known about it. The meetings are not only secret in theory, but secret
in reality. By the present practice, no official minute in all ordinary
cases is kept of them. Even a private note is discouraged and disliked.
The House of Commons, even in its most inquisitive and turbulent
moments, would scarcely permit a note of a Cabinet meeting to be read.
No Minister who respected the fundamental usages of political practice
would attempt to read such a note. The committee which unites the
law-making power to the law-executing power--which, by virtue of that
combination, is, while it lasts and holds together, the most powerful
body in the State--is a committee wholly secret. No description of it,
at once graphic and authentic, has ever been given. It is said to be
sometimes like a rather disorderly board of directors, where many speak
and few listen--though no one knows.[1] But a Cabinet, though it is a
committee of the legislative assembly, is a committee with a power
which no assembly would--unless for historical accidents, and after
happy experience--have been persuaded to entrust to any committee. It
is a committee which can dissolve the assembly which appointed it; it
is a committee with a suspensive veto--a committee with a power of
appeal. Though appointed by one Parliament, it can appeal if it chooses
to the next. Theoretically, indeed, the power to dissolve Parliament is
entrusted to the sovereign only; and there are vestiges of doubt
whether in ALL cases a sovereign is bound to dissolve Parliament when
the Cabinet asks him to do so. But neglecting such small and dubious
exceptions, the Cabinet which was chosen by one House of Commons has an
appeal to the next House of Commons. The chief committee of the
legislature has the power of dissolving the predominant part of that
legislature--that which at a crisis is the supreme legislature. The
English system, therefore, is not an absorption of the executive power
by the legislative power; it is a fusion of the two. Either the Cabinet
legislates and acts, or else it can dissolve. It is a creature, but it
has the power of destroying its creators. It is an executive which can
annihilate the legislature, as well as an executive which is the
nominee of the legislature. It was made, but it can unmake; it was
derivative in its origin, but it is destructive in its action. This
fusion of the legislative and executive functions may, to those who
have not much considered it, seem but a dry and small matter to be the
latent essence and effectual secret of the English Constitution; but we
can only judge of its real importance by looking at a few of its
principal effects, and contrasting it very shortly with its great
competitor, which seems likely, unless care be taken, to outstrip it in
the progress of the world. That competitor is the Presidential system.
The characteristic of it is that the President is elected from the
people by one process, and the House of Representatives by another. The
independence of the legislative and executive powers is the specific
quality of Presidential government, just as their fusion and
combination is the precise principle of Cabinet government.
[1] It is said that at the end of the Cabinet which agreed to propose a
fixed duty on corn, Lord Melbourne put his back to the door and said,
"Now is it to lower the price of corn or isn't it? It is not much
matter which we say, but mind, we must all say THE SAME." This is the
most graphic story of a Cabinet I ever heard, but I cannot vouch for
its truth. Lord Melbourne's is a character about which men make stories.
First, compare the two in quiet times. The essence of a civilised age
is, that administration requires the continued aid of legislation. One
principal and necessary kind of legislation is taxation. The expense of
civilised government is continually varying. It must vary if the
Government does its duty. The miscellaneous estimates of the English
Government contain an inevitable medley of changing items. Education,
prison discipline, art, science, civil contingencies of a hundred
kinds, require more money one year and less another. The expense of
defence--the naval and military estimates--vary still more as the
danger of attack seems more or less imminent, as the means of retarding
such danger become more or less costly. If the persons who have to do
the work are not the same as those who have to make the laws, there
will be a controversy between the two sets of persons. The tax-imposers
are sure to quarrel with the tax-requirers. The executive is crippled
by not getting the laws it needs, and the legislature is spoiled by
having to act without responsibility: the executive becomes unfit for
its name, since it cannot execute what it decides on; the legislature
is demoralised by liberty, by taking decisions of which others (and not
itself) will suffer the effects.
In America so much has this difficulty been felt that a semi-connection
has grown up between the legislature and the executive. When the
Secretary of the Treasury of the Federal Government wants a tax he
consults upon it with the chairman of the Financial Committee of
Congress. He cannot go down to Congress himself and propose what he
wants; he can only write a letter and send it. But he tries to get a
chairman of the Finance Committee who likes his tax;--through that
chairman he tries to persuade the committee to recommend such tax; by
that committee he tries to induce the house to adopt that tax. But such
a chain of communications is liable to continual interruptions; it may
suffice for a single tax on a fortunate occasion, but will scarcely
pass a complicated budget--we do not say in a war or a rebellion--we
are now comparing the Cabinet system and the Presidential system in
quiet times--but in times of financial difficulty. Two clever men never
exactly agreed about a budget. We have by present practice an Indian
Chancellor of the Exchequer talking English finance at Calcutta, and an
English one talking Indian finance in England. But the figures are
never the same, and the views of policy are rarely the same. One most
angry controversy has amused the world, and probably others scarcely
less interesting are hidden in the copious stores of our Anglo-Indian
correspondence.
But relations something like these must subsist between the head of a
finance committee in the legislature, and a finance Minister in the
executive.[2] They are sure to quarrel, and the result is sure to
satisfy neither. And when the taxes do not yield as they were expected
to yield, who is responsible? Very likely the Secretary of the Treasury
could not persuade the chairman--very likely the chairman could not
persuade his committee--very likely the committee could not persuade
the assembly. Whom, then, can you punish--whom can you abolish--when
your taxes run short? There is nobody save the legislature, a vast
miscellaneous body difficult to punish, and the very persons to inflict
the punishment. Nor is the financial part of administration the only
one which requires in a civilised age the constant support and
accompaniment of facilitating legislation. All administration does so.
In England, on a vital occasion, the Cabinet can compel legislation by
the threat of resignation, and the threat of dissolution; but neither
of these can be used in a Presidential State. There the legislature
cannot be dissolved by the executive Government; and it does not heed a
resignation, for it has not to find the successor. Accordingly, when a
difference of opinion arises, the legislature is forced to fight the
executive, and the executive is forced to fight the legislative; and so
very likely they contend to the conclusion of their respective
terms.[3] There is, indeed, one condition of things in which this
description, though still approximately true, is, nevertheless, not
exactly true; and that is, when there is nothing to fight about. Before
the rebellion in America, owing to the vast distance of other States,
and the favourable economic condition of the country, there were very
few considerable objects of contention; but if that government had been
tried by English legislation of the last thirty years, the discordant
action of the two powers, whose constant cooperation is essential to
the best government, would have shown itself much more distinctly. Nor
is this the worst. Cabinet government educates the nation; the
Presidential does not educate it, and may corrupt it. It has been said
that England invented the phrase, "Her Majesty's Opposition"; that it
was the first Government which made a criticism of administration as
much a part of the polity as administration itself. This critical
opposition is the consequence of Cabinet government. The great scene of
debate, the great engine of popular instruction and political
controversy, is the legislative assembly. A speech there by an eminent
statesman, a party movement by a great political combination, are the
best means yet known for arousing, enlivening, and teaching a people.
The Cabinet system ensures such debates, for it makes them the means by
which statesmen advertise themselves for future and confirm themselves
in present Governments. It brings forward men eager to speak, and gives
them occasions to speak. The deciding catastrophes of Cabinet
governments are critical divisions preceded by fine discussions.
Everything which is worth saying, everything which ought to be said,
most certainly WILL be said. Conscientious men think they ought to
persuade others; selfish men think they would like to obtrude
themselves. The nation is forced to hear two sides--all the sides,
perhaps, of that which most concerns it. And it likes to hear--it is
eager to know. Human nature despises long arguments which come to
nothing--heavy speeches which precede no motion--abstract disquisitions
which leave visible things where they were. But all men heed great
results, and a change of Government is a great result. It has a hundred
ramifications; it runs through society; it gives hope to many, and it
takes away hope from many. It is one of those marked events which, by
its magnitude and its melodrama, impress men even too much. And debates
which have this catastrophe at the end of them--or may so have it--are
sure to be listened to, and sure to sink deep into the national mind.
Travellers even in the Northern States of America, the greatest and
best of Presidential countries, have noticed that the nation was "not
specially addicted to politics"; that they have not a public opinion
finished and chastened as that of the English has been finished and
chastened. A great many hasty writers have charged this defect on the
"Yankee race," on the Anglo-American character; but English people, if
they had no motive to attend to politics, certainly would not attend to
politics. At present there is BUSINESS in their attention. They assist
at the determining crisis; they arrest or help it. Whether the
Government will go out or remain is determined by the debate, and by
the division in Parliament. And the opinion out of doors, the secret
pervading disposition of society, has a great influence on that
division. The nation feels that its judgment is important, and it
strives to judge. It succeeds in deciding because the debates and the
discussions give it the facts and the arguments. But under a
Presidential government, a nation has, except at the electing moment,
no influence; it has not the ballot-box before it; its virtue is gone,
and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns. It is not
incited to form an opinion like a nation under a Cabinet government;
nor is it instructed like such a nation. There are doubtless debates in
the legislature, but they are prologues without a play. There is
nothing of a catastrophe about them; you can not turn out the
Government. The prize of power is not in the gift of the legislature,
and no one cares for the legislature. The executive, the great centre
of power and place, sticks irremovable; you cannot change it in any
event. The teaching apparatus which has educated our public mind, which
prepares our resolutions, which shapes our opinions, does not exist. No
Presidential country needs to form daily delicate opinions, or is
helped in forming them. It might be thought that the discussions in the
press would supply the deficiencies in the Constitution; that by a
reading people especially, the conduct of their Government would be as
carefully watched, that their opinions about it would be as consistent,
as accurate, as well considered, under a Presidential as under a
Cabinet polity. But the same difficulty oppresses the press which
oppresses the legislature. It can DO NOTHING. It cannot change the
administration; the executive was elected for such and such years, and
for such and such years it must last. People wonder that so literary a
people as the Americans--a people who read more than any people who
ever lived, who read so many newspapers--should have such bad
newspapers. The papers are not so good as the English, because they
have not the same motive to be good as the English papers. At a
political "crisis," as we say--that is, when the fate of an
administration is unfixed, when it depends on a few votes yet
unsettled, upon a wavering and veering opinion--effective articles in
great journals become of essential moment. The Times has made many
ministries. When, as of late, there has been a long continuance of
divided Parliaments, of Governments which were without "brute voting
power," and which depended on intellectual strength, the support of the
most influential organ of English opinion has been of critical moment.
If a Washington newspaper could have turned out Mr. Lincoln, there
would have been good writing and fine argument in the Washington
newspapers. But the Washington newspapers can no more remove a
President during his term of place than the Times can remove a lord
mayor during his year of office. Nobody cares for a debate in Congress
which "comes to nothing," and no one reads long articles which have no
influence on events. The Americans glance at the heads of news, and
through the paper. They do not enter upon a discussion. They do not
think of entering upon a discussion which would be useless.
[2] It is worth observing that even during the short existence of the
Confederate Government these evils distinctly showed themselves. Almost
the last incident at the Richmond Congress was an angry financial
correspondence with Jefferson Davis.
[3] I leave this passage to stand as it was written, just after the
assassination of Mr. Lincoln, and when every one said Mr. Johnson would
be very hostile to the South.
After saying that the division of the legislature and the executive in
Presidential governments weakens the legislative power, it may seem a
contradiction to say that it also weakens the executive power. But it
is not a contradiction. The division weakens the whole aggregate force
of Government--the entire imperial power; and therefore it weakens both
its halves. The executive is weakened in a very plain way. In England a
strong Cabinet can obtain the concurrence of the legislature in all
acts which facilitate its administration; it is itself, so to say, the
legislature. But a President may be hampered by the Parliament, and is
likely to be hampered. The natural tendency of the members of every
legislature is to make themselves conspicuous. They wish to gratify an
ambition laudable or blamable; they wish to promote the measures they
think best for the public welfare; they wish to make their WILL felt in
great affairs. All these mixed motives urge them to oppose the
executive. They are embodying the purposes of others if they aid; they
are advancing their own opinions if they defeat: they are first if they
vanquish; they are auxiliaries if they support. The weakness of the
American executive used to be the great theme of all critics before the
Confederate rebellion. Congress and committees of Congress of course
impeded the executive when there was no coercive public sentiment to
check and rule them.
But the Presidential system not only gives the executive power an
antagonist in the legislative power, and so makes it weaker; it also
enfeebles it by impairing its intrinsic quality. A Cabinet is elected
by a legislature; and when that legislature is composed of fit persons,
that mode of electing the executive is the very best. It is a case of
secondary election, under the only conditions in which secondary
election is preferable to primary. Generally speaking, in an
electioneering country (I mean in a country full of political life, and
used to the manipulation of popular institutions), the election of
candidates to elect candidates is a farce. The Electoral College of
America is so. It was intended that the deputies when assembled should
exercise a real discretion, and by independent choice select the
President. But the primary electors take too much interest. They only
elect a deputy to vote for Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Breckenridge, and the
deputy only takes a ticket, and drops that ticket in an urn. He never
chooses or thinks of choosing. He is but a messenger--a transmitter;
the real decision is in those who choose him--who chose him because
they knew what he would do. It is true that the British House of
Commons is subject to the same influences. Members are mostly, perhaps,
elected because they will vote for a particular Ministry, rather than
for purely legislative reasons. But--and here is the capital
distinction--the functions of the House of Commons are important and
CONTINUOUS. It does not, like the Electoral College in the United
States, separate when it has elected its ruler; it watches, legislates,
seats and unseats ministries, from day to day. Accordingly it is a REAL
electoral body. The Parliament of 1857, which, more than any other
Parliament of late years, was a Parliament elected to support a
particular premier--which was chosen, as Americans might say, upon the
"Palmerston ticket"--before it had been in existence two years,
dethroned Lord Palmerston. Though selected in the interest of a
particular Ministry, it in fact destroyed that Ministry. A good
Parliament, too, is a capital choosing body. If it is fit to make laws
for a country, its majority ought to represent the general average
intelligence of that country; its various members ought to represent
the various special interests, special opinions, special prejudices, to
be found in that community. There ought to be an advocate for every
particular sect, and a vast neutral body of no sect--homogeneous and
judicial, like the nation itself. Such a body, when possible, is the
best selector of executives that can be imagined. It is full of
political activity; it is close to political life; it feels the
responsibility of affairs which are brought as it were to its
threshold; it has as much intelligence as the society in question
chances to contain. It is, what Washington and Hamilton strove to
create, an electoral college of the picked men of the nation. The best
mode of appreciating its advantages is to look at the alternative. The
competing constituency is the nation itself, and this is, according to
theory and experience, in all but the rarest cases, a bad constituency.
Mr. Lincoln, at his second election, being elected when all the Federal
States had set their united hearts on one single object, was
voluntarily reelected by an actually choosing nation. He embodied the
object in which every one was absorbed. But this is almost the only
Presidential election of which so much can be said. In almost all cases
the President is chosen by a machinery of caucuses and combinations too
complicated to be perfectly known, and too familiar to require
description. He is not the choice of the nation, he is the choice of
the wire-pullers. A very large constituency in quiet times is the
necessary, almost the legitimate, subject of electioneering management:
a man cannot know that he does not throw his vote away except he votes
as part of some great organisation; and if he votes as a part, he
abdicates his electoral function in favour of the managers of that
association. The nation, even if it chose for itself, would, in some
degree, be an unskilled body; but when it does not choose for itself,
but only as latent agitators wish, it is like a large, lazy man, with a
small vicious mind,--it moves slowly and heavily, but it moves at the
bidding of a bad intention; it "means LITTLE, but it means that little
ILL."
And, as the nation is less able to choose than a Parliament, so it has
worse people to choose out of. The American legislators of the last
century have been much blamed for not permitting the Ministers of the
President to be members of the assembly; but, with reference to the
specific end which they had in view, they saw clearly and decided
wisely. They wished to keep "the legislative branch absolutely distinct
from the executive branch"; they believed such a separation to be
essential to a good constitution; they believed such a separation to
exist in the English, which the wisest of them thought the best
Constitution. And, to the effectual maintenance of such a separation,
the exclusion of the President's Ministers from the legislature is
essential. If they are not excluded they become the executive, they
eclipse the President himself. A legislative chamber is greedy and
covetous; it acquires as much, it concedes as little as possible. The
passions of its members are its rulers; the law-making faculty, the
most comprehensive of the imperial faculties, is its instrument; it
will take the administration if it can take it. Tried by their own
aims, the founders of the United States were wise in excluding the
Ministers from Congress.
But though this exclusion is essential to the Presidential system of
government, it is not for that reason a small evil. It causes the
degradation of public life. Unless a member of the legislature be sure
of something more than speech, unless he is incited by the hope of
action, and chastened by the chance of responsibility, a first-rate man
will not care to take the place, and will not do much if he does take
it. To belong to a debating society adhering to an executive (and this
is no inapt description of a congress under a Presidential
Constitution) is not an object to stir a noble ambition, and is a
position to encourage idleness. The members of a Parliament excluded
from office can never be comparable, much less equal, to those of a
Parliament not excluded from office. The Presidential Government, by
its nature, divides political life into two halves, an executive half
and a legislative half; and, by so dividing it, makes neither half
worth a man's having--worth his making it a continuous career--worthy
to absorb, as Cabinet government absorbs, his whole soul. The statesmen
from whom a nation chooses under a Presidential system are much
inferior to those from whom it chooses under a Cabinet system, while
the selecting apparatus is also far less discerning.
All these differences are more important at critical periods, because
government itself is more important. A formed public opinion, a
respectable, able, and disciplined legislature, a well-chosen
executive, a Parliament and an administration not thwarting each other,
but co-operating with each other, are of greater consequence when great
affairs are in progress than when small affairs are in progress-when
there is much to do than when there is little to do. But in addition to
this, a Parliamentary or Cabinet Constitution possesses an additional
and special advantage in very dangerous times. It has what we may call
a reserve of power fit for and needed by extreme exigencies.
The principle of popular government is that the supreme power, the
determining efficacy in matters political, resides in the people--not
necessarily or commonly in the whole people, in the numerical majority,
but in a CHOSEN people, a picked and selected people. It is so in
England; it is so in all free countries. Under a Cabinet Constitution
at a sudden emergency this people can choose a ruler for the occasion.
It is quite possible and even likely that he would not be ruler before
the occasion. The great qualities, the imperious will, the rapid
energy, the eager nature fit for a great crisis are not required--are
impediments--in common times; A Lord Liverpool is better in everyday
politics than a Chatham--a Louis Philippe far better than a Napoleon.
By the structure of the world we often want, at the sudden occurrence
of a grave tempest, to change the helmsman--to replace the pilot of the
calm by the pilot of the storm. In England we have had so few
catastrophes since our Constitution attained maturity, that we hardly
appreciate this latent excellence. We have not needed a Cavour to rule
a revolution--a representative man above all men fit for a great
occasion, and by a natural legal mode brought in to rule. But even in
England, at what was the nearest to a great sudden crisis which we have
had of late years--at the Crimean difficulty--we used this inherent
power. We abolished the Aberdeen Cabinet, the ablest we have had,
perhaps, since the Reform Act--a Cabinet not only adapted, but
eminently adapted, for every sort of difficulty save the one it had to
meet--which abounded in pacific discretion, and was wanting only in the
"daemonic element"; we chose a statesman, who had the sort of merit
then wanted, who, when he feels the steady power of England behind him,
will advance without reluctance, and will strike without restraint. As
was said at the time, "We turned out the Quaker, and put in the
pugilist".
But under a Presidential government you can do nothing of the kind. The
American Government calls itself a Government of the supreme people;
but at a quick crisis, the time when a sovereign power is most needed,
you cannot FIND the supreme people. You have got a Congress elected for
one fixed period, going out perhaps by fixed instalments, which cannot
be accelerated or retarded--you have a President chosen for a fixed
period, and immovable during that period: all the arrangements are for
STATED times. There is no ELASTIC element, everything is rigid,
specified, dated. Come what may, you can quicken nothing, and can
retard nothing. You have bespoken your Government in advance, and
whether it suits you or not, whether it works well or works ill,
whether it is what you want or not, by law you must keep it. In a
country of complex foreign relations it would mostly happen that the
first and most critical year of every war would be managed by a peace
Premier, and the first and most critical years of peace by a war
Premier. In each case the period of transition would be irrevocably
governed by a man selected not for what he was to introduce, but what
he was to change--for the policy he was to abandon, not for the policy
he was to administer.