s like, or what Lord
Palmerston is like, runs through society. We have simply no notion what
it would be to be left with the visible sovereignty in the hands of an
unknown man. The notion of employing a man of unknown smallness at a
crisis of unknown greatness is to our minds simply ludicrous. Mr.
Lincoln, it is true, happened to be a man, if not of eminent ability,
yet of eminent justness. There was an inner depth of Puritan nature
which came out under suffering, and was very attractive. But success in
a lottery is no argument for lotteries. What were the chances against a
person of Lincoln's antecedents, elected as he was, proving to be what
he was? Such an incident is, however, natural to a Presidential
government. The President is elected by processes which forbid the
election of known men, except at peculiar conjunctures, and in moments
when public opinion is excited and despotic; and consequently if a
crisis comes upon us soon after he is elected, inevitably we have
government by an unknown quantity--the superintendence of that crisis
by what our great satirist would have called "Statesman X". Even in
quiet times, government by a President, is, for the several various
reasons which have been stated, inferior to government by a Cabinet;
but the difficulty of quiet times is nothing as compared with the
difficulty of unquiet times. The comparative deficiencies of the
regular, common operation of a Presidential government are far less
than the comparative deficiencies in time of sudden trouble--the want
of elasticity, the impossibility of a dictatorship, the total absence
of a REVOLUTIONARY RESERVE. This contrast explains why the
characteristic quality of Cabinet Governments--the fusion of the
executive power with the legislative power--is of such cardinal
importance. I shall proceed to show under what form and with what
adjuncts it exists in England.

[4] The framers of the Constitution expected that the vice-president
would be elected by the Electoral College as the second wisest man in
the country. The vice-presidentship being a sinecure, a second-rate man
agreeable to the wire-pullers is always smuggled in. The chance of
succession to the presidentship is too distant to be thought of.

NO. III.

THE MONARCHY.

I.

The use of the Queen, in a dignified capacity, is incalculable. Without
her in England, the present English Government would fail and pass
away. Most people when they read that the Queen