The British Versus the American System of National Government

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Williamson & Company, 1891 - 42 páginas

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Página 25 - I know not how better to describe our form of government in a single phrase than by calling it a government by the chairmen of the Standing Committees of Congress.
Página 21 - There is in the American government, considered as a whole, a want of unity. Its branches are unconnected; their efforts are not directed to one aim, do not produce one harmonious result. The sailors, the helmsman, the engineer, do not seem to have one purpose or obey one will, so that instead of making steady way the vessel may pursue a devious or zigzag course, and sometimes merely turn round and round in the water.
Página 11 - The President 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.
Página 22 - Thus, that open and public responsibility for measures, which properly belongs to the executive in all governments, and especially in a republican government, as its greatest security and strength, is completely done away. The executive is compelled to resort to secret and unseen influence, to private interviews, and private arrangements, to accomplish its own appropriate purposes ; instead of proposing and sustaining its own duties and measures by a bold and manly appeal to the nation in the face...
Página 22 - The heads of the departments are, in fact, thus precluded from proposing or vindicating their own measures in the face of the nation in the course of debate, and are compelled to submit them to other men, who are either imperfectly acquainted with the measures or are indifferent to their success or failure. Thus that open and public responsibility for measures which properly...
Página 38 - 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.
Página 28 - The fate of bills committed is generally not uncertain. As a rule, a bill committed is a bill doomed. When it goes from the clerk's desk to a committee-room it crosses a parliamentary bridge of sighs to dim dungeons of silence whence it will never return.
Página 39 - ... their views upon the revision of the tariff. The speeches made before the Committees at their open sessions are, therefore, scarcely of such a kind as would be instructive to the public, and on that account worth publishing. They are as a rule the pleas of special pleaders, the arguments of advocates. They have about them none of the searching, critical, illuminating character of the higher order of parliamentary debate, in which men are pitted against each other as equals, and urged to sharp...
Página 38 - The great scene of debate, the great engine of popular instruction and political controversy, is the legislative assembly.
Página 6 - It would seem that no impulse short of the impulse of self-preservation, no force less than the force of revolution, can nowadays be expected to move the cumbrous machinery of formal amendment erected in Article Five.

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