branch absolutely distinct
from the executive branch"; they believed such a separation to be
essential to a good constitution; they believed such a separation to
exist in the English, which the wisest of them thought the best
Constitution. And, to the effectual maintenance of such a separation,
the exclusion of the President's Ministers from the legislature is
essential. If they are not excluded they become the executive, they
eclipse the President himself. A legislative chamber is greedy and
covetous; it acquires as much, it concedes as little as possible. The
passions of its members are its rulers; the law-making faculty, the
most comprehensive of the imperial faculties, is its instrument; it
will take the administration if it can take it. Tried by their own
aims, the founders of the United States were wise in excluding the
Ministers from Congress.

But though this exclusion is essential to the Presidential system of
government, it is not for that reason a small evil. It causes the
degradation of public life. Unless a member of the legislature be sure
of something more than speech, unless he is incited by the hope of
action, and chastened by the chance of responsibility, a first-rate man
will not care to take the place, and will not do much if he does take
it. To belong to a debating society adhering to an executive (and this
is no inapt description of a congress under a Presidential
Constitution) is not an object to stir a noble ambition, and is a
position to encourage idleness. The members of a Parliament excluded
from office can never be comparable, much less equal, to those of a
Parliament not excluded from office. The Presidential Government, by
its nature, divides political life into two halves, an executive half
and a legislative half; and, by so dividing it, makes neither half
worth a man's having--worth his making it a continuous career--worthy
to absorb, as Cabinet government absorbs, his whole soul. The statesmen
from whom a nation chooses under a Presidential system are much
inferior to those from whom it chooses under a Cabinet system, while
the selecting apparatus is also far less discerning.

All these differences are more important at critical periods, because
government itself is more important. A formed public opinion, a
respectable, able, and disciplined legislature, a well-chosen
executive, a Parliament and an administration not thwarting each other,
but co-operating with each other, are of grea