he can
carry out that policy. But the American President has no similar
security. He is elected in one way, at one time, and Congress (no
matter which House) is elected in another way, at another time. The two
have nothing to bind them together, and in matter of fact, they
continually disagree.

This was written in the time of Mr. Lincoln, when Congress, the
President, and all the North were united as one man in the war against
the South. There was then no patent instance of mere disunion. But
between the time when the essays were first written in the Fortnightly,
and their subsequent junction into a book, Mr. Lincoln was
assassinated, and Mr. Johnson, the Vice-President, became President,
and so continued for nearly four years. At such a time the
characteristic evils of the Presidential system were shown most
conspicuously. The President and the Assembly, so far from being (as it
is essential to good government that they should be) on terms of close
union, were not on terms of common courtesy. So far from being capable
of a continuous and concerted co-operation they were all the while
trying to thwart one another. He had one plan for the pacification of
the South and they another; they would have nothing to say to his
plans, and he vetoed their plans as long as the Constitution permitted,
and when they were, in spite of him, carried, he, as far as he could
(and this was very much), embarrassed them in action. The quarrel in
most countries would have gone beyond the law, and come to blows; even
in America, the most law-loving of countries, it went as far as
possible within the law. Mr. Johnson described the most popular branch
of the legislature--the House of Representatives--as a body "hanging on
the verge of government"; and that House impeached him criminally, in
the hope that in that way they might get rid of him civilly. Nothing
could be so conclusive against the American Constitution, as a
Constitution, as that incident. A hostile legislature and a hostile
executive were so tied together, that the legislature tried, and tried
in vain, to rid itself of the executive by accusing it of illegal
practices. The legislature was so afraid of the President's legal power
that it unfairly accused him of acting beyond the law. And the blame
thus cast on the American Constitution is so much praise to be given to
the American political character.

Few nations, perhaps scarcely any nation, could have borne such a trial
so eas