The one necessity of the situation was revenue, and to obtain it speedily and in large amounts through taxation the only principle recognised—if it can be called a principle-was akin to that recommended to the traditionary Irishman on his visit to Donnybrook Fair, 'Wherever you see a head, hit it.' Wherever you find an article, a product, a trade, a profession, or a source of income, tax it! And so an edict went forth to this effect, and the people cheerfully submitted. Incomes under $5,000 were taxed 5 per cent., with an exemption of $600 and house rent actually paid; these exemptions being allowed on this ground, that they represented an amount sufficient at the time to enable a small family to procure She bare necessaries of life, and thus take out from the operation of the law all those who were dependent upon each day's earnings to supply each day's needs. Incomes in excess of $5,000 and not in excess of $10,000 were taxed 2 per cent. in addition; and incomes over $10,000 5 per cent. additional, without any abeyance or exemptions whatever. '

Now this is all contrary to and worse than what would have happened under a Parliamentary Government. The delay to tax would not have occurred under it: the movement by the country to get taxation would never have been

necessary under it. The excessive taxation accordingly

imposed would not have been permitted under it. The ast point I think I need not labour at length. The

evils of a bad tax are quite sure to be pressed upon the ears of Parliament in season and out of season: the few persons who have to pay it are thoroughly certain to make themselves heard. The sort of taxation tried in America, that of taxing everything, and seeing what everything would yield, could not have been tried under a Government delicately and quickly sensitive to public opinion.

I do not apologise for dwelling at length upon these points, for the subject is one of transcendent importance. The practical choice of first-rate nations is between the Presidential Government and the Parliamentary; no Stat can be first-rate which has not a Government by discussion, and those are the only two existing species of that Government. It is between them that a nation which has to choose its Government must choose. And nothing therefore can be more important than to compare the two, and to decide upon the testimony of experience, and by facts, which of them is the better.

June 29, 1872.

NOTE.-The results of the presidential election of 1876 add force to the foregoing criticisms of the working of the United Etates Constitution. Mr. Bagehot, in discussing the recent election in his journal, has remarked upon our defective method of President-making to the following effect: He considers it a mistake to let the election of the President depend on a great popular vote taken for that sole purpose. No doubt the original intention was that the electoral college should be a deliberative body. But it has ceased to be such, and this was inevitable, for the reason

that a single question cannot be referred to a popular vote without getting representatives whose decision on that one question will be pledged to their constituents. The only way in which a body elected by the people can be a genuinely deliberative one is to refer to it a number of different questions of all degrees of importance, with freedom to choose in conformity with the results of discussion on any one of them. The Senate, which is elected by the Legislatures of the various States, has always had more consideration and influence in consequence of that mode of election; and if the choice of the President had been left to the two Houses of Congress, sitting in common, there is little doubt that, as a rule, better Presidents would have been chosen. In that way, too, would have been avoided all danger of the invalidation of an important election in consequence of possible violence, or the corruption of some local board, in a distant State.-See London Economist of November 25, 1876.

II.

THE CABINET.

"Ow all great subjects," says Mr. Mill, "much remains to be said," and of none is this more true than of the English Constitution. The literature which has accumulated upon it is huge. But an observer who looks at the living reality will wonder at the contrast to the paper description. He will see in the life much which is not in the books; and he will not find in the rough practice many refinements of the literary theory.

It was natural-perhaps inevitable—that such an undergrowth of irrelevant ideas should gather round the British Constitution. Language is the tradition of nations; each generation describes what it sees, but it uses words transmitted from the past. When a great entity like the British Constitution has continued in connected outward sameness, but hidden inner change, for many ages, every generation inherits a series of inapt words of maxims

once true, but of which the truth is ceasing or has ceased. As a man's family go on muttering in his maturity incorrect phrases derived from a just observation of his early youth, so, in the full activity of an historical constitution, its subjects repeat phrases true in the time of their fathers, and inculcated by those fathers, but now true no longer. Or, if I may say so, an ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth: what you see of him is the same; what you do not see is wholly altered.

There are two descriptions of the English Constitution which have exercised immense influence, but which are • erroneous. First, it is laid down as a principle of the English polity, that in it the legislative, the executive, and the judicial powers, are quite divided that each is entrusted to a separate person or set of persons that nu one of these can at all interfere with the work of the other. There has been much eloquence expended in explaining how the rough genius of the English people, even in the middle ages, when it was especially rude, carried into life and practice that elaborate division of functions which philosophers had suggested on paper, but which they had hardly hoped to see except on paper.

Secondly, it is insisted that the peculiar excellence of the British Constitution lies in a balanced union of three powers. It is said that the monarchical element, the aristocratic element, and the democratic element, have each a share in the supreme sovereignty, and that the assent of all three is necessary to the action of that