to have any vitality. Blackstone, the great authority of the eighteenth century, set forth this theory of the division of power between King, Lords, and Commons with clearness and force, and nobody then understood English history minutely or thoroughly enough to see its fallaciousness. Montesquieu also, the ablest and most elegant political writer of the

age,

with whose works most of the states

Influence of Montesquieu and Black

men in the Federal Convention were stone familiar, gave a similar description of the English Constitution, and generalized from it as the ideal constitution for a free people. But Montesquieu and Blackstone, in their treatment of this point, had their eyes upon the legal fictions, and were blind to the real machinery which was working under them. They gave elegant expression to what the late Mr. Bagehot called the "literary theory" of the English Constitution. But the real thing differed essentially from the "literary theory" even in their day. In our own time the divergence has become so conspicuous that it would not now be possible for well-informed writers to make the mistake of Montesquieu and Blackstone. In our time it has come to be perfectly obvious that so far from the English Constitution separating the executive power from the legislative, this is precisely what it does not do. In Great Britain the supreme power is all lodged in a single body,

the House of Commons. The sovereign has come to be purely a legal fiction, and the House of Lords maintains itself only by submitting to the Commons. The House of Commons is absolutely supreme, and, as we shall presently see, it really both appoints and dismisses the executive. The English executive, or chief magistrate, is ordinarily the first lord of the treasury, and is commonly styled the prime minister. He is chairman of the most important committee of the House of Commons, and his cabinet consists of the chairmen of other committees.

What our

government

To make this perfectly clear, let us see what our machinery of government would be if it were really like the English. The presence or absence of the crowned head makes no essential difference; it is only a kind of ornamental cupola. Suppose for a moment the presidency abolished, or reduced to the political nullity of the crown in England; and postpone for a moment the consideration would be if it of the Senate. Suppose that in our House of Representatives the committee of ways and means had two chairmen, -an upper chairman who looks after all sorts of business, and a lower chairman who attends especially to the finances. This upper chairman, we will say, corresponds to the first lord of the treasury, while the lower one corre

were really

like that of

Great Britain

sponds to the chancellor of the exchequer. Sometimes, when the upper chairman is a great financier, and capable of enormous labour, he will fill both places at once, as Mr. Gladstone was lately first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer. The chairman of the other committees on foreign, military, and naval affairs will answer to the English secretaries of state for foreign affairs and for war, the first lord of the admiralty, and so on. This group of chairmen, headed by the upper chairman of the ways and means, will then answer to the English cabinet, with its prime minister. To complete the parallel, let us suppose that, after a new House of Representatives is elected, it chooses this prime minister, and he appoints the other chairmen who are to make up his cabinet. Suppose, too, that he initiates all legislation, and executes all laws, and stays in office three weeks or thirty years, or as long as he can get a majority of the house to vote for his measures. If he loses his majority, he can either resign, or dissolve the house and order a new election, thus appealing directly to the people. If the new house gives him a majority, he stays in office; if it shows a majority against him, he steps down into the house, and becomes, perhaps, the leader of the opposition.

Now if this were the form of our government, it would correspond in all essential fea

tures to that of England. The likeness is liable to be obscured by the fact that in England it is the queen who is supposed to appoint the prime minister; but that is simply a part of the antiquated "literary theory of the English Constitution. In reality the queen only acts as mistress of the ceremonies. Whatever she may wish, the prime minister must be the man who can command the best working majority in the house. This is not only tested by the first vote that is taken, but it is almost invariably known beforehand so well that if the queen offers the place to the wrong man he refuses to take it. Should he be so foolish as to take it, he is sure to be overthrown at the first test vote, and then the right man comes in. Thus in 1880 the queen's manifest preference for Lord Granville or Lord Hartington made no sort of difference. Mr. Gladstone was as much chosen by the House of Commons as if the members had sat in their seats and balloted for him. If the crown were to be abolished tomorrow, and the house were henceforth, on the resignation of a prime minister, to elect a new one to serve as long as he could command a majority, it would not be doing essentially otherwise than it does now. The house then dismisses its minister when it rejects one of his important measures. But while thus appointed and dismissed by the house, he is in no wise

its slave; for by the power of dissolution he has the right to appeal to the country, and let the general election decide the issue. The obvious advantages of this system are that it makes anything like a deadlock between the legislature and the executive impossible; and it insures a concentration of responsibility. The prime minister's bills cannot be disregarded, like the president's messages; and thus, too, the house is kept in hand, and cannot degenerate into a debating club.1

A system so delicate and subtle, yet so strong and efficient, as this could no more have been invented by the wisest of statesmen than a chemist could make albumen by taking its elements and mixing them together. In its practical working it is a much simpler system than ours, and still its principal features are not such as would be likely to occur to men who had not had some actual experience of them. It is the peculiar outgrowth of English history. As we can now see, its chief characteristic is its not separating the executive power from the legislative. As a member of Parliament, the prime

In the British government, department is from the not separated legislative

the executive

1 The history of President Cleveland's tariff message of 1887, however, shows that, where a wise and courageous president calls attention to a living issue, his party, alike in Congress and in the country, is in a measure compelled to follow his lead.