g disposition of society, has a great influence on that
division. The nation feels that its judgment is important, and it
strives to judge. It succeeds in deciding because the debates and the
discussions give it the facts and the arguments. But under a
Presidential government, a nation has, except at the electing moment,
no influence; it has not the ballot-box before it; its virtue is gone,
and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns. It is not
incited to form an opinion like a nation under a Cabinet government;
nor is it instructed like such a nation. There are doubtless debates in
the legislature, but they are prologues without a play. There is
nothing of a catastrophe about them; you can not turn out the
Government. The prize of power is not in the gift of the legislature,
and no one cares for the legislature. The executive, the great centre
of power and place, sticks irremovable; you cannot change it in any
event. The teaching apparatus which has educated our public mind, which
prepares our resolutions, which shapes our opinions, does not exist. No
Presidential country needs to form daily delicate opinions, or is
helped in forming them. It might be thought that the discussions in the
press would supply the deficiencies in the Constitution; that by a
reading people especially, the conduct of their Government would be as
carefully watched, that their opinions about it would be as consistent,
as accurate, as well considered, under a Presidential as under a
Cabinet polity. But the same difficulty oppresses the press which
oppresses the legislature. It can DO NOTHING. It cannot change the
administration; the executive was elected for such and such years, and
for such and such years it must last. People wonder that so literary a
people as the Americans--a people who read more than any people who
ever lived, who read so many newspapers--should have such bad
newspapers. The papers are not so good as the English, because they
have not the same motive to be good as the English papers. At a
political "crisis," as we say--that is, when the fate of an
administration is unfixed, when it depends on a few votes yet
unsettled, upon a wavering and veering opinion--effective articles in
great journals become of essential moment. The Times has made many
ministries. When, as of late, there has been a long continuance of
divided Parliaments, of Governments which were without "brute voting
power," and which depended on int