The Latin

course still to be determined. Russia is not a republic, and the Chinese republic is a fiction. In Switzerland the executive power rests in a Federal Council of seven, the chairman of which, though called "President," is in no sense a chief of state. The British Dominions are not republics in their titular heads, though they are in all other respects. The ancient republics were city rather than national institutions, and the city republic of Rome broke down when confronted with the task of governing an empire. American republics have copied their paper governments, but not their actual institutions, from our model. They tend toward personal dictatorships. The two which have best resisted this tendency are Argentina, where the Cabinet officers sit and speak in Congress, and Brazil, which has our Federal system of state and national powers. These are the significant republics of the world, and in all of them except our own the chief of state is either a figure head or a dictator. The only ones which have any sort of responsible leadership are those in which the executive is represented on the floor of the legislative branch.

the throne, like the Priests of Amon, in certain Egyptian dynasties, or the Elder Statesmen of modern Japan. Even the Roman Emperor was theoretically the military commander, in a government of which the Consul long remained the titular head. In parliamentary monarchies, this place is taken by the prime minister, who may or may not be a member of parliament or responsible to it, but whose chief function is always to represent the executive branch in the parliament and to be the leader of the legislative assembly.

It is the same with monarchies. The monarch is either an autocrat or a figurehead, with the figureheads immensely in the majority in this age of revolutions. And everywhere, when the chief of state has become a mere ornamental symbol, some one else has arisen alongside him, to wield the actual power.

Under personal monarchies, this administering functionary may become a hereditary second dynasty, like the Shoguns of feudal Japan or the Tubou ariki of Tonga, or a traditional power behind

The prime minister, whether in a republic or in a monarchy, is no

figurehead. Theoretically, he is nothing. The great powers he exercises are not his own. He may even be without legal existence, as was the case until recently in Great Britain. But if the king or president must, by custom, take his advice or dismiss him, and if

parliament must follow his lead or else. eject him or itself from office, he wields, for the moment, the legal powers of both king and parliament. He and his ministers are "the Government." But their tenure, like their power, is not their own. It is a revocable delegation. The premier represents leadership and responsibility, but his authority is derived and precarious.

Against this background, compare the President.

America alone has solved the problem of combining the two functions of headship in one man without making him either an autocrat, a figurehead, or a creature of Congress. The President is both chief of state and head of government.

As chief of state, if we do not surround him with the theatrical trappings by which other peoples distinguish the per

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sonal repository of the nation's sovereignty, it is because our tastes do not run that way. We do endow him with what is to us even more impressive-the honor and prestige of certainly the most powerful, and in our eyes the highest, office on earth. We look to the President as the supreme embodiment of the nation. No chief of state in the world, royal or republican, holds a position of more imposing personal distinction.

But in addition we leave to the President, not merely formally, but actually, the full powers of the chief executive. He is the real head of the administrative branch of the Government. He appoints He appoints the heads of the executive departments and they are responsible to him. He or his representatives make all other appointments, subject only to the civil service laws and to such influence as the Senate had been able to seize by the threat of refusing confirmation. He is responsible for executive policies and for efficiency of administration. He determines the movements and disposition of the Army and Navy. He receives or refuses to receive ambassadors, and thereby determines the recognition of foreign governments. He negotiates treaties, subject only to subsequent approval by the Senate. He appoints Federal judges, and thereby establishes for the lifetime of his appointees the trend of our jurisprudence. He makes the budget, and so takes the initiative in deciding the direction and proportion of development of all other governmental activities.

These are all major governmental functions, such as other chiefs of state exercise only through responsible ministers. The President exercises them himself, on his own judgment; with his Cabinet responsible to him, not he to them; and with himself not responsible to the Congress at all, nor to the people except on one predetermined calendar day, once in four years. In these executive functions alone, the President is the most powerful single personage on earth.

And to these we have added, especially in recent years, all but one of the functions of a prime minister, also. The

President is head of the Government, as well as of the State, and of his party as well as of the Government. He is a political representative, as well as an executive leader.

As leader of the people he has no competitor. While what little is left of debate in Congress is ignored, the President's every word reaches practically every person in the nation. He is the only individual all of whose speeches and messages are printed in full by every newspaper and are generally read by all the people. If he speaks over the radio, every broadcasting station on the continent is hooked up or silent, and every receiving set is tunedin to listen. He can in a day set the whole people to thinking of one thing, and so can promptly crystallize a public sentiment, to which, to be sure, he must himself finally yield if it is adverse, but to which also he can finally compel Congress to yield if it is favorable. He can, by inspiring "feelers," quietly sound out public opinion in advance of taking a personal position. He can instantly command the services of any expert, or of any number of experts, on any subject. All knowledge is at his disposal, for the asking. He need make no hasty, unconsidered, or ignorant decision, and yet he can decide quickly. He is equipped as no one else could be to achieve and to exercise popular leadership.

THE PASSING OF A THEORY

COR at least the whole of the present

FOR

century, the precedent has been growing that he shall exercise this leadership in Congress, as well as before the people. What little was left of the "literary" theory of the non-legislative character of the executive expired with the nineteenth century. It was perhaps a coincidence that a dominant personality like Roosevelt happened to fill out the first Presidential term of the new century.

But it was no accident that a whole series of governors began exercising like dominance in their respective states at the same time. The need of leadership had become intense. State legislatures were notoriously incapable of providing it.

increase the price of the things of which it produces more than it consumes. The whole people want economy, but each part wants appropriations.

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State bosses had been furnishing it irresponsibly long enough. There was revolt, not merely against their dictatorship, but against the rule of the self-seeking special interests which that dictatorship had represented. The increasing complexity of life made necessary an enormous expansion of the functions of government. Bosses did not understand, or did not sympathize with these new movements; chaotic, unled mob-legislatures were merely bewildered when confronted with them; and it was the choice of executive leadership or none. In more than one state, the governor became the government-and the people, if he was a good governor, liked it.

The executive, whether President or governor, had certain qualifications for this leadership which the legislature, under our discrete system, could not get. He alone represented the whole people.

"DIRTY WORK" IN THE U. S. SENATE FAMOUS Western legislator announced: "I always vote in favor of every appropriation, and against every tax." He knew, of course, that no such policy could be carried out, but he passed the responsibility of balancing appropriations and taxes to the governor. It was Congressman Garner, of Texas, to whom was attributed the remark: "I'll tell you right now, every time one of those Yankees gets a ham, I'm going to do my best to get a hog." Other and greater men have confessed to the same policy. "What have you been doing?" an eminent Senator was asked. "Dirty work-getting higher tariffs for my

The legislature merely represented the sum of all their parts. To the evil of legislative inefficiency had been added the vice of legislative log-rolling. Each legislator conceived himself as representing the separate interests of his particular district or state, while nobody represented the common good.

The people found within themselves no remedy for this evil. The first concern of each district is for its local interests. The whole people may want lower taxes, but each locality wants more money spent on itself. The whole people, as consumers, want lower prices, but each community wants whatever of tariff or other laws will

state." When William S. Holman, the famous "watch dog of the Treasury," supported for Indianapolis an appropriation which he had opposed for other places, Dockery of Missouri killed the proposal with a laugh by quoting:

'Tis sweet to hear the honest watchdog's bark Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home.

This log-rolling is by no means an American invention. It is a universal nuisance in France, and is prevented in England only by the peculiar device referred to in the second article of this series. The writer recalls conversations

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a few years ago with the then Prime Ministers of Brazil and of Australia. Each of them vividly described a situation exactly like the familiar one in America, and complained of it as if it were the peculiar invention of his own country.

Since each constituency, under this incorrigible local psychology, requires its representative to vote for policies which would be impossible if applied to all districts, while no district has any separate interest in the necessary general measures for the common good, it became necessary to find some one who could represent, as the disintegrate legislative body did not, the whole people. This representative, in the parliamentary governments, was already the Prime Minister. In America the only possible person was, in

the President.

Gradually there has grown up the habit of looking to the executive, rather than to private members of the legislative branch, for the initiation of legislative policies. In spite of our traditional theories to the contrary, this was natural and inevitable. It is a function already required by law of the executive in other countries, and it is incumbent on him by obvious necessity here. The development of "administration bills" and of executive leadership in pushing them through is scarcely an innovation, even in America, though its recent revival has been spectacular, and it is certainly in accordance with sound theory, as well as with good practice in government.

We have as yet few legal provisions for the direct introduction of such bills, and none for their face-to-face public advocacy. The fiction is that the bills are the spontaneous proposal of a private member; but actually there is no concealment of their origin. The "Mellon Plan" never went by any other name; the "La Follette policies" in Wisconsin are known by that name everywhere, though La Follette was never a member of the legislature and had no power to introduce or pass any bill; and the "Ten Commandments" of Johnson, in California, were bills drawn at his suggestion by a kitchen

HIS is distinctly a function, not of

the chief of state, but of the prime minister. Of the prime minister's characteristics the President has lacked only the vital features of direct contact and responsibility. He and his Cabinet had to slip their bills into Congress under the door, and had to trust to quite other methods than open, personal advocacy to get them passed. Their legislative powers have not been less than those of a prime minister; they have, indeed, been greater. But they have been subterranean and irresponsible. And herein lies. the only menace of this growing executive leadership. It has proved in practice the most useful and popular power in America. ica. Its danger is that it will become autocratic; that it will subordinate the legislature, as it has already done in such other countries as have copied this feature of our system.

This danger is the greater by reason of the weapons of aggression over Congress which our system puts into the hands of the President. Not merely has he that access to publicity which Congress has lost, with which to mobilize public sentiment to the more or less legitimate intimidation of Congress, but he has a direct club over the individual congressman personally. "Patronage" is the circulating medium of practical politics; the currency in which its obligations are incurred

and paid. Until forty years ago, the whole vast civil service of the United States was in the direct power of the President, and the custom was to "turn the rascals out" with each change of party control. The Civil Service Reform Laws now limit that, as to the great army of routine employees, but there are still thousands of important offices, and a multitude of smaller posts, with which political services can be rewarded. The Congressman who needs these appointments to distribute among his supporters can get them only through the President. And Presidents, even the most idealistic of them, have not hesitated to use this club to drive members into line on their pet bills.

Administrative favors other than appointments, distributed by the heads of the executive departments, are another potent means of discipline. A large part of a congressman's work consists of running errands to the departments for individual constituents or local community interests. Even a little more attention to the member who has been "good" and a little more red tape in the way of the member who has been unruly, may make the difference between their respective success or failure.

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REMOVE THESE BACK-STAIRS!

HIS is not leadership; it is bossism. And to the extent to which the execu And to the extent to which the executive is tempted to resort to these means, his power over Congress, even if exercised for good, is a menace to the structure of our institutions. We have conferred on the executive all the functions of a prime minister-except the only one which makes that power safe. We do not dare go backward. The leadership of the executive is too useful, and we have no substitute for it. The only way out is forward to equip the executive to do in the open, with the responsibility of publicity and the weapons of leadership and argument, what is now done in secret and often coercive ways.

The chief of state and prime minister head the executive branch of government, but throughout the world there has also

grown up the additional executive institution of a cabinet or ministry, as the chief organ of administration, and also, in most countries, as the bridge between the executive and legislative branches.

There are three forms of cabinets, of which the American is the most curious and the least developed.

THE CABINET IN GREAT BRITAIN

HE typical "responsible" cabinet is of course the British Ministry, on which, more or less directly, all other cabinets have been modeled.

The development of the British Cabinet makes too long a story to tell here. In its present form it consists simply of the leaders of the majority party in Parliament. These ministers, without losing their seats or activity in Parliament, become also the heads of the executive departments of the Government. It is as though the Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations were made also Secretary of the Treasury ex-officio. A few "without portfolio" have only parliamentary functions, and all of them are chosen with prime regard for their parliamentary usefulness. They are rarely experts on the detailed administration of their particular departments. They become responsible for its major policies, and especially for leading upon those policies in Parliament; but in actual administration, according to Lloyd George, they personally make only one decision in ten thousand. All the rest is done by permanent under-secretaries.

But that ten-thousandth decision is the one which determines the policy of the Empire. It is made before Parliament, and subject to its approval. "Dear Henry," wrote Robert Lowe to his brother in 1868, "I am Chancellor of the Exchequer, with everything to learn." Sir Edward Carson, when appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, said: "My only qualification is that I am absolutely at sea." We have had Secretaries of the Navy similarly qualified.

The Cabinet's prime functions are to legislate. It is "the Government." Its duty is to introduce the major measures,