66

Considering the vast patronage in the hands of the President, which Mr. Justice Story adverts to as having "some tendency to create a counteracting influence in aid of his independence* (an assertion which he certainly need not have qualified by the word some"), and considering also the principle of the payment of members and all that it has been shown to involve, including the complaints at its inadequate amount, it is abundantly clear that, in the ordinary course of things, the exercise of that patronage enables the President to cause the essential measures of the Government to pass through Congress, and permits him to mould or defer others which may not be in accordance with his views of policy. Thus he is able, though the general course of his policy may be disapproved of by both Houses of Legislature, to pass the supplies, and to wield for the term of his office the whole power of the Government. This was

the case with President Tyler, who was at variance with the Senate during nearly the

* 882.

whole course of his administration.

And the

latest and most notorious instance has only ceased with the last presidential election; the former President and his Ministry having been of the "Whig" party, and yet having succeeded in carrying on the government for four years in the face of a democratic majority against them, both in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. The President is also generally able to soften, or modify, or finally to suppress altogether, bills that may be adverse to his course of policy, or, in his opinion, precipitate, unwise, or dangerous, so that they may never be brought before him in such a shape as to call upon him, in obedience to his sense of public duty, to exercise his negative upon them.

But the President's negative would be of no avail should public opinion be roused upon any point to such a degree as to oblige two-thirds of both Houses of Congress to take part against him. Patronage and influence would then be alike overborne, and possibly at the very moment, and on the

very questions, when the truest regard for the general and permanent interests of the country would have required that a check should be placed upon the popular feeling of the moment. Then would be seen that weakness in the Executive of the United States which M. De Tocqueville has commented upon in reference to this as well as other portions of his ministerial character, and which reduces him, in times of excitement, to the position of "a mere agent of the popular will."*

The President of the United States combines in himself the two functions which belong in this country to the Crown and to the Prime Minister. In the exercise of the latter function he can, as has been seen, carry on the Government for a term of four years according to a policy which is disapproved of by the majority of both Houses of Legislature, and in every step of which they would be compelled to oppose him if they acted upon their convictions and their acknowledged principles. In the exercise of his higher function,

* De la Démocratie en Amérique, vol. i. ch. 8.

as the Executive of the State, he is armed with patronage, which, in ordinary cases, enables him so to regulate the course of legislation as to prevent the necessity of his having recourse to his power of negativing the measures of a hostile Legislature, but which power is liable to fail him at moments, when, in his opinion, there is the most need to use it.

On a comparison of the two systems, even from the point of view most in accordance with popular sympathies, it cannot be said that we have any reason to complain of our own. It is too obvious for remark, that no minister in this country can, under ordinary circumstances, retain office an hour after he has ceased to be supported by the majority of the House of Commons. The patronage in the hands of the Government is too small to enable him to do more (and then only at a time when parties should happen to be nicely balanced) than delay his fall. He must stand, if at all, upon the broad basis of his open and acknowledged policy, and when this ceases to be in unison with the opinion of the

House of Commons and the country, he must give way to some one else. That opinion may be somewhat more slow in forming and declaring itself, than the public opinion as represented in the Legislature of the United States; but it is only more slow because more anxious to reflect the matured wisdom of the community, and not its impulses. And when that opinion is once declared, it is seldom indeed that it is not final. Against any measure brought forward by a minister so supported, and upon the responsibility of the Government of the day, the Crown would never venture, except in some very extreme case, to interpose its negative. If it did, it would be by no exercise of "patronage," which it now possesses in so scanty a measure as to be almost inappreciable in reference to public affairs; it would be by no indirect "influence," which it has no means of bringing to bear upon the course of legislation, that it would seek to support itself. It would be by an appeal, which the act would indicate, to the intelligence and the justice of the nation,