With Us The Queen's Minister Has A Greater Weight In Parliament Than The President's Minister Could Hold In Congress, Because The Queen Is Bound To Employ A Minister In Whom The Parliament Has Confidence.

As soon as such confidence ceases, the minister ceases to be minister.

As the Crown has no politics of its own, it is simply necessary that the minister of the day should hold the politics of the people as testified by their representatives. The machinery of the President's government cannot be made to work after this fashion. The President himself is a political officer, and the country is bound to bear with his politics for four years, whatever those politics may be. The ministry which he selects, on coming to his seat, will probably represent a majority in Congress, seeing that the same suffrages which have elected the President will also have elected the Congress. But there exists no necessity on the part of the President to employ ministers who shall carry with them the support of Congress. If, however, the minister sat in Congress - if it were required of each minister that he should have a seat either in one House or in the other - the President would, I think, find himself constrained to change a ministry in which Congress should decline to confide. It might not be so at first, but there would be a tendency in that direction.

The governing powers do not rest exclusively with the President or with the President and his ministers; they are shared in a certain degree with the Senate, which sits from time to time in executive session, laying aside at such periods its legislative character. It is this executive authority which lends so great a dignity to the Senate, gives it the privilege of preponderating over the other House, and makes it the political safeguard of the nation. The questions of government as to which the Senate is empowered to interfere are soon told. All treaties made by the President must be sanctioned by the Senate; and all appointments made by the President must be confirmed by the Senate. The list is short; and one is disposed to think, when first hearing it, that the thing itself does not amount to much. But it does amount to very much; it enables the Senate to fetter the President, if the Senate should be so inclined, both as regards foreign politics and home politics. A Secretary for Foreign Affairs at Washington may write what dispatches he pleases without reference to the Senate; but the Senate interferes before those dispatches can have resulted in any fact which may be detrimental to the nation. It is not only that the Senate is responsible for such treaties as are made, but that the President is deterred from the making of treaties for which the Senate would decline to make itself responsible. Even though no treaty should ever be refused its sanction by the Senate, the protecting power of the Senate in that matter would not on that account have been less necessary or less efficacious.

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