form? Not the mechanism of government, for all its checks have been evaded. Not the conscience of the legislature and the President, for heated combatants seldom shrink from justifying the means by the end. Nothing but the fear of the people, whose broad good sense and attachment to the great principles of the Constitution may generally be relied on to condemn such a perversion of its forms. Yet if excitement has risen high over the country, a majority of the people may acquiesce; and then it matters little whether what is really a revolution be accomplished by openly violating or by merely distorting the forms of law. To the people we come sooner or later: it is upon their wisdom and self-restraint that the stability of the most cunningly devised scheme of government will in the last resort depend.

CHAPTER XXV

COMPARISON OF THE AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN SYSTEMS

THE relations to one another of the different branches of the government in the United States are so remarkable and so full of instruction for other countries, that it seems desirable, even at the risk of a little repetition, to show by a comparison with the Cabinet or parliamentary system of European countries how this complex American machinery actually works.

The English system on which have been modelled, of course with many variations, the systems of France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Germany, Hungary (where, however, the English scheme has been compounded with an ancient and very interesting native-born constitution), Sweden, Norway, Denmark,1 Spain, and Portugal, as well as the constitutions of the great self-governing English colonies in North America and Australia-this English system places at the head of the state a person in whose name all executive acts are done, and who is (except in France) irresponsible and irremovable.2 His acts are done by the advice and on the responsibility of ministers chosen nominally by him, but really by the representatives of the people-usually, but not necessarily, from among the members of the legislature. The representatives are, therefore, through the agents whom they select, the true government of the country. When the representative assembly ceases to trust these agents, the latter resign, and a new set are appointed. Thus the executive as well as the legislative power really belongs to the majority of the representative chamber, though in appointing agents, an expedient which its size makes needful, it is forced to leave in the hands of these agents 1 In Denmark constitutional government seems still to subsist in theory, though for a good many years it has been suspended in practice.

2 In the British colonies the governor is irremovable by the colony, and irresponsible to its legislature, though responsible to and removable by the home government.

a measure of discretion sufficient to make them appear distinct from it, and sometimes to tempt them to acts which their masters disapprove. As the legislature is thus in a sense executive, so the executive government, the council of ministers or cabinet, is in so far legislative that the initiation of measures rests very largely with them, and the carrying of measures through the Chamber demands their advocacy and counter pressure upon the majority of the representatives. They are not merely executive agents but also legislative leaders. One may say, indeed, that the legislative and executive functions are interwoven as closely under this system as under absolute monarchies, such as Imperial Rome or modern Russia; and the fact that taxation, while effected by means of legislation, is the indispensable engine of administration, shows how inseparable are these two apparently distinct powers.

Under this system the sovereignty of the legislature may be more or less complete. It is most complete in France; least complete in Germany and Prussia, where the power of the Emperor and King is great and not declining. But in all these countries not only are the legislature and executive in close touch with one another, but they settle their disputes without reference to the judiciary. The courts of law cannot be invoked by the executive against the legislature, because questions involving the validity of a legislative act do not come before it, since the legislature is either completely sovereign, as in England, or the judge of its own competence, as in Belgium. The judiciary, in other words, does not enter into the consideration of the political part of the machinery of government.

This system of so-called cabinet government seems to Europeans now, who observe it at work over a large part of the world, an obvious and simple system. We are apt to forget that it was never seen anywhere till the English developed it by slow degrees, and that it is a very delicate system, depending on habits, traditions, and understandings which are not easily set forth in words, much less transplanted to a new soil.

We are also prone to forget how very recent it is. People commonly date it from the reign of King William the Third; but it worked very irregularly till the Hanoverian kings came to the throne, and even then it at first worked by means of a monstrous system of bribery and place-mongering. In the days of George the Third the personal power of the Crown for a

while revived and corruption declined. The executive head of the state was, during the latter decades of the century, a factor apart from his ministers. They were not then, as now, a mere committee of Parliament dependent upon Parliament, but rather a compromise between the king's will and the will of the parliamentary majority. They deemed and declared themselves to owe a duty to the king conflicting with, sometimes overriding, their duty to Parliament. Those phrases of abasement before the Crown which when now employed by prime ministers amuse us by their remoteness from the realities of the case, then expressed realities. In 1787, when the Constitutional Convention met at Philadelphia, the Cabinet system of government was in England still immature. It was so immature that its true nature had not been perceived. And although we now can see that the tendency was really towards the depression of the Crown and the exaltation of Parliament, men might well, when they compared the influence of George III. with that exercised by George I.,3 argue in the terms of Dunning's famous resolution, that "the power of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished." 4

1 Corruption was possible, because the House of Commons did not look for support to the nation, its debates were scantily reported, it had little sense of responsibility. An active king was therefore able to assert himself against it, and to form a party in it, as well as outside of it, which regarded him as its head. This forced the Whigs to throw themselves upon the nation at large; the Tories did the same; corruption withered away; and as Parliament came more and more under the watchful eye of the people, and responsible to it, the influence of the king declined and vanished.

2 Gouverneur Morris, however, one of the acutest minds in the Convention of 1787, remarked there, "Our President will be the British (Prime) Minister. If Mr. Fox had carried his India Bill, he would have made the Minister the King in form almost as well as in substance."-Elliot's Debates, i. 361.

3 George III. had the advantage of being a national king, whereas his two predecessors had been Germans by language and habits as well as by blood. His popularity contributed to his influence in politics. Mrs. Papendiek's Diary contains some amusing illustrations of the exuberant demonstrations of "loyalty' which he excited. When he went to Weymouth for sea bathing after his recovery from the first serious attack of lunacy, crowds gathered along the shore, and bands of music struck up "God save the King" when he ducked his head beneath the brine.

4 It is not easy to say when the principle of the absolute dependence of ministers on a parliamentary majority without regard to the wishes of the Crown passed into a settled doctrine. (Needless to say that it has received no formally legal recognition, but is merely usage.) The long coincidence during the dominance of Pitt and his Tory successors down till 1827 of the wishes and interests of the Crown with those of the parliamentary majority prevented the question from arising in a practical shape. Even in 1827 Mr. Canning writes to J. W. Croker :VOL. I T

The greatest problem that free peoples have to solve is how to enable the citizens at large to conduct or control the executive business of the state. England was in 1787 the only nation (the cantons of Switzerland were so small as scarcely to be thought of) that had solved this problem, firstly, by the development of a representative system, secondly, by giving to her representatives a large authority over the executive. The Constitutional Convention, therefore, turned its eyes to her when it sought to constitute a free government for the new nation which the "more perfect union" of the States was calling into conscious being.

Very few of the members of the Convention had been in England so as to know her constitution, such as it then was, at first hand. Yet there were three sources whence light fell upon it, and for that light they were grateful. One was their experience in dealing with the mother country since the quarrel began. They saw in Britain an executive largely influenced by the personal volitions of the king, and in its conduct of colonial and foreign affairs largely detached from and independent of Parliament, since it was able to take tyrannical steps without the previous knowledge or consent of Parliament, and able afterwards to defend those steps by alleging a necessity whereof Parliament, wanting confidential information, could imperfectly judge. It was in these colonial and foreign affairs that the power of the Crown chiefly lay (as, indeed, to this day the authority of Parliament over the executive is smaller here than in any other department, because secrecy and promptitude are more essential), so they could not be expected to know for how much less the king counted in domestic affairs. Moreover, there was believed to be often a secret junto which really controlled the ministry, because acting in concert with the Crown; and the Crown had powerful engines at its disposal, bribes and honours, pensions and places, engines irresistible by the average virtue of representatives whose words and votes were not reported, and nearly half of whom were the nominees of some magnate.1

"Am I to understand, then, that you consider the King [George IV.] as completely in the hands of the Tory aristocracy as his father, or rather as George II. was in the hands of the Whigs? If so, George III. reigned and Mr. Pitt (both father and son) administered the Government in vain. I have a better opinion of the real vigour of the Crown when it chooses to put forth its own strength, and I am not without some reliance on the body of the people"!—Croker Correspondence, vol. i. p. 368.

1 The Crown itself had pocket boroughs. Hamilton doubted whether the British Constitution could be worked without corruption.