censure them, may lay down rules for their guidance, it cannot get rid of them. It is as if the directors of a company were forced to go on employing a manager whom they had ceased to trust, because it was not they but the shareholders who had appointed him. There remains the power which in free countries has been long regarded as the citadel of parliamentary of the purse. supremacy, the power Congress has the sole right of raising money and appropriating it to the service of the state. Its management of national finance is significantly illustrative of the plan which separates the legislative from the executive. It has been shown in a preceding chapter that in this supremely important matter of raising and applying the public revenue, the executive government, instead of proposing and supervising, instead of securing that each department gets the money that it needs, that no money goes where it is not needed, that revenue is procured in the least troublesome and expensive way, that an exact yearly balance is struck, that the policy of expenditure is self-consistent and reasonably permanent from year to year, is by its exclusion from Congress deprived of influence on the one hand, of responsibility on the other. The chancellorship of the exchequer, to use an English expression, is put into commission, and divided between the chairmen of several unconnected committees of both Houses. A mass of business which, as English experience shows, specially needs the knowledge, skill, and economical conscience of a responsible ministry, is left to committees which are powerful but not responsible, and to Houses whose nominal responsibility is in practice sadly weakened by their want of appropriate methods and organization. The question follows: How far does the power of the Much purse enable Congress to control the President? less than in European countries. Congress may check any particular scheme which the President favours by refusing supplies for it. If he were to engage in military operations he cannot under the Constitution "declare war" for that belongs to Congress-the House might paralyse him by declining to vote the requisite army appropriations. If he were to repeat the splendid audacity of Jefferson by purchasing a new territory, they could withhold the purchase money. But if, keeping within the limits of his constitutional functions, he takes a different course from that they recommend, if for instance he should refuse, at their repeated requests, to demand the liberation of American citizens pining in foreign dungeons, or to suppress disorders in a State whose government had requested Federal intervention, they would have to look on. To withhold the ordinary supplies, and thereby stop the machine of government, would injure the country and themselves far more than the President. They would, to use a common expression, be cutting off their nose to spite their face. They could not lawfully refuse to vote his salary, for that is guaranteed to him by the Constitution. They could not, except by a successful impeachment, turn him out of the White House or deprive him of his title to the obedience of all Federal officials. Accordingly, when Congress has endeavoured to coerce the President by the use of its money powers, the case being one in which it could not attack him by ordinary legislation (either because such legislation would be unconstitutional, or for want of a two-thirds majority), it has proceeded not by refusing appropriations altogether, as the English House of Commons would do in like circumstances, but by attaching what is called a “rider" to an appropriation bill. More than twenty years ago the House had formed the habit of inserting in bills appropriating money to the purposes of the public service, provisions relating to quite different matters, which there was not time to push through in the ordinary way. In 1867 Congress used this device against President Johnson, with whom it was then at open war, by attaching to an army appropriation bill clause which virtually deprived the President of the command of the army, entrusting its management to the general highest in command (General Grant). The President yielded, knowing that if he refused the bill would be carried over his veto by a two-thirds vote; and a usage already mischievous was confirmed. In 1879, the majority in Congress attempted to overcome, by the same weapon, the resistance of President Hayes to certain measures affecting the South which they desired to pass. They tacked these measures to three appropriation bills, army, legislative, and judiciary. The minority in both houses fought hard against the riders, but were beaten. The President vetoed all three bills, and Congress was obliged to pass them without the riders. Next session the struggle recommenced in the same form, and the President, by rejecting the money bills, again compelled Congress to drop the tacked provisions. This victory, which was of course due to the fact that the dominant party in Congress could not command a two-thirds majority, was deemed to have settled the question as between the executive and the legislature, and may have per 1 A leading member of the House, Mr. Reagan of Texas, said there that between 1862 and 1875, 375 measures of general legislation had been passed as provisoes upon appropriation bills. See Mr. Horace Davis's "American Constitutions," p. 30, in Johns Hopkins University Studies, Third Series. manently discouraged the latter from recurring to the same tactics. President Hayes in his veto messages argued strongly against the whole practice of tacking other matters to money bills. It has certainly caused great abuses, and is now forbidden by the constitutions of many States. Recently the President has urged upon Congress the desirability of so amending the Federal Constitution as to enable him, as a State governor is by some recent State constitutions allowed to do, to veto single items in an appropriation bill without rejecting the whole bill. Such an amendment is generally desired by enlightened men, because it would enable the executive to do its duty by the country in defeating many petty jobs which are now smuggled into these bills, without losing the supplies necessary for the public service which the bills provide. The change seems a small one, but its adoption would cure one of the defects due to the absence of ministers from Congress, and might save the nation. millions of dollars a year, by diminishing wasteful expenditure on local purposes. But the process of amending the Constitution is so troublesome that even a change which involves no party issues may remain unadopted long after the best opinion has become unanimous in its favour. CHAPTER XXI THE LEGISLATURE AND THE EXECUTIVE THE fundamental characteristic of the American National Government is its separation of the legislative, executive, and judicial departments. This separation is the merit which the Philadelphia Convention chiefly sought toattain, and which the Americans have been wont to regard as most completely secured by their Constitution. In Europe, as well as in America, men are accustomed to talk of legislation and administration as distinct. But a consideration of their nature will show that it is not easy to separate these two departments in theory by analysis, and still less easy to keep them apart in practice. We may begin by examining their relations in the internal affairs of a nation, reserving foreign policy for a later part of the discussion. People commonly think of the Legislature as the body which lays down general rules of law, which prescribes, for instance, that at a man's death his children shall succeed equally to his property, or that a convicted thief shall be punished with imprisonment, or that a manufacturer may register his trade mark. They think of the Executive as the person or persons who do certain acts under those rules, who lock up convicts, register trade marks, carry letters, raise and pay |