responsibility. The President may be impeached, but the member of
an opposition does not always wish to have recourse to such an
extreme measure as impeachment. The ministers are not in the
houses, and cannot therefore personally answer questions. Different
large subjects, such as foreign affairs, financial affairs, and army
matters, are referred to Standing Committees in both Houses; and
these committees have relations with the ministers. But they have
no constitutional power over the ministers; nor have they the much
more valuable privilege of badgering a minister hither and thither
by viva voce questions on every point of his administration. The
minister sits safe in his office--safe there for the term of the
existing Presidency if he can keep well with the president; and
therefore, even under ordinary circumstances, does not care much for
the printed or written messages of Congress. But under
circumstances so little ordinary as those of 186l-62, while
Washington was surrounded by hundreds of thousands of soldiers,
Congress was absolutely impotent. Mr. Seward could snap his fingers
at Congress, and he did so. He could not snap his fingers at the
army; but then he could go with the army, could keep the army on his
side by remaining on the same side with the army; and this as it
seemed he resolved to do. It must be understood that Mr. Seward was
not Prime Minister. The President of the United States has no Prime
Minister--or hitherto has had none. The Minister for Foreign
Affairs has usually stood highest in the cabinet, and Mr. Seward, as
holding that position, was not inclined to lessen its authority. He
was gradually assuming for that position the prerogatives of a
Premier, and men were beginning to talk of Mr. Seward's ministry.
It may easily be understood that at such a time the powers of
Congress would be undefined, and that ambitious members of Congress
would rise and assert on the floor, with that peculiar voice of