Volume II Part 11 (1/2)

Seward is now the Minister for Foreign Affairs in the States, and it is hardly too much to say that he has made himself a laughing-stock among the diplomatists of Europe, by the mixture of his ignorance and his arrogance. His reports to his own ministers during the single year of his office, as published by himself apparently with great satisfaction, are a monument not so much of his incapacity as of his want of training for such work. We all know his long state papers on the ”Trent” affair. What are we to think of a statesman who acknowledges the action of his country's servant to have been wrong, and in the same breath declares that he would have held by that wrong, had the material welfare of his country been thereby improved?

The United States have now created a great army and a great debt.

They will soon also have created a great navy. Affairs of other nations will press upon them, and they will press against the affairs of other nations. In this way statecraft will become necessary to them; and by degrees their ministers will become habile, graceful, adroit;--and perhaps crafty, as are the ministers of other nations.

And, moreover, the United States have had no outlying colonies or dependencies, such as an India and Canada are to us, as Cuba is and Mexico was to Spain, and as were the provinces of the Roman empire.

Territories she has had, but by the peculiar beneficence of her political arrangements, these territories have a.s.sumed the guise of sovereign States, and been admitted into federal partners.h.i.+p on equal terms, with a rapidity which has hardly left to the central Government the reality of any dominion of its own. We are inclined to suppose that these new States have been allowed to a.s.sume their equal privileges and State rights because they have been contiguous to the old States--as though it were merely an extension of frontier.

But this has not been so. California and Oregon have been very much further from Was.h.i.+ngton than the Canadas are from London. Indeed they are still further, and I hardly know whether they can be brought much nearer than Canada is to us, even with the a.s.sistance of railways.

But nevertheless California and Oregon were admitted as States, the former as quickly and the latter much more quickly than its population would seem to justify Congress in doing, according to the received ratio of population. A preference in this way has been always given by the United States to a young population over one that was older. Oregon with its 60,000 inhabitants has one representative.

New York with 4,000,000 inhabitants has thirty-three. But in order to be equal with Oregon, New York should have sixty-six. In this way the outlying populations have been encouraged to take upon themselves their own governance, and the governing power of the President and his cabinet has been kept within moderate limits.

But not the less is the position of the President very dominant in the eyes of us Englishmen by reason of the authority with which he is endowed. It is not that the scope of his power is great, but that he is so nearly irresponsible in the exercise of that power. We know that he can be impeached by the representatives and expelled from his office by the verdict of the Senate; but this, in fact, does not amount to much. Responsibility of this nature is doubtless very necessary, and prevents ebullitions of tyranny such as those in which a Sultan or an Emperor may indulge; but it is not that responsibility which especially recommends itself to the minds of free men. So much of responsibility they take as a matter of course, as they do the air which they breathe. It would be nothing to us to know that Lord Palmerston could be impeached for robbing the Treasury, or Lord Russell punished for selling us to Austria. It is well that such laws should exist, but we do not in the least suspect those n.o.ble lords of such treachery. We are anxious to know, not in what way they may be impeached and beheaded for great crimes, but by what method they may be kept constantly straight in small matters. That they are true and honest is a matter of course. But they must be obedient also, discreet, capable, and above all things of one mind with the public.

Let them be that; or if not they, then with as little delay as may be, some others in their place. That with us is the meaning of ministerial responsibility. To that responsibility all the cabinet is subject. But in the Government of the United States there is no such responsibility. The President is placed at the head of the executive for four years, and while he there remains no man can question him. It is not that the scope of his power is great. Our own Prime Minister is doubtless more powerful,--has a wider authority. But it is that within the scope of his power the President is free from all check. There are no reins, const.i.tutional or unconst.i.tutional, by which he can be restrained. He can absolutely repudiate a majority of both Houses, and refuse the pa.s.sage of any act of Congress even though supported by those majorities. He can retain the services of ministers distasteful to the whole country. He can place his own myrmidons at the head of the army and navy,--or can himself take the command immediately on his own shoulders. All this he can do, and there is no one that can question him.

It is hardly necessary that I should point out the fundamental difference between our King or Queen, and the President of the United States. Our Sovereign, we all know, is not responsible. Such is the nature of our const.i.tution. But there is not on that account any a.n.a.logy between the irresponsibility of the Queen and that of the President. The Queen can do no wrong; but therefore, in all matters of policy and governance, she must be ruled by advice. For that advice her ministers are responsible; and no act of policy or governance can be done in England as to which responsibility does not immediately settle on the shoulders appointed to bear it. But this is not so in the States. The President is nominally responsible.

But from that every-day working responsibility, which is to us so invaluable, the President is in fact free.

I will give an instance of this. Now, at this very moment of my writing, news has reached us that President Lincoln has relieved General Maclellan from the command of the whole army, that he has given separate commands to two other generals,--to General Halleck, namely, and alas! to General Fremont, and that he has altogether altered the whole organization of the military command as it previously existed. This he did not only during war, but with reference to a special battle, for the special fighting of which he, as ex-officio Commander-in-Chief of the forces, had given orders. I do not hereby intend to criticise this act of the President's, or to point out that that has been done which had better have been left undone. The President, in a strategetical point of view, may have been,--very probably has been, quite right. I, at any rate, cannot say that he has been wrong. But then neither can anybody else say so with any power of making himself heard. Of this action of the President's, so terribly great in its importance to the nation, no one has the power of expressing any opinion to which the President is bound to listen. For four years he has this sway, and at the end of four years he becomes so powerless that it is not then worth the while of any demagogue in a fourth-rate town to occupy his voice with that President's name. The anger of the country as to the things done both by Pierce and Buchanan is very bitter. But who wastes a thought upon either of these men? A past President in the United States is of less consideration than a past Mayor in an English borough. Whatever evil he may have done during his office, when out of office he is not worth the powder which would be expended in an attack.

But the President has his ministers as our Queen has hers. In one sense he has such ministers. He has high state servants who under him take the control of the various departments, and exercise among them a certain degree of patronage and executive power. But they are the President's ministers, and not the ministers of the people. Till lately there has been no chief minister among them, nor am I prepared to say that there is any such chief at present. According to the existing theory of the government these gentlemen have simply been the confidential servants of the commonwealth under the President, and have been attached each to his own department without concerted political alliance among themselves, without any acknowledged chief below the President, and without any combined responsibility even to the President. If one minister was in fault--let us say the Postmaster-General,--he alone was in fault, and it did not fall to the lot of any other minister either to defend him, or to declare that his conduct was indefensible. Each owed his duty and his defence to the President alone; and each might be removed alone, without explanation given by the President to the others. I imagine that the late practice of the President's cabinet has in some degree departed from this theory; but if so, the departure has sprung from individual ambition rather than from any preconcerted plan. Some one place in the cabinet has seemed to give to some one man an opportunity of making himself pre-eminent, and of this opportunity advantage has been taken. I am not now intending to allude to any individual, but am endeavouring to indicate the way in which a ministerial cabinet, after the fas.h.i.+on of our British cabinet, is struggling to get itself created. No doubt the position of Foreign Secretary has for some time past been considered as the most influential under the President.

This has been so much the case that many have not hesitated to call the Secretary of State the chief minister. At the present moment, May, 1862, the gentleman who is at the head of the war department has, I think, in his own hands greater power than any of his colleagues.

It will probably come to pa.s.s before long that one special minister will be the avowed leader of the cabinet, and that he will be recognized as the chief servant of the State under the President. Our own cabinet, which now-a-days seems with us to be an inst.i.tution as fixed as Parliament and as necessary as the throne, has grown by degrees into its present shape, and is not, in truth, nearly so old as many of us suppose it to be. It shaped itself, I imagine, into its present form, and even into its present joint responsibility, during the reign of George III. It must be remembered that even with us there is no such thing as a const.i.tutional Prime Minister, and that our Prime Minister is not placed above the other ministers in any manner that is palpable to the senses. He is paid no more than the others; he has no superior t.i.tle; he does not take the highest rank among them; he never talks of his subordinates, but always of his colleagues; he has a t.i.tle of his own, that of First Lord of the Treasury, but it implies no heads.h.i.+p in the cabinet. That he is the head of all political power in the nation, the Atlas who has to bear the globe, the G.o.d in whose hands rest the thunderbolts and the showers, all men do know. No man's position is more a.s.sured to him.

But the bounds of that position are written in no book, are defined by no law, have settled themselves not in accordance with the recorded wisdom of any great men, but as expediency and the fitness of political things in Great Britain have seemed from time to time to require. This drifting of great matters into their proper places is not as closely in accordance with the idiosyncrasies of the American people as it is with our own. They would prefer to define by words, as the French do, what shall be the exact position of every public servant connected with their Government; or rather of every public servant with whom the people shall be held as having any concern.

But nevertheless, I think it will come to pa.s.s that a cabinet will gradually form itself at Was.h.i.+ngton as it has done at London, and that of that cabinet there will be some recognized and ostensible chief.

But a Prime Minister in the United States can never take the place there which is taken here by our Premier. Over our Premier there is no one politically superior. The highest political responsibility of the nation rests on him. In the States this must always rest on the President, and any minister, whatever may be his name or a.s.sumed position, can only be responsible through the President. And it is here especially that the working of the United States system of Government seems to me deficient,--appears as though it wanted something to make it perfect and round at all points. Our ministers retire from their offices, as do the Presidents; and indeed the ministerial term of office with us, though of course not fixed, is in truth much shorter than the Presidential term of four years. But our ministers do not, in fact, ever go out. At one time they take one position, with pay, patronage, and power; and at another time another position, without these good things; but in either position they are acting as public men, and are, in truth, responsible for what they say and do. But the President, on whom it is presumed that the whole of the responsibility of the United States Government rests, goes out at a certain day, and of him no more is heard. There is no future before him to urge him on to constancy; no hope of other things beyond, of greater honours and a wider fame, to keep him wakeful in his country's cause. He has already enrolled his name on the list of his country's rulers, and received what reward his country can give him. Conscience, duty, patriotism may make him true to his place.

True to his place, in a certain degree, they will make him. But ambition and hope of things still to come are the moving motives in the minds of most men. Few men can allow their energies to expand to their fullest extent in the cold atmosphere of duty alone. The President of the States must feel that he has reached the top of the ladder, and that he soon will have done with life. As he goes out he is a dead man. And what can be expected from one who is counting the last lingering hours of his existence? ”It will not be in my time,”

Mr. Buchanan is reported to have said, when a friend spoke to him with warning voice of the coming rebellion. ”It will not be in my time.” In the old days, before democracy had prevailed in upsetting that system of Presidential election which the const.i.tution had intended to fix as permanent, the Presidents were generally re-elected for a second term. Of the seven first Presidents five were sent back to the White House for a second period of four years.

But this has never been done since the days of General Jackson; nor will it be done, unless a stronger conservative reaction takes place than the country even as yet seems to promise. As things have lately ordered themselves, it may almost be said that no man in the Union would be so improbable a candidate for the Presidency as the outgoing President. And it has been only natural that it should be so. Looking at the men themselves who have lately been chosen, the fault has not consisted in their non-reelection, but in their original selection.

There has been no desire for great men; no search after a man of such a nature, that when tried the people should be anxious to keep him.

”It will not be in my time,” says the expiring President. And so, without dismay, he sees the empire of his country slide away from him.

A President, with the possibility of re-election before him, would be as a minister who goes out, knowing that he may possibly come in again before the session is over,--and perhaps believing that the chances of his doing so are in his favour. Under the existing political phase of things in the United States, no President has any such prospect;--but the ministers of the President have that chance.

It is no uncommon thing at present for a minister under one President to reappear as a minister under another; but a statesman has no a.s.surance that he will do so because he has shown ministerial capacity. We know intimately the names of all our possible ministers,--too intimately as some of us think,--and would be taken much by surprise if a gentleman without an official reputation were placed at the head of a high office. If something of this feeling prevailed as to the President's cabinet, if there were some a.s.surance that competent statesmen would be appointed as Secretaries of State, a certain amount of national responsibility would by degrees attach itself to them, and the President's shoulders would, to that amount, be lightened. As it is, the President pretends to bear a burden which, if really borne, would indicate the possession of Herculean shoulders. But, in fact, the burden at present is borne by no one.

The government of the United States is not in truth responsible either to the people or to Congress.

But these ministers, if it be desired that they shall have weight in the country, should sit in Congress either as senators or as representatives. That they cannot so sit without an amendment of the const.i.tution I have explained in the previous chapter; and any such amendment cannot be very readily made. Without such seats they cannot really share the responsibility of the President, or be in any degree amenable to public opinion for the advice which they give in their public functions. It will be said that the const.i.tution has expressly intended that they should not be responsible, and such, no doubt, has been the case. But the const.i.tution, good as it is, cannot be taken as perfect. The government has become greater than seems to have been contemplated when that code was drawn up. It has spread itself as it were over a wider surface, and has extended to matters which it was not then necessary to touch. That theory of governing by the means of little men was very well while the government itself was small.

A President and his clerks may have sufficed when there were from thirteen to eighteen States; while there were no territories, or none at least that required government; while the population was still below five millions; while a standing army was an evil not known and not feared; while foreign politics was a troublesome embroglio in which it was quite unnecessary that the United States should take a part. Now there are thirty-four States. The territories populated by American citizens stretch from the States on the Atlantic to those on the Pacific. There is a population of thirty million souls. At the present moment the United States are employing more soldiers than any other nation, and have acknowledged the necessity of maintaining a large army even when the present troubles shall be over. In addition to this the United States have occasion for the use of statecraft with all the great kingdoms of Europe. That theory of ruling by little men will not do much longer. It will be well that they should bring forth their big men and put them in the place of rulers.

The President has at present seven ministers. They are the Secretary of State, who is supposed to have the direction of Foreign Affairs; the Secretary of the Treasury, who answers to our Chancellor of the Exchequer; the Secretaries of the Army and of the Navy; the Minister of the Interior; the Attorney-General; and the Postmaster-General.

If these officers were allowed to hold seats in one House or in the other,--or rather if the President were enjoined to place in these offices men who were known as members of Congress, not only would the position of the President's ministers be enhanced and their weight increased, but the position also of Congress would be enhanced and the weight of Congress would be increased. I may, perhaps, best exemplify this by suggesting what would be the effect on our Parliament by withdrawing from it the men who at the present moment,--or at any moment,--form the Queen's cabinet. I will not say that by adding to Congress the men who usually form the President's cabinet, a weight would be given equal to that which the withdrawal of the British cabinet would take from the British Parliament. I cannot pay that compliment to the President's choice of servants. But the relations.h.i.+p between Congress and the President's ministers would gradually come to resemble that which exists between Parliament and the Queen's ministers. The Secretaries of State and of the Treasury would after a while obtain that honour of leading the Houses which is exercised by our high political officers, and the dignity added to the positions would make the places worthy of the acceptance of great men. It is hardly so at present. The career of one of the President's ministers is not a very high career as things now stand; nor is the man supposed to have achieved much who has achieved that position. I think it would be otherwise if the ministers were the leaders of the legislative Houses. To Congress itself would be given the power of questioning and ultimately of controlling these ministers. The power of the President would no doubt be diminished as that of Congress would be increased. But an alteration in that direction is in itself desirable. It is the fault of the present system of government in the United States that the President has too much of power and weight, while the Congress of the nation lacks power and weight. As matters now stand, Congress has not that dignity of position which it should hold; and it is without it because it is not endowed with that control over the officers of the government which our Parliament is enabled to exercise.

The want of this close connection with Congress and the President's ministers has been so much felt, that it has been found necessary to create a medium of communication. This has been done by a system which has now become a recognized part of the machinery of the government, but which is, I believe, founded on no regularly organized authority. At any rate no provision is made for it in the const.i.tution; nor, as far as I am aware, has it been established by any special enactment or written rule. Nevertheless, I believe I am justified in saying that it has become a recognized link in the system of government adopted by the United States. In each House standing committees are named, to which are delegated the special consideration of certain affairs of state. There are, for instance, committees of foreign affairs, of finance, the judiciary committee, and others of a similar nature. To these committees are referred all questions which come before the House bearing on the special subject to which each is devoted. Questions of taxation are referred to the finance committee before they are discussed in the House; and the House, when it goes into such discussion, has before it the report of the committee. In this way very much of the work of the legislature is done by branches of each House, and by selected men whose time and intellects are devoted to special subjects. It is easy to see that much time and useless debate may be thus saved, and I am disposed to believe that this system of committees has worked efficiently and beneficially. The mode of selection of the members has been so contrived as to give to each political party that amount of preponderance in each committee which such party holds in the House.

If the democrats have in the Senate a majority, it would be within their power to vote none but democrats into the committee on finance; but this would be manifestly unjust to the republican party, and the injustice would itself frustrate the object of the party in power; therefore the democrats simply vote to themselves a majority in each committee, keeping to themselves as great a preponderance in the committee as they have in the whole House, and arranging also that the chairman of the committee shall belong to their own party. By these committees the chief legislative measures of the country are originated and inaugurated,--as they are with us by the ministers of the Crown, and the chairman of each committee is supposed to have a certain amicable relation with that minister who presides over the office with which his committee is connected. Mr. Sumner is at present chairman of the committee on foreign affairs, and he is presumed to be in connection with Mr. Seward, who, as Secretary of State, has the management of the foreign relations of the Government.

But it seems to me that this supposed connection between the committees and the ministers is only a makes.h.i.+ft, showing by its existence the absolute necessity of close communication between the executive and the legislative, but showing also by its imperfections the great want of some better method of communication. In the first place the chairman of the committee is in no way bound to hold any communication with the minister. He is simply a senator, and as such has no ministerial duties, and can have none. He holds no appointment under the President, and has no palpable connection with the executive. And then it is quite as likely that he may be opposed in politics to the minister as that he may agree with him. If the two be opposed to each other on general politics, it may be presumed that they cannot act together in union on one special subject.