This Drifting Of Great Matters Into Their Proper Places Is Not As Closely In Accordance With The Idiosyncrasies Of The American People As It Is With Our Own.

They would prefer to define by words, as the French do, what shall be the exact position of every public servant connected with their government; or rather of every public servant with whom the people shall be held as having any concern.

But nevertheless, I think it will come to pass that a cabinet will gradually form itself at Washington as it has done at London, and that of that cabinet there will be some recognized and ostensible chief.

But a Prime Minister in the United States can never take the place there which is taken here by our Premier. Over our Premier there is no one politically superior. The highest political responsibility of the nation rests on him. In the States this must always rest on the President, and any minister, whatever may be his name or assumed position, can only be responsible through the President. And it is here especially that the working of the United States system of government seems to me deficient - appears as though it wanted something to make it perfect and round at all points. Our ministers retire from their offices as do the Presidents; and indeed the ministerial term of office with us, though of course not fixed, is in truth much shorter than the presidential term of four years. But our ministers do not in fact ever go out. At one time they take one position, with pay, patronage, and power; and at another time another position, without these good things; but in either position they are acting as public men, and are in truth responsible for what they say and do. But the President, on whom it is presumed that the whole of the responsibility of the United States government rests, goes out at a certain day, and of him no more is heard. There is no future before him to urge him on to constancy; no hope of other things beyond, of greater honors and a wider fame, to keep him wakeful in his country's cause. He has already enrolled his name on the list of his country's rulers, and received what reward his country can give him. Conscience, duty, patriotism may make him true to his place. True to his place, in a certain degree, they will make him. But ambition and hope of things still to come are the moving motives of the minds of most men. Few men can allow their energies to expand to their fullest extent in the cold atmosphere of duty alone. The President of the States must feel that he has reached the top of the ladder, and that he soon will have done with life. As he goes out he is a dead man. And what can be expected from one who is counting the last lingering hours of his existence? "It will not be in my time," Mr. Buchanan is reported to have said, when a friend spoke to him with warning voice of the coming rebellion.

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