into consideration, but in the meantime it may be interesting to glance at two current pictures, photographs, so to speak, of the condition of things which results from the want of executive guidance of legislation.

WASHINGTON, June 8.- As one Democratic convention after another is held, the absolute lack of harmony between the President and his party grows more striking.

In fact, ever since the war, the barriers between the White House and the Capitol have been growing higher and sinking deeper. A man who makes a study of the development in Washington, tells me that he believes that it is only a question of a short time when the President will be almost continually at variance with Congress.

He gives it as his reason that the great bond of union between the two has been patronage. On that, Congress and the President have come together. It has afforded a basis by which the executive was enabled to make himself felt in the legislative branch. The successive placing of practically all the minor offices of the government under civil service rules has acquitted the great majority of Congress of any responsibility to go and see the President or the heads of departments. They might visit them to discuss great questions, but as a matter of fact they do not, and they never have.

In England, the executive branch is kept in touch with the legislative side, because the two are practically one. The minute the executive ceases to be in harmony with the legislative, the former goes out of office.

In Washington, the executive has no standing whatever with the legislative, except as they are brought in contact by artificial means, and this artificial means has always been the disposition of the patronage.

Members of Congress on both sides admit that one of the growing evils of the government is the breach which is opening up along the lines I have suggested. They see no way to help it except by having the cabinet officers selected out of one branch or the other of Congress, or at least by cabinet officials having membership on the floor. To-day, hardly one congressman in ten has been at the White House during this session of Congress. They have nothing to go for unless they wish to obtrude their views upon the President, or else are summoned by him to give them. Neither one is natural, and neither one has happened.

The result is that the power of the Speaker of the House is constantly growing at the expense of the executive. In the next two years the financial and tariff questions will be more subject to the veto of the Speaker than to any other power. This is why Mr. Reed,

if he is not elected to the presidency, can be of more service in the chair of the House than in any other place, and his friends will go at once to work to insist that he shall run again in case he is not nominated at St. Louis.1

WASHINGTON, January 13.—The absence of close affiliation between the administration and the Republican leaders in Congress is painfully apparent.

In the House the Democrats sit in their seats and with derision call on their opponents to know what the policy of the administration is, while no one on the Republican side of the chamber seems to feel confident enough to make reply.

The only Republican who has ever felt that he had the right to speak for the President is Grosvenor of Ohio, but since the fierce attack on the administration upon the civil service matter he is no longer recognized as Mr. McKinley's spokesman. Of the other leaders Governor Dingley (chairman of Ways and Means) is the only one who is in a position to take that rôle, and he seems to be entirely indifferent when the Democrats fling out their taunts and gibes.

It is only a few months since the Democrats declined to treat Cleveland's administration as their own. This is not by any means the case among the Republicans now, who are loyal to Mr. McKinley; but nevertheless it is perfectly apparent that the communication between the executive and the Republican majority in Congress is not close. The two branches are simply drifting apart. It would be a godsend to the country if something would happen to get things out of the dreary monotony and set the President and his friends in Congress working together along certain well-defined lines of policy.2

This picture will gain force by reference to the reports of applause from the galleries- very common in the House and increasingly so in the Senate following any piece of declamation fitted to excite popular passion. In the British Parliament the slightest demonstration on the part of the spectators would be followed by the instant expulsion of every one of them. One of the most marked features of the first French Revolution was the part which

1 Washington correspondent, Boston Daily Advertiser, June 9, 1896. 2 Correspondence, Boston Daily Advertiser, January 14, 1898. The godsend has since made its appearance in full measure in the shape of a foreign war.

the mob used to take in the debates of the Legislative Assembly and the Convention. The scale of operation

in Washington is smaller but the principle is the same. That Congress should permit such occurrences is not the least significant mark of the condition into which it is falling.

IN

CHAPTER XXXII

THE EXECUTIVE IN THE STATE

N examining the State governments we have seen that the main difficulty running through them all is the same as with the federal government, the absorption of power by the legislature, with the common result of impotence, both in that and the executive, for any stable government. There is this difference, however, that the federal executive, the President, is the head of a powerful organization, consisting of one man in every place from his Cabinet down to the lowest departments of administration, even within the limits of the States; whereas the governor of a State is hampered by a body of officials separately elected in all the chief departments, independent of him and cutting him off completely from the whole chain of subordinate administration. Even in the military department, the control of which by its head is absolutely necessary to any kind of efficiency, the officers are elective from below. While, therefore, the President of the United States does wield a very great power, even if in subjection to the legislature, the governor of à State is really nothing but a figurehead, except for such scraps of power as the legislature may see fit to dole out to him, or as he can obtain by lobbying and intrigue.

We will take, as before, Massachusetts in the first place as an example, and our argument will be directed to establishing two points:

1. That the report of the United States Senate committee, referred to in the last chapter, should be applied to the legislature of the State, and,

2. That the governor should have the power of appointment and removal of every State executive official, with or without the approval of the Senate, but without reference to the council.

These propositions, again, will need to be considered from different points of view.

1. The effect upon administration.

2. The effect upon legislation.

3. The effect upon the character of public men.

4. The effect upon the voters and universal suffrage in the State.

5. The effect of example upon other States as well as the federal government.

Of course the putting into practice the Senate report would be worse than useless as long as the present executive organization remains in force. A state treasurer, an attorney-general, a secretary of state, all elected separately and independent at once of each other and of the governor, would simply excite laughter when exposed by question and criticism to any public responsibility. Neither of them could have any policy, because the departments depend upon each other, and no one has any control beyond his own; nor could any one, for the same reason, give any available information without criticising other departments, which would be very likely to produce recrimination. Neither could present a policy from the governor, because the governor, having no power, can have no policy, and if he had, the separately elected heads of departments are under no obligation to advocate it or carry it out. The first step, therefore, is to procure an amendment to the Constitution, permitting the governor to appoint and remove all officials. This would encounter at once the conservatism of the State, backed by the politicians who find in the elective offices material for stimulating

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