Mutual toleration, in turn, encouraged forbearance. By the late nineteenth century, informal conventions or work-arounds had already begun to permeate all branches of government, enabling our system of checks and balances to function reasonably well. The importance of these norms was not lost on outside observers. In his two-volume masterpiece, The American Commonwealth (1888), British scholar James Bryce wrote that it was not the U.S. Constitution itself that made the American political system work but rather what he called “usages”: our unwritten rules.
