omnipotent in choosing them indirectly.

The Cabinet, in a word, is a Board of Control, chosen by the legislature, out of persons whom it trusts and knows, to rule the Nation. A cabinet is a combining committee a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the State to the executive part of the State. In its origin it belongs to the one, in its functions it belongs to the other." And he proceeds further to show how, by this practical fusion, this result is clearly attained-that the will of the people, constitutionally expressed through their elected representatives in the House of Commons, controls both the law-making and the law-executing power, and is, in very fact, the ultimate power in government. The responsibility of the executive to the people through the elective branch of parliament is the essential principle of the British constitution.

Turning now to the system of government across the border, one finds the same principle of ultimate responsibility to the people; but it is worked out in a very different and much less satisfactory way. It is not very far from the truth to say that the United States system is an attempt to work out the "literary theory" of the British constitution in actual practice. Take as an example the "national" government at Washington, for the type is persistent throughout both the "national" and the "local" governments of the American Union, just as the British type is persistent throughout both the "national" and "local" governments of the British Empire. How it came about that the "literary theory" of the British constitution was embodied in the constitution of the United States has been the subject of frequent enquiry, and a quotation is ventured from a recent American work of great merit :

66

The Convention of 1787 was composed of very able men of the English-speaking race. They took the system of government with which they had been familiar, improved it, adapted it to the circumstances with which they had to deal, and put it into successful operation. . . It is needful,

6 • Prof. Woodrow Wilson, "Congressional Government," 4th ed., p. 307. See, however, a criticism of this work in “ Essays on Govern ment " (A. Lawrence Lowell), p. 46 et seq.

however, to remember in this connection what has already been alluded to, that when the Convention was copying the English constitution that constitution was in a stage of transition, and had by no means fully developed the features which are now recognized as most characteristic of it. The English constitution of that day had a great many features which did not invite republican imitation. It was suspected, if not known, that the ministers who sat in parliament were little more than tools of a ministry of Royal favorites, who were kept out of sight behind the strictest confidences of the Court. It was notorious that the subservient parliaments of the day represented the estates and the money of the peers and the influence of the King, rather than the intelligence and purpose of the Nation.

It was something more than natural that the convention of 1787 should desire to erect a Congress which would not be subservient, and an executive which could not be despotic; and it was equally to have been expected that they should regard an absolute separation of these two great branches of the system as the only effectual means for the accomplishment of that much desired end.”

Prof. Wilson, indeed, claims that Congress is now supreme over the executive of the federal government, and "subjects even the details of administration to the constant supervision, and all policy to the watchful intervention, of the Standing Committees of Congress"; but he laments the lack of executive responsibility to Congress. The President and the heads of the chief executive departments of government stand apart, isolated from Congress; bound to execute its laws, but with no greater influence in securing the passage of laws in aid of effective administration, or in preventing the passage of laws which may hamper administration, than is possessed by any other private citizen. By the terms of the "Constitution" itself they are debarred from seats in Congress, and so have no initiative in legislation. On the other hand, Congress must go to the full extent of law-making in order to exercise its supremacy over the executive. But the trouble may be, not in the Act itself, but in its execution; no matter to what extent of detail an Act may make provision, Art. 1., s. 6.

an executive completely out of sympathy with the law will not be a very satisfactory administrator of it. In short, there is no guarantee of that harmony between the legislative and executive departments, that sympathy and co-operation, without which there must necessarily arise constant friction, lack of continuity in policy, and even a deadlock in the administration of public affairs. Congress and the executive are responsible, each directly to the people; but the retention of the confidence of Congress is in no way a condition to the retention of office. Congress has no such power to depose the executive as has the House of Commons in the British constitutional system. Moreover, the constant possibility of party diversity between the Executive and Congress renders it very difficult to fasten responsibility upon either. This difficulty is thus strongly put by Prof. Wilson: 8

"Is Congress rated for corrupt, or imperfect, or foolish legislation? . . . Does administration blunder and run itself into all sorts of straits? The Secretaries hasten to plead the unreasonable or unwise commands of Congress, and Congress falls to blaming the Secretaries. The Secretaries aver that the whole mischief might have been avoided if they had only been allowed to suggest the proper measures; and the men who framed the existing measures, in their turn, avow their despair of good government so long as they must entrust all their plans to the bungling incompetence of men who are appointed by, and responsible to, somebody else. How is the school-master, the nation, to know which boy needs the whipping?"

In the preface to the same work, the distinction between. the British and the American systems of government is thus shortly stated:

"It is our legislative and administrative machinery which makes our government essentially different from all other great governmental systems. The most striking contrast in modern politics is not between Presidential and Monarchial governments, but between Congressional and Parliamentary governments. Congressional government is Committee gov'Congressional Government, p. 283.

8

ernment; Parliamentary government is government by a responsible Calinet Ministry.

"These are the two principal types which present themselves for the instruction of the modern student of the practical in politics: administration by semi-independent executive agents who obey the dictation of a legislature to which they are not responsible; and administration by executive agents who are the accredited leaders and accountable servants of a legislature virtually supreme in all things."

After this comparison of the two leading types of AngloSaxon self-government, it is easy to decide to which the Canadian constitution conforms.

If, so far as the right of local self-government has been conceded, power is exercisable, the law-making power with the same efficacy, and the law-executing power under the same principle of responsibility to parliament and, through parliament, to the electorate, as in the United Kingdom, the preamble to the B. N. A. Act is strictly accurate.

9

To any one who has knowledge of the constitutions of the provinces prior to Confederation, it is unnecessary to point out that since the concession of "Responsible Government and up to 1867 those constitutions were "similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom," and as to them all that has been said in reference to the British Constitution might be repeated.

Nor will it be contended that, under the B. N. A. Act, the sum total of our rights of self-government has been lessened. And no one who knows the actual working of the machinery of government in Canada will contend that either in the Dominion or the various provinces there exists other than a parliamentary government.

It has been usual to speak of " the division of power" under a federal system. In truth, this form of expression is most inapt and very inaccurately describes the division of labor which really exists. Its thoughtless use has been fruitful of much misconception of the true line or principle of division. There is in the system no "division of power" in See Chap. I., ante.

the sense in which such division was, by the older writers, erroneously assumed to exist under the British form of gov ernment; and certainly none in the sense in which such division does actually exist in the individual systems of the United States. The true line of division is this: The various subject matters with which government may have to deal are divided into two great divisions 10-matters of general and matters of local concern-but to each of such divisions the full equipment of power, legislative and executive, is given. The Dominion government and the Provincial governments are carried on (each within the sphere of its legitimate operation) on the same principle as is the government of the United Kingdom. Jurisdiction as to subject matter conceded, the will of the legislature, Dominion or Provincial, is supreme over the executive in the same sense as the will of the Imperial parliament is supreme over the executive in the United Kingdom. The legal principle, so strongly insisted upon by Mr. Dicey-the supremacy of parliament as clearly appears here as in the United Kingdom; while, for the "conventional" aspect of the question, it is only necessary to point out that, as in the United Kingdom so here, the ultimate responsibility of the executive to the electorate through the elective branch of the legislature is clearly established in relation as well to each provincial as to the Dominion government. The elective branch of the legislature (Dominion Parliament or Provincial Legislative Assembly) represents, and is directly responsible to, the electorate as in the United Kingdom. The Executive Committee (the cabinet), composed of members of the legislature, hold their positions by virtue of, and contingently upon, the retention of the confidence of the elective branch of that Legislature and are, therefore, practically directly responsible to that elective branch-as in the United Kingdom. The same chain of connected relation, the same source of motive power, and the same method of applying that power to the work of government, exists in each of our governmental bodies as in the United Kingdom.

10 See e.g., Bank of Toronto v. Lambe, 12 App. Cas. 587; 56 L. J. P. C. 87; 4 Cart. 7.