 28: Working Relations of the National and the State Governments
• Chapter 29: Criticism of the Federal System
• Chapter 30: Merits of the Federal System
• Chapter 31: Growth and Development of the Constitution
• Chapter 32: The Amendment of the Constitution
• Chapter 33: The Interpretation of the Constitution
• Chapter 34: The Development of the Constitution By Usage
• Chapter 35: The Results of Constitutional Development
• Part II: The State Governments
• Chapter 36: Nature of the American State
• Chapter 37: State Constitutions
• Chapter 38: The Development of State Constitutions
• Chapter 39: Direct Legislation By the People
• Chapter 40: State Governments: the Legislature
• Chapter 41: The State Executive
• Chapter 42: The State Judiciary
• Chapter 43: State Finance
• Chapter 44: The Working of State Governments
• Chapter 45: Remedies For the Faults of State Governments
• Chapter 46: State Politics
• Chapter 47: The Territories
• Chapter 48: Local Government
• Chapter 49: Observations On Local Government
• Chapter 50: The Government of Cities
• Chapter 51: The Working of City Governments
• Chapter 52: An American View of Municipal Government In the United States
• Appendix: Note to Chapter 3: On Constitutional Conventions
• Note to Chapter 4: What the Federal Constitution Owes to the Constitutions of the Several States
• Note to Chapter 10: Extracts From the Rules of the Senate
• Note (a) to Chapter 16: Private Bills
• Note (b) to Chapter 16: The Lobby
• Note (a) to Chapter 30: Constitution of the Confederate States, 1861–65
• Note (b) to Chapter 30: The Federal Constitution of Canada
• Note to Chapter 33: The Dartmouth College Case
• Articles of Confederation, 1781–88
• Constitution of the United States
• Extracts From the Constitution of the State of Oklahoma 1

Publisher’s Note

The first edition of James Bryce’s The American Commonwealth appeared in 1888. It was published in London by Macmillan & Co. as a three-volume set and is the only edition of the book to be released in England. A two-volume edition of the work, using smaller type, was published at the same time in New York, and all subsequent editions have been limited to two volumes.

Two chapters in this first edition were written by Americans so that Bryce could obtain an American copyright (at that time the United States had not joined the International Copyright Union). Seth Low, a leader of the municipal reform movement and later president of Columbia University and mayor of New York, wrote chapter 52, “An American View of Municipal Government in the United States”; and Professor Frank J. Goodnow of Columbia University, a prominent political scientist and author of pioneer studies in the field of public administration, wrote chapter 88, “The Tweed Ring in New York City.”

In 1889, Macmillan reprinted the first edition but omitted the Goodnow chapter on the Tweed Ring because it had become the object of a libel suit. This chapter was also suppressed in the second edition of the work, which was published in 1893 with many revisions and additions. Bryce later rewrote the Goodnow chapter, however, and changed the title to “The Tammany Ring in New York City.” It was introduced in the extensively revised third edition published in 1910. But Bryce did not significantly alter the substance of this controversial chapter. He used every name that Goodnow had used and simply moderated the tone and updated the story.

The publisher heralded the 1910 edition as a “new edition completely revised throughout with additional chapters.” The changes were not as extensive as this suggests, but Bryce had added a great deal of new material since the first edition, including supplementary materials on political parties and amendments to the Constitution, and new chapters on American universities and colleges, immigration, the South since the Civil War, and what was then called “the Negro problem.” Seth Low also made modest revisions of his chapter on municipal government for the third edition.

In all of its essential attributes, the third edition published in 1910 represents Bryce’s final and most mature reflections on American institutions. In 1914, Bryce brought some statistics and the appendix up to date, and he apparently made a few additional minor corrections and additions before his death in 1922; but these changes did not significantly alter the work. Macmillan continued to publish the updated third edition in New York as late as 1941. The 1941 edition of The American Commonwealth, which encompasses all of the changes, corrections, and additions to the first three editions entered by Bryce, was used in the preparation of this new Liberty Fund edition.

In this new edition of Bryce’s classic, the reader will also note that the appendix has been expanded to include an essay by Bryce entitled “The Predictions of Hamilton and De Tocqueville” (originally published in 1887 by Johns Hopkins University) and two contemporaneous book reviews of The American Commonwealth, published in 1889, by Woodrow Wilson and Lord Acton, respectively.

Although capitalization and punctuation have been modernized for the convenience of the reader, Bryce’s style, including spelling and grammar, has been preserved intact. Footnotes and bracketed material are those of Bryce, except as otherwise noted.