with executive questions. Its machinery, and especially the absence of ministerial leaders and consequent want of organization, unfit it for promptly confronting practical troubles. It is apt to be sparing of supplies, and of that confidence which doubles the value of supplies. Jealousies of the executive, which are proper in quiet times and natural towards those with whom Congress has little direct intercourse, may now be perilous, yet how is Congress to trust persons not members of its own body nor directly amenable to its control? When dangers thicken the only device may be the Roman one of a temporary dictatorship. Something like this happened in the War of Secession, for the powers then conferred upon President Lincoln, or exercised without congressional censure by him, were almost as much in excess of those enjoyed under the ordinary law as the authority of a Roman dictator exceeded that of a Roman consul. Fortunately the habits of legality, which lie deep in the American as they did in the Roman people, reasserted themselves after the war was over, as they were wont to do at Rome in her earlier and better days. When the squall had passed the ship righted, and she has pursued her subsequent course on as even a keel as before. man. The defects of the tools are the glory of the work- 1 There is a story that President Lincoln said to Salmon P. Chase, his secretary of the treasury, in the early days of the war: "These rebels are violating the Constitution to destroy the Union. I will violate the Constitution if necessary to save the Union; and I suspect, Chase, that our Constitution is going to have a rough time of it before we get done with this row." Mr. Hay, however, the distinguished biographer of Lincoln, to whom I have applied for information, doubts the authenticity of the anecdote, as does also Mr. Robert T. Lincoln. President Lincoln usually argued that his use of extraordinary powers was provided for in the Constitution. See, however, the passage in his so-called Hodges Letter, quoted in a note to Chapter XXXIV. the smaller is the intelligence needed to work it; the more liable it is to derangement, so much greater must be the skill and care applied by one who tends it. The English Constitution, which we admire as a masterpiece of delicate equipoises and complicated mechanism, would anywhere but in England be full of difficulties and dangers. It stands and prospers in virtue of the traditions that still live among English statesmen and the reverence that has ruled English citizens. It works by a body of understandings which no writer can formulate, and of habits which centuries have been needed to instil. So the American people have a practical aptitude for politics, a clearness of vision and capacity for self-control never equalled by any other nation. In 1861 they brushed aside their darling legalities, allowed the executive to exert novel powers, passed lightly laws whose constitutionality remains doubtful, raised an enormous army, and contracted a prodigious debt. Romans could not have been more energetic in their sense of civic duty, nor more trustful to their magistrates. When the emergency had passed away the torrent which had overspread the plain fell back at once into its safe and well-worn channel. The reign of legality returned; and only four years after the power of the executive had reached its highest point in the hands of President Lincoln, it was reduced to its lowest point in those of President Johnson. Such a people can work any Constitution. The danger for them is that this reliance on their skill and their star may make them heedless of the faults of their political machinery, slow to devise improvements which are best applied in quiet times. CHAPTER XXVI GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE FRAME OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT THE account which has been so far given of the working of the American Government has been necessarily an account rather of its mechanism than of its spirit. Its practical character, its temper and colour, so to speak, largely depend on the party system by which it is worked, and on what may be called the political habits of the people. These will be described in later chapters. Here, however, before quitting the study of the constitutional of organs government, it is well to sum up the criticisms we have been led to make, and to add a few remarks, for which no fitting place could be found in preceding chapters, on the general features of the national government. I. No part of the Constitution cost its framers so much time and trouble as the method of choosing the President. They saw the evils of a popular vote. They saw also the objections to placing in the hands of Congress the election of a person whose chief duty it was to hold Congress in check. The plan of having him selected by judicious persons, specially chosen by the people for that purpose, seemed to meet both difficulties, and was therefore recommended with confidence. The result has, however, so completely falsified these expectations that it is hard to comprehend how they came to be entertained. The presidential electors are mere ciphers, who vote, as a matter of course, for the candidate of the party which names them; and the President is practically chosen by the people at large. The only importance which the elaborate machinery provided in the Constitution retains, is that it prevents a simple popular vote in which the majority of the nation should prevail, and makes the issue of the election turn on the voting in certain "pivotal" States. II. The choice of the President, by what is now practically a simultaneous popular vote, not only involves once in every four years a tremendous expenditure of energy, time, and money, but induces of necessity a crisis which, if it happens to coincide with any passion powerfully agitating the people, may be dangerous to the commonwealth. III. There is always a risk that the result of a presidential election may be doubtful or disputed on the ground of error, fraud, or violence. When such a case arises, the difficulty of finding an authority competent to deal with it, and likely to be trusted, is extreme. Moreover, the question may not be settled until the pre-existing executive has, by effluxion of time, ceased to have a right to the obedience of the citizens. The experience of the election of 1876 illustrates these dangers. Such a risk of interregna is incidental to all systems, monarchic or republican, which make the executive head elective, as witness the Romano-Germanic Empire of the Middle Ages, and the Papacy. But it is more serious where he is elected by the people than where, as in France or Switzerland, he is chosen by the Chambers.1 1 In Switzerland the Federal Council of seven are elected by the two IV. The change of the higher executive officers, and of many of the lower executive officers also, which usually takes place once in four years, gives a jerk to the machinery, and causes a discontinuity of policy, unless, of course, the President has served only one term, and is re-elected. Moreover, there is generally a loss either of responsibility or of efficiency in the executive chief magistrate during the last part of his term. An outgoing President may possibly be a reckless President, because he has little to lose by misconduct, little to hope from good conduct. He may therefore abuse his patronage, or gratify his whims with impunity. But more often he is a weak President.1 He has little influence with Congress, because his patronage will soon come to an end, little hold on the people, who are already speculating on the policy of his successor. His secretary of state cannot treat boldly with foreign powers, who perceive that he has a diminished influence in the Senate, and know that the next secretary may have different views. The above considerations suggest the inquiry whether the United States, which no doubt needed a President in 1789 to typify the then created political unity of the nation, might not now dispense with one. This question, however, has never been raised in a practical form in Chambers, and then elect one of their own number to be their President, and therewith also President of the Confederation (Constit. of 1874, art. 98). In some British colonies it has been provided that, in case of the absence or death or incapacity of the Governor, the Chief Justice shall act as Governor. In India the senior member of Council acts in similar cases for the Viceroy. 1 A British House of Commons in the last few months before its impending dissolution usually presents the same alternations of recklessness (generally taking the form of electioneering bids to powerful sections of opinion in the country) and feebleness which shrinks from entering on any large scheme of policy, or giving any important decision. This was marked in the latter part of the session of 1885. |