the Americans, when they speak of the administration party as the party in power, have, in borrowing an English phrase, applied it to utterly different facts. Their “party in power” need have no “power” beyond that of securing places for its adherents. It may be in a minority in one house of Congress, in which event it accomplishes nothing, but can at most merely arrest adverse legislation, or in a small minority in both houses of Congress, in which event it must submit to see many things done which it dislikes. And if its enemies control the Senate, even its executive arm is paralyzed. Though party feeling has generally been stronger in America than in England, and even now covers a larger proportion of the voters, and enforces a stricter discipline, party government is distinctly weaker.
Those who lament the violence of European factions may fancy America an Elysium where legislation is just and reasonable, because free from bias, where pure and enlarged views of national interest override the selfish designs of politicians. It would be nearer the truth to say that the absence of party control operates chiefly to make laws less consistent, and to prevent extended schemes of policy from being framed, because the chance of giving continuous effect to them is small. The natural history of the party system, and of the methods whereby it is worked, belongs to a later part of this book. The system is complete, the methods are elaborate, but the Constitution opposes obstacles unknown in France or England to the complete control by a party of the whole government of the country.
We are now in a position to sum up the practical results of the system which purports to separate Congress from the executive, instead of uniting them as they are united under a cabinet government. I say “purports to separate,” because the separation, significant as it is, is less complete than current language imports, or than the Fathers of the Constitution would seem to have intended. The necessary coherence of the two powers baffled them. These results are five:
The president and his ministers have no initiative in Congress, little influence over Congress, except what they can exert upon individual members through the bestowal of patronage, or upon their party in Congress by threatening it with popular displeasure.
Congress has, together with unlimited powers of inquiry, imperfect powers of control over the administrative departments.
The nation does not always know how or where to fix responsibility for misfeasance or neglect. The person and bodies concerned in making and executing the laws are so related to one another that each can generally shift the burden of blame on someone else, and no one acts under the full sense of direct accountability.
There is a loss of force by friction, i.e., part of the energy, force, and time of the men and bodies that make up the government is dissipated in struggles with one another. This belongs to all free governments, because all free governments rely upon checks. But the more checks, the more friction.
There is a risk that executive vigour and promptitude may be found wanting at critical moments.
We may include these defects in one general expression. There is in the American government, considered as a whole, a want of unity. Its branches are unconnected; their efforts are not directed to one aim, do not produce one harmonious result. The sailors, the helmsman, the engineer, do not seem to have one purpose or obey one will, so that instead of making steady way the vessel may pursue a devious or zigzag course, and sometimes merely turn round and round in the water. The more closely anyone watches from year to year the history of free governments, and himself swims in the deep-eddying time current, the more does he feel that current’s force, so that human foresight and purpose seem to count for little, and ministers and parliaments to be swept along they know not whither by some overmastering fate or overruling providence. But this feeling is stronger in America than in Europe, because in America such powers as exist act with little concert and resign themselves to a conscious impotence. Clouds arise, blot out the sun overhead, and burst in a tempest; the tempest passes, and leaves the blue above bright as before, but at the same moment other clouds are already beginning to peer over the horizon. Parties are formed and dissolved, compromises are settled and assailed and violated, wars break out and are fought through and forgotten, new problems begin to show themselves, and the civil powers, presidents, and cabinets, and state governments, and houses of Congress, seem to have as little to do with all these changes, as little ability to foresee or avert or resist them, as the farmer, who sees approaching the tornado which will uproot his crop, has power to stay its devastating course.
A president can do little, for he does not lead either Congress or the nation. Congress cannot guide or stimulate the president, nor replace him by a man fitter for the emergency. The cabinet neither receive a policy from Congress nor give one to it. Each power in the state goes its own way, or wastes precious moments in discussing which way it shall go, and that which comes to pass seems to be a result not of the action of the legal organs of the state, but of some larger force which at one time uses their discord as its means, at another neglects them altogether. This at least is the impression which the history of the greatest problem and greatest struggle that America has seen, the struggle of the slaveholders against the Free Soil and Union party, culminating in the war of the rebellion, makes upon one who looking back on its events sees them all as parts of one drama. Inevitable the struggle may have been; and in its later stages passion had grown so hot, and the claims of the slaveholders so extravagant, that possibly under no scheme of government—so some high American authorities hold—could a peaceful solution have been looked for. Yet it must be remembered that the carefully devised machinery of the Constitution did little to solve that problem or avert that struggle, while the system of divided and balanced and limited powers, giving every advantage to those who stood by the existing law, and placing the rights of the states behind the bulwarks of an almost unalterable instrument, may have tended to aggravate the spirit of uncompromising resistance. The nation asserted itself at last, but not till the resources which the Constitution provided for the attainment of a peaceful solution had irretrievably failed.
Not wholly dissimilar was the course of events in the first years of the French Revolution. The Constitution framed by the National Assembly in 1791 so limited the functions and authority of each power in the state that no one person, no one body, was capable of leading either the nation or the legislature, or of framing and maintaining a constructive policy. Things were left to take their own course. The boat drifted to the rapids, and the rapids hurried her over the precipice.17
This want of unity is painfully felt in a crisis. When a sudden crisis comes upon a free state, the executive needs two things, a large command of money and powers in excess of those allowed at ordinary times. Under the European system the duty of meeting such a crisis is felt to devolve as much on the representative chamber as on the ministers who are its agents. The chamber is therefore at once appealed to for supplies, and for such legislation as the occasion demands. When these have been given, the ministry moves on with the weight of the people behind it; and as it is accustomed to work at all times with the chamber, and the chamber with it, the piston plays smoothly and quickly in the cylinder. In America the president has at ordinary times little to do with Congress, while Congress is unaccustomed to deal with executive questions. Its machinery, and especially the absence of ministerial leaders and consequent want of organization, unfit it for promptly confronting practical troubles. It is apt to be sparing of supplies, and of that confidence which doubles the value of supplies. Jealousies of the executive, which are proper in quiet times and natural towards those with whom Congress has little direct intercourse, may now be perilous, yet how is Congress to trust persons not members of its own body nor directly amenable to its control? When dangers thicken the only device may be the Roman one of a temporary dictatorship. Something like this happened in the War of Seccession, for the powers then conferred upon President Lincoln, or exercised without congressional censure by him, were almost as much in excess of those enjoyed under the ordinary law as the authority of a Roman dictator exceeded that of a Roman consul.18 Fortunately the habits of legality, which lie deep in the American as they did in the Roman people, reasserted themselves after the war was over, as they were wont to do at Rome in her earlier and better days. When the squall had passed the ship righted, and she has pursued her subsequent
