A good parliament is a capital choosing body; it is an electoral college
of the picked men of the nation. But in the American system the
president is chosen by a complicated machinery of caucuses; he is not
the choice of the nation, but of the wirepullers. The members of
congress are excluded from executive office, and the separation makes
neither the executive half nor the legislative half of political life
worth having. Hence it is only men of an inferior type who are attracted
to political life at all.

Again our system enables us to change our ruler suddenly on an
emergency. Thus we could abolish the Aberdeen Cabinet, which was in
itself eminently adapted for every sort of difficulty save the one it
had to meet, but wanted the daemonic element, and substitute a statesman
who had the precise sort of merit wanted at the moment. But under a
presidential government you can do nothing of the kind. There is no
elastic element; everything is rigid, specified, dated. You have
bespoken your government for the time, and you must keep it. Moreover,
under the English system all the leading statesmen are known quantities.
But in America a new president before his election is usually an unknown
quantity.

Cabinet government demands the mutual confidence of the electors, a calm
national mind, and what I may call rationality--a power involving
intelligence, yet distinct from it. It demands also a competent
legislature, which is a rarity. In the early stages of human society the
grand object is not to make new laws, but to prevent innovation. Custom
is the first check on tyranny, but at the present day the desire is to
adapt the law to changed conditions. In the past, however, continuous
legislatures were rare because they were not wanted. Now you have to get
a good legislature and to keep it good. To keep it good it must have a