small motions in Parliament about it, which is the way to popularise
their view. And in the end I do not doubt that they would have
prevailed. They would have had to teach a lesson both pleasant and
true, and such lessons are soon learned. On the whole, therefore,
the result of the comparison is that a Presidential government makes
it much easier than the Parliamentary to maintain a great surplus of
income over expenditure, but that it does not give the same facility
for examining whether it be good or not good to maintain a surplus,
and, therefore, that it works blindly, maintaining surpluses when
they do extreme harm just as much as when they are very beneficial.

In this point the contrast of Presidential with Parliamentary
government is mixed; one of the defects of Parliamentary government
probably is the difficulty under it of maintaining a surplus revenue
to discharge debt, and this defect Presidential government escapes,
though at the cost of being likely to maintain that surplus upon
inexpedient occasions as well as upon expedient. But in all other
respects a Parliamentary government has in finance an unmixed
advantage over the Presidential in the incessant discussion. Though
in one single case it produces evil as well as good, in most cases
it produces good only. And three of these cases are illustrated by
recent American experience. First, as Mr. Goldwin Smith--no
unfavourable judge of anything American--justly said some years
since, the capital error made by the United States Government was
the "Legal Tender Act," as it is called, by which it made
inconvertible paper notes issued by the Treasury the sole
circulating medium of the country. The temptation to do this was
very great, because it gave at once a great war fund when it was
needed, and with no pain to any one. If the notes of a Government
supersede the metallic currency medium of a country to the extent of