Although our system of government has many elements not found in the British system, in the following respects the government and institutions of the people of Great Britain furnish the explanation for corresponding characteristics of the government and institutions of the people of the United States. (1) The recognition of a considerable measure of local self-government; that is, the right of the people of distinct communities or divisions to determine in some way for themselves the rules and regulations for their own conduct, so far as the welfare of the whole people is not thereby prejudiced. (2) Participation in the exercise of the powers of government by representatives of different communities or divisions, collected together in some legislative body, as, for instance, in England the Parliament, in the states the legislatures, and in the United States the Congress. Direct election of all these representatives by popular vote is not essential to the representative character of such a legislative body, although the present tendency in both countries is to entrust the selection of such representatives to popular suffrage. (3) Constitutional limitations on the powers of those who exercise public authority, imposed not merely by the will of those who exercise the power of government, but resting on some higher sanction, and assumed to be of such binding force that they ought to be acknowledged and respected. It is not essential, however, to the existence of constitutional government that these limitations rest on any definite authority, or that they be enforcible in any specific manner. (4) Distribution of the powers of government among distinct departments, and their exercise by different persons or classes of persons. It was theoretically assumed by those who attempted to state in a philosophical way the nature of the British constitution at the time the state and federal governments were organized in the United States, that the powers of the government of Great Britain resided in and were exercised by the king, the Parliament, and the courts, and that these three departments were to a considerable extent co-ordinate and independent of each other. The subsequent historical development of the British government has, however, resulted in the subordination of the authority of the king to that of Parliament; and in Parliament the House of Lords has acknowledged the ultimate authority of the House of Commons, so that at this time there is no longer, if there ever was, a real balancing of power among the three so-called departments of the British government. In the United States, however, the division of powers among the three departments was actual in the colonial period, and continues, in fact, definite in the state and federal governments, where the legislative, executive, and judicial functions are practically, as well as theoretically, distinct and independent.