In the same way, we can only glance at what Mr. Woodrow Wilson calls the "treaty-marring power of the Senate."* "The President," says the same American critic, "really has no voice at all in the conclusions of the Senate with reference to his diplomatic transactions, or with reference to any of the matters upon which he consults it; and yet without a voice in the conclusion there is no consultation. * The Senate, when it closes its doors upon going into 'executive session,' closes them upon the President as much as upon the rest of the world." We have seen a very recent example of the working of this system in the rejection by the Senate of the proposed Fisheries Treaty with Great Britain.

*

What I wish to concentrate attention upon this evening, for it is of the most far-reaching consequences of all, is the different relation which exists between the President and his Secretaries of State on the one hand, under the American system, and the Premier and other members of the Cabinet under the British system, and between the Executive and Congress on the one hand, and the Cabinet and

*Congressional Government, p. 50,

†īb., p. 233.

Parliament on the other hand, and therefore I will call your attention at once to the concluding words of Article 1, Section 6, of the American Constitution which provide that "No person holding any office under the United States shall be a member of either House during his continuance in office." "The founders of the American Constitution," says John Morley, in his delightful life of Robert Walpole, "as all know, followed Montesquieu's phrases, if not his design, about separating legislature from executive, by excluding ministers from both Houses of Congress. This is fatal to any reproduction of the English system. The American Cabinet is vitally unlike our own on this account.' "*

Under the American system, therefore, the President and the Secretaries of State cannot be members either of the House of Representatives or of the Senate; they are under no direct responsibility to Congress of any kind; nor can they take any direct part in initiating or debating any measure. Under the British system, on the other hand, the Ministers of the Crown not only may, but must, have seats in one or other House of Parliament, and are directly

*Walpole (Twelve English Statesmen Series), p. 154.

responsible to the popular house. In the words of Bagehot, constantly referred to as the most acute of English constitutional writers, the Cabinet under our system is a board of control chosen by the legislature out of persons whom it trusts and knows, to rule the nation.* Cabinet Ministers form a committee of the legislature, chosen by the majority for the time being. They are accountable to the legislature and must resign office as soon as they lose its confidence, or else dissolve Parliament and accept whatever verdict the country may give. They are jointly as well as severally liable for their acts. "The essence of responsible government," said the late Lord Derby, "is that mutual bond of responsibility one for another wherein a government acting by party go together, frame their measures in concert, and where, if one member falls to the ground, the others almost as a matter of course, fall with him."+ None of these principles hold true in America. The President is not responsible to Congress for his acts. His ministers do not sit in Congress, and are not accountable to it, but to the President their master. Congress may request their attend

*The English Constitution, 5th ed.,

P. 13.

+Central Government, by H. D. Traill, p. 26.

ance before a committee, as it may require the attendance of any other witness, but they have no opportunity of expounding and justifying to Congress, as a whole, their own, or rather their master's policy. Hence an adverse vote of Congress does not affect their or his position. They are not present in Congress to be questioned as to matters of administration which arise, and yet an American writer himself admits "that the only really self-governing people is that people which discusses and interrogates its administration."* In America, again, the administration does not work as a whole. It is not a whole. It is a group of persons, each individually dependent on and answerable to the President, but with no joint policy, no collective responsibility.

Borrowing freely from Mr. Bryce, I may summarize the difference thus: With us and in England, if the Executive ministry displeases the House of Commons, the House passes an adverse vote. The ministry have their choice to resign or to dissolve Parliament. If they resign, a new ministry is appointed from the party which has proved itself strongest in the House of Commons, and cooperation being restored between the legislature and *Congressional Government, p. 303.

the executive, public business proceeds. In America, a dispute between the President and Congress may arise over an executive act or over a bill. If over an executive act, an appointment or a treaty, one branch of Congress, the Senate, can check the President, that is, can prevent him from doing what he wishes, but cannot make him do what they wish. If over a bill which the President has returned to Congress unsigned, the two Houses can, by a twothirds majority, pass it over his veto, and so end the quarrel; though the carrying out of the bill in its details must be left to him and his ministers, whose dislike of it may render them unwilling and therefore unsuitable agents. Should there not be a twothirds majority, the bill drops; and however important the question may be, however essential to the country, some prompt dealing with it, either in the sense desired by the majority in Congress or in that preferred by the President, nothing can be Anone till the current term of Congress expires.*

The American Constitution in its attempt to create a number of effective checks and balances has produced a system from which dead-locks cannot fail to ensue, and which at a time of crisis may *American Commonwealth, Vol. 1, page 282,