Part 1 (1/2)
Congressional Government.
by Woodrow Wilson.
PREFACE
The object of these essays is not to exhaust criticism of the government of the United States, but only to point out the most characteristic practical features of the federal system. Taking Congress as the central and predominant power of the system, their object is to ill.u.s.trate everything Congressional. Everybody has seen, and critics without number have said, that our form of national government is singular, possessing a character altogether its own; but there is abundant evidence that very few have seen just wherein it differs most essentially from the other governments of the world. There have been and are other federal systems quite similar, and scarcely any legislative or administrative principle of our Const.i.tution was young even when that Const.i.tution was framed. It is our legislative and administrative _machinery_ which makes our government essentially different from all other great governmental systems. The most striking contrast in modern politics is not between presidential and monarchical governments, but between Congressional and Parliamentary governments. Congressional government is Committee government; Parliamentary government is government by a responsible Cabinet Ministry. These are the two princ.i.p.al types which present themselves for the instruction of the modern student of the practical in politics: administration by semi-independent executive agents who obey the dictation of a legislature to which they are not responsible, and administration by executive agents who are the accredited leaders and accountable servants of a legislature virtually supreme in all things.
My chief aim in these essays has been, therefore, an adequate ill.u.s.trative contrast of these two types of government, with a view to making as plain as possible the actual conditions of federal administration. In short, I offer, not a commentary, but an outspoken presentation of such cardinal facts as may be sources of practical suggestion.
WOODROW WILSON
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, _October_ 7, 1884.
CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT:
A STUDY IN AMERICAN POLITICS.
I.
INTRODUCTORY.
The laws reach but a very little way. Const.i.tute government how you please, infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of powers, which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of ministers of state. Even all the use and potency of the laws depends upon them. Without them your commonwealth is no better than a scheme upon paper; and not a living, active, effective organization.--BURKE.
The great fault of political writers is their too close adherence to the forms of the system of state which they happen to be expounding or examining. They stop short at the anatomy of inst.i.tutions, and do not penetrate to the secret of their functions.--JOHN MORLEY.
It would seem as if a very wayward fortune had presided over the history of the Const.i.tution of the United States, inasmuch as that great federal charter has been alternately violated by its friends and defended by its enemies. It came hard by its establishment in the first place, prevailing with difficulty over the strenuous forces of dissent which were banded against it. While its adoption was under discussion the voices of criticism were many and authoritative, the voices of opposition loud in tone and ominous in volume, and the Federalists finally triumphed only by dint of hard battle against foes, formidable both in numbers and in skill. But the victory was complete,--astonis.h.i.+ngly complete. Once established, the new government had only the zeal of its friends to fear. Indeed, after its organization very little more is heard of the party of opposition; they disappear so entirely from politics that one is inclined to think, in looking back at the party history of that time, that they must have been not only conquered but converted as well. There was well-nigh universal acquiescence in the new order of things. Not everybody, indeed, professed himself a Federalist, but everybody conformed to federalist practice. There were jealousies and bickerings, of course, in the new Congress of the Union, but no party lines, and the differences which caused the constant brewing and breaking of storms in Was.h.i.+ngton's first cabinet were of personal rather than of political import. Hamilton and Jefferson did not draw apart because the one had been an ardent and the other only a lukewarm friend of the Const.i.tution, so much as because they were so different in natural bent and temper that they would have been like to disagree and come to drawn points wherever or however brought into contact. The one had inherited warm blood and a bold sagacity, while in the other a negative philosophy ran suitably through cool veins. They had not been meant for yoke-fellows.
There was less antagonism in Congress, however, than in the cabinet; and in none of the controversies that did arise was there shown any serious disposition to quarrel with the Const.i.tution itself; the contention was as to the obedience to be rendered to its provisions. No one threatened to withhold his allegiance, though there soon began to be some exhibition of a disposition to confine obedience to the letter of the new commandments, and to discountenance all attempts to do what was not plainly written in the tables of the law. It was recognized as no longer fas.h.i.+onable to say aught against the principles of the Const.i.tution; but all men could not be of one mind, and political parties began to take form in antagonistic schools of const.i.tutional construction. There straightway arose two rival sects of political Pharisees, each professing a more perfect conformity and affecting greater ”ceremonial cleanliness” than the other. The very men who had resisted with might and main the adoption of the Const.i.tution became, under the new division of parties, its champions, as sticklers for a strict, a rigid, and literal construction.
They were consistent enough in this, because it was quite natural that their one-time fear of a strong central government should pa.s.s into a dread of the still further expansion of the power of that government, by a too loose construction of its charter; but what I would emphasize here is not the motives or the policy of the conduct of parties in our early national politics, but the fact that opposition to the Const.i.tution as a const.i.tution, and even hostile criticism of its provisions, ceased almost immediately upon its adoption; and not only ceased, but gave place to an undiscriminating and almost blind wors.h.i.+p of its principles, and of that delicate dual system of sovereignty, and that complicated scheme of double administration which it established. Admiration of that one-time so much traversed body of law became suddenly all the vogue, and criticism was estopped. From the first, even down to the time immediately preceding the war, the general scheme of the Const.i.tution went unchallenged; nullification itself did not always wear its true garb of independent state sovereignty, but often masqueraded as a const.i.tutional right; and the most violent policies took care to make show of at least formal deference to the wors.h.i.+pful fundamental law. The divine right of kings never ran a more prosperous course than did this unquestioned prerogative of the Const.i.tution to receive universal homage. The conviction that our inst.i.tutions were the best in the world, nay more, the model to which all civilized states must sooner or later conform, could not be laughed out of us by foreign critics, nor shaken out of us by the roughest jars of the system.
Now there is, of course, nothing in all this that is inexplicable, or even remarkable; any one can see the reasons for it and the benefits of it without going far out of his way; but the point which it is interesting to note is that we of the present generation are in the first season of free, outspoken, unrestrained const.i.tutional criticism.
We are the first Americans to hear our own countrymen ask whether the Const.i.tution is still adapted to serve the purposes for which it was intended; the first to entertain any serious doubts about the superiority of our own inst.i.tutions as compared with the systems of Europe; the first to think of remodeling the administrative machinery of the federal government, and of forcing new forms of responsibility upon Congress.
The evident explanation of this change of att.i.tude towards the Const.i.tution is that we have been made conscious by the rude shock of the war and by subsequent developments of policy, that there has been a vast alteration in the conditions of government; that the checks and balances which once obtained are no longer effective; and that we are really living under a const.i.tution essentially different from that which we have been so long wors.h.i.+ping as our own peculiar and incomparable possession. In short, this model government is no longer conformable with its own original pattern. While we have been s.h.i.+elding it from criticism it has slipped away from us. The n.o.ble charter of fundamental law given us by the Convention of 1787 is still our Const.i.tution; but it is now our _form of government_ rather in name than in reality, the form of the Const.i.tution being one of nicely adjusted, ideal balances, whilst the actual form of our present government is simply a scheme of congressional supremacy. National legislation, of course, takes force now as at first from the authority of the Const.i.tution; but it would be easy to reckon by the score acts of Congress which can by no means be squared with that great instrument's evident theory. We continue to think, indeed, according to long-accepted const.i.tutional formulae, and it is still politically unorthodox to depart from old-time phraseology in grave discussions of affairs; but it is plain to those who look about them that most of the commonly received opinions concerning federal const.i.tutional balances and administrative arrangements are many years behind the actual practices of the government at Was.h.i.+ngton, and that we are farther than most of us realize from the times and the policy of the framers of the Const.i.tution. It is a commonplace observation of historians that, in the development of const.i.tutions, names are much more persistent than the functions upon which they were originally bestowed; that inst.i.tutions constantly undergo essential alterations of character, whilst retaining the names conferred upon them in their first estate; and the history of our own Const.i.tution is but another ill.u.s.tration of this universal principle of inst.i.tutional change. There has been a constant growth of legislative and administrative practice, and a steady accretion of precedent in the management of federal affairs, which have broadened the sphere and altered the functions of the government without perceptibly affecting the vocabulary of our const.i.tutional language. Ours is, scarcely less than the British, a living and fecund system. It does not, indeed, find its rootage so widely in the hidden soil of unwritten law; its tap-root at least is the Const.i.tution; but the Const.i.tution is now, like Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, only the sap-centre of a system of government vastly larger than the stock from which it has branched,--a system some of whose forms have only very indistinct and rudimental beginnings in the simple substance of the Const.i.tution, and which exercises many functions apparently quite foreign to the primitive properties contained in the fundamental law.
The Const.i.tution itself is not a complete system; it takes none but the first steps in organization. It does little more than lay a foundation of principles. It provides with all possible brevity for the establishment of a government having, in several distinct branches, executive, legislative, and judicial powers. It vests executive power in a single chief magistrate, for whose election and inauguration it makes carefully definite provision, and whose privileges and prerogatives it defines with succinct clearness; it grants specifically enumerated powers of legislation to a representative Congress, outlining the organization of the two houses of that body and definitely providing for the election of its members, whose number it regulates and the conditions of whose choice it names; and it establishes a Supreme Court with ample authority of const.i.tutional interpretation, prescribing the manner in which its judges shall be appointed and the conditions of their official tenure. Here the Const.i.tution's work of organization ends, and the fact that it attempts nothing more is its chief strength.
For it to go beyond elementary provisions would be to lose elasticity and adaptability. The growth of the nation and the consequent development of the governmental system would snap asunder a const.i.tution which could not adapt itself to the new conditions of an advancing society. If it could not stretch itself to the measure of the times, it must be thrown off and left behind, as a by-gone device; and there can, therefore, be no question that our Const.i.tution has proved lasting because of its simplicity. It is a corner-stone, not a complete building; or, rather, to return to the old figure, it is a root, not a perfect vine.
The chief fact, therefore, of our national history is that from this vigorous tap-root has grown a vast const.i.tutional system,--a system branching and expanding in statutes and judicial decisions, as well as in unwritten precedent; and one of the most striking facts, as it seems to me, in the history of our politics is, that that system has never received complete and competent critical treatment at the hands of any, even the most acute, of our const.i.tutional writers. They view it, as it were, from behind. Their thoughts are dominated, it would seem, by those incomparable papers of the ”Federalist,” which, though they were written to influence only the voters of 1788, still, with a strange, persistent longevity of power, shape the const.i.tutional criticism of the present day, obscuring much of that development of const.i.tutional practice which has since taken place. The Const.i.tution in operation is manifestly a very different thing from the Const.i.tution of the books. ”An observer who looks at the living reality will wonder at the contrast to the paper description. He will see in the life much which is not in the books; and he will not find in the rough practice many refinements of the literary theory.”[1] It is, therefore, the difficult task of one who would now write at once practically and critically of our national government to escape from theories and attach himself to facts, not allowing himself to be confused by a knowledge of what that government was intended to be, or led away into conjectures as to what it may one day become, but striving to catch its present phases and to photograph the delicate organism in all its characteristic parts exactly as it is to-day; an undertaking all the more arduous and doubtful of issue because it has to be entered upon without guidance from writers of acknowledged authority.
The leading inquiry in the examination of any system of government must, of course, concern primarily the real depositaries and the essential machinery of power. There is always a centre of power: where in this system is that centre? in whose hands is self-sufficient authority lodged, and through what agencies does that authority speak and act?
The answers one gets to these and kindred questions from authoritative manuals of const.i.tutional exposition are not satisfactory, chiefly because they are contradicted by self-evident facts. It is said that there is no single or central force in our federal _scheme_; and so there is not in the federal scheme, but only a balance of powers and a nice adjustment of interactive checks, as all the books say. How is it, however, in the practical conduct of the federal government? In that, unquestionably, the predominant and controlling force, the centre and source of all motive and of all regulative power, is Congress. All niceties of const.i.tutional restriction and even many broad principles of const.i.tutional limitation have been overridden, and a thoroughly organized system of congressional control set up which gives a very rude negative to some theories of balance and some schemes for distributed powers, but which suits well with convenience, and does violence to none of the principles of self-government contained in the Const.i.tution.
This fact, however, though evident enough, is not on the surface. It does not obtrude itself upon the observation of the world. It runs through the undercurrents of government, and takes shape only in the inner channels of legislation and administration which are not open to the common view. It can be discerned most readily by comparing the ”literary theory” of the Const.i.tution with the actual machinery of legislation, especially at those points where that machinery regulates the relations of Congress with the executive departments, and with the att.i.tude of the houses towards the Supreme Court on those occasions, happily not numerous, when legislature and judiciary have come face to face in direct antagonism. The ”literary theory” is distinct enough; every American is familiar with the paper pictures of the Const.i.tution.
Most prominent in such pictures are the ideal checks and balances of the federal system, which may be found described, even in the most recent books, in terms substantially the same as those used in 1814 by John Adams in his letter to John Taylor. ”Is there,” says Mr. Adams, ”a const.i.tution upon record more complicated with balances than ours? In the first place, eighteen states and some territories are balanced against the national government.... In the second place, the House of Representatives is balanced against the Senate, the Senate against the House. In the third place, the executive authority is, in some degree, balanced against the legislative. In the fourth place, the judicial power is balanced against the House, the Senate, the executive power, and the state governments. In the fifth place, the Senate is balanced against the President in all appointments to office, and in all treaties.... In the sixth place, the people hold in their hands the balance against their own representatives, by biennial ... elections. In the seventh place, the legislatures of the several states are balanced against the Senate by s.e.xtennial elections. In the eighth place, the electors are balanced against the people in the choice of the President.
Here is a complicated refinement of balances, which, for anything I recollect, is an invention of our own and peculiar to us.”[2]