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impeded the executive when there was no coercive public sentiment to
check and rule them.

But the Presidential system not only gives the executive power an
antagonist in the legislative power, and so makes it weaker; it also
enfeebles it by impairing its intrinsic quality. A Cabinet is elected
by a legislature; and when that legislature is composed of fit persons,
that mode of electing the executive is the very best. It is a case of
secondary election, under the only conditions in which secondary
election is preferable to primary. Generally speaking, in an
electioneering country (I mean in a country full of political life, and
used to the manipulation of popular institutions), the election of
candidates to elect candidates is a farce. The Electoral College of
America is so. It was intended that the deputies when assembled should
exercise a real discretion, and by independent choice select the
President. But the primary electors take too much interest. They only
elect a deputy to vote for Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Breckenridge, and the
deputy only takes a ticket, and drops that ticket in an urn. He never
chooses or thinks of choosing. He is but a messenger--a transmitter;
the real decision is in those who choose him--who chose him because
they knew what he would do. It is true that the British House of
Commons is subject to the same influences. Members are mostly, perhaps,
elected because they will vote for a particular Ministry, rather than
for purely legislative reasons. But--and here is the capital
distinction--the functions of the House of Commons are important and
CONTINUOUS. It does not, like the Electoral College in the United
States, separate when it has elected its ruler; it watches, legislates,
seats and unseats ministries, from day to day. Accordingly it is a REAL
electoral body. The Parliament of 1857, which, more than any other
Parliament of late years, was a Parliament elected to support a
particular premier--which was chosen, as Americans might say, upon the
"Palmerston ticket"--before it had been in existence two years,
dethroned Lord Palmerston. Though selected in the interest of a
particular Ministry, it in fact destroyed that Ministry. A good
Parliament, too, is a capital choosing body. If it is fit to make laws
for a country, its majority ought to represent the general average
intelligence of that country; its various members ought to represent
the various special interests, special opinions, special p