Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

government is most important—is but a vast continuous commentary on these reflections. It would, indeed, be absurd to press against presidential government as such the singular defect by which Vice-President Johnson has become President-by which a man elected to a sinecure

Terry is fixed in what is for the moment the most important RosEVEL administrative part in the political world. This defect, CAL vist/ though most characteristic of the expectations of the Coolel

*

were

Pretty
DAMN

framers of the constitution and of its working, is but an
accident of this particular case of presidential govern-
ment, and no necessary ingredient in that government
itself. But the first election of Mr. Lincoln is liable to no
such objection. It was a characteristic instance of the
natural working of such a government upon a great
occasion. And what was that working? It may be
DAMN GOOD
summed up—it was government by an unknown
quantity. Hardly any one in America had any living
but they HAD
idea what Mr. Lincoln was like, a definite notion
The did it

what he would do. The leading statesmen under the
system of cabinet government are not only household
words, but household ideas. A conception, not, perhaps,
in all respects a true but a most vivid conception of what
Mr. Gladstone is like, or what Lord Palmerston is like,
runs through society. We have simply no notion what
it would be to be left with the visible sovereignty in the
hands of an unknown man. The notion of employing a
man of unknown smallness at a crisis of unknown great-

*The framers of the constitution expected that the vice-president would be elected by the Electoral College as the second wisest man in the country. The vice-presidentship being a sinecure, a second-rate man agreeable to the wire-pullers is always smuggled in. The chance of suc. cession to the presidentship is too distant to be thought of.

GOOD

! THAT'S WHAT They Thought of Teddy Who is this Tatrist, scribbling.

all

over the book?

ness is to our minds simply ludicrous. Mr. Lincoln, it is
true, happened to be a man, if not of eminent ability, yet of
eminent justness, There was an inner depth of Puritan
nature which came out under suffering, and was very attrac-
tive. But success in a lottery is no argument for lotteries.
What were the chances against a person of Lincoln's ante-
cedents, elected as he was, proving to be what he was?

Such an incident is, however, natural to a presidential
government. The President is elected by processes which
forbid the election of known men, except at peculiar
conjunctures, and in moments when public opinion is
excited and despotic; and consequently if a crisis comes
upon us soon after he is elected, inevitably we have
government by an unknown quantity-the superin-
tendence of that crisis by what our great satirist would
have called "Statesman X." Even in quiet times,
government by a president is, for the several various
reasons which have been stated, inferior to government
by a cabinet; but the difficulty of quiet times is nothing
as compared with the difficulty of unquiet times. The
comparative deficiencies of the regular, common operation
of a presidential government are far less than the com-
parative deficiencies in time of sudden trouble the want
Who The hell
of elasticity, the impossibility of a dictatorship, the
total absence of a revolutionary reserve.

WANT OR NEEDS ONE

This contrast explains why the characteristic quality of cabinet governments-the fusion of the executive power with the legislative power-is of such cardinal importance. I shall proceed to show under what form and with what adjuncts it exists in England.

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

Rosevelt have todo

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

арти

33

No. II.

THE MONARCHY.

THE use of the Queen, in a dignified capacity, is incalculable. Without her in England, the present English Government would fail and pass away. Most people when they read that the Queen walked on the slopes at Windsor-that the Prince of Wales went to the Derby -have imagined that too much thought and prominence were given to little things. But they have been in error; and it is nice to trace how the actions of a retired widow and an unemployed youth become of such importance.

The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other. It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations. The nature of a constitution, the action of an assembly, the play of parties, the unseen formation of a guiding opinion, are complex facts, difficult to know and easy to mistake. But the action of a single will, the fiat of a single mind, are easy ideas: anybody can make them out, and no one can ever forget them. When

D

you put before the mass of mankind the question, "Will you be governed by a king, or will you be governed by à constitution?" the inquiry comes out thus-"Will you be governed in a way you understand, or will you be governed in a way you do not understand?" The issue was put to the French people; they were asked, “Will you be governed by Louis Napoleon, or will you be governed by an assembly?" The French people said, "We will be governed by the one man we can imagine, and not by the many people we cannot imagine.”

The best mode of comprehending the nature of the two governments, is to look at a country in which the two have within a comparatively short space of years succeeded each other.

"The political condition," says Mr. Grote, 'which Grecian legend everywhere presents to us, is in its principal features strikingly different from that which had become universally prevalent among the Greeks in the time of the Peloponnesian war. Historical oligarchy, as well as democracy, agreed in requiring a certain established system of government, comprising the three elements of specialised functions, temporary functionaries, and ultimate responsibility (under some forms or other) to the mass of qualified citizens—either a Senate or an Ecclesia, or both. There were, of course, many and capital distinctions between one government and another, in respect to the qualification of the citizen, the attributes and efficiency of the general assembly, the admissibility to power, &c.; and men might often be dissatisfied with the way in which these questions were determined in their

own city. But in the mind of every man, some determining rule or system-something like what in modern times is called a constitution—was indispensable to any government entitled to be called legitimate, or capable of creating in the mind of a Greek a feeling of moral obligation to obey it. The functionaries who exercise authority under it might be more or less competent or popular; but his personal feelings towards them were commonly lost in his attachment or aversion to the general system. If any energetic man could by audacity or craft break down the constitution, and render himself permanent ruler according to his own will and pleasure, even though he might govern well, he could never inspire the people with any sentiment of duty towards him: his sceptre was illegitimate from the beginning, and even the taking of his life, far from being interdicted by that moral feeling which condemned the shedding of blood in other, cases, was considered meritorious: he could not even be mentioned in the language except by a name (rúpavros despot) which branded him as an object of mingled fear and dislike.

"If we carry our eyes back from historical to legendary Greece, we find a picture the reverse of what has been here sketched. We discern a government in which there is little or no scheme or system, still less any idea of responsibility to the governed, but in which the mainspring of obedience on the part of the people consists in their personal feeling and reverence towards the chief. We remark, first and foremost, the King; next, a limited number of subordinate kings or chiefs; afterwards, the

« AnteriorContinuar »