The American Commonwealth. Viscount James Bryce
Hamilton was by far the ablest man among those who soon came to form the Federalist party, the party which called for a strong executive, and desired to subordinate the states to the central authority. He soon became recognized as its leader. Knox was of the same way of thinking. Dissensions presently arose between Jefferson and Hamilton, ending in open hostility, but Washington retained them both as ministers till Jefferson retired in 1794 and Hamilton in 1795. The second president, John Adams, kept on the ministers of his predecessor, being in accord with their opinions, for they and he belonged to the now full-grown Federalist party. But before he quitted office he had quarrelled with most of them, having taken important steps without their knowledge and against their wishes. Jefferson, the third president, was a thorough-going party leader, who naturally chose his ministers from his own political adherents. As all subsequent presidents have been seated by one or other party, all have felt bound to appoint a party cabinet though not necessarily one of strong party men. Their party expects it; and they prefer to be advised by people of their own way of thinking.
So far, an American cabinet resembles a British one. It is composed of members of one party, if not of prominent party leaders. But now mark the differences. The parliamentary system of England and of those countries which like Belgium, Italy, and the self-governing British colonies, have more or less modelled themselves upon England, rests on four principles.
The head of the executive is irresponsible. Responsibility attaches to the cabinet, i.e., to the body of ministers who advise him, so that if he errs, it is through their fault; they suffer and he escapes. The ministers cannot allege, as a defence for any act of theirs, the command of the Crown. If the Crown gives them an order of which they disapprove, they ought to resign.
The ministers sit in the legislature, practically forming in England, as has been observed by Bagehot, the most acute of English constitutional writers, a committee of the legislature, chosen by the majority for the time being.
The ministers are accountable to the legislature, and must resign office12 as soon as they lose its confidence.
The ministers are jointly as well as severally liable for their acts: i.e., the blame of an act done by any of them falls on the whole cabinet, unless one of them chooses to take it entirely on himself and retire from office. Their responsibility is collective.
None of these principles holds true in America. The president is personally responsible for his acts, not indeed to Congress, but to the people, by whom he is chosen. No means exist of enforcing this responsibility, except by impeachment, but as his power lasts for four years only, and is much restricted, this is no serious evil. He cannot avoid responsibility by alleging the advice of his ministers, for he is not bound to follow it, and they are bound to obey him or retire. The ministers do not sit in Congress. They are not accountable to it, but to the president, their master. It may request their attendance before a committee, as it may require the attendance of any other witness, but they have no opportunity of expounding and justifying to Congress as a whole their own, or rather their master’s, policy. Hence an adverse vote of Congress does not affect their or his position. If they propose to take a step which requires money, and Congress refuses the requisite appropriation, the step cannot be taken. But a dozen votes of censure will neither compel them to resign nor oblige the president to pause in any line of conduct which is within his constitutional rights. This, however strange it may seem to a European, is a necessary consequence of the fact that the president, and by consequence his cabinet, do not derive their authority from Congress. Suppose (as befell in 1878–79) a Republican president, with a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. The president, unless of course he is convinced that the nation has changed its mind since it elected him, is morally bound to follow out the policy which he professed as a candidate, and which the majority of the nation must be held in electing him to have approved. That policy is, however, opposed to the views of the present majority of Congress. They are right to check him as far as they can. He is right to follow out his own views and principles in spite of them so far as the Constitution and the funds at his disposal permit. A deadlock may follow. But deadlocks may happen under any system, except that of an omnipotent sovereign, be he a man or an assembly, the risk of deadlocks being indeed the price which a nation pays for the safeguard of constitutional checks.
In this state of things one cannot properly talk of the cabinet apart from the president. An American administration resembles not so much the cabinets of England and France as the group of ministers who surround the czar or the sultan, or who executed the bidding of a Roman emperor like Constantine or Justinian. Such ministers are severally responsible to their master, and are severally called in to counsel him, but they have not necessarily any relations with one another, nor any duty of collective action. So while the president commits each department to the minister whom the law provides, and may if he chooses leave it altogether to that minister, the executive acts done are his own acts, by which the country will judge him; and still more is his policy as a whole his own policy, and not the policy of his ministers taken together.13 The ministers meet in council (often twice every week while Congress is sitting), but may not have much to settle when they meet, since they have no parliamentary tactics to contrive, few bills to prepare, few problems of foreign policy to discuss. They are not a government, as Europeans understand the term; they are a group of heads of departments, whom the chief, though he usually consults them separately, often finds it useful to bring together in one room for a talk about politics, including appointments, or to settle some administrative question which lies on the borderland between the provinces of two ministers. A significant illustration of the contrast between the English and American systems may be found in the fact that whereas an English monarch has never (since Queen Anne’s time) sat in his own cabinet, because if he did he would be deemed accountable for its decisions, an American president always does, because he is accountable, and really needs advice to help him, not to shield him.14
The so-called cabinet is unknown to the statutes as well as to the Constitution of the United States. So is the English cabinet unknown to the law of England. But then the English cabinet is a part, is, in fact, a committee, though no doubt an informal committee, of a body as old as Parliament itself, the Privy Council, or Curia Regis. Of the ancient institutions of England which reappear in the Constitution of the United States, the Privy Council is not one.15 It may have seemed to the Convention of 1787 to be already obsolete. Even in England it was then already a belated survival from an earlier order of things, and now it lives on only in its committees, three of which, the Board of Trade, the Board of Education, and the Agricultural Department, serve as branches of the administration, one, the Judicial Committee, is a law court, and one, the Cabinet, is the virtual executive of the nation.16 The framers of the American Constitution saw its unsuitability to their conditions. It was nominated, while with them a council must have been elective. Its only effect would have been to control the president, but for domestic administration control is scarcely needed, because the president has only to execute the laws, while in foreign affairs and appointments the Senate controls him already. A third body, over and above the two houses of Congress, was in fact superfluous. The Senate may appear in some points to resemble the English Privy Council of the seventeenth century, because it advises the executive in certain matters; but there is all the difference in the world between being advised by those whom you have yourself chosen and those whom election by others forces upon you. So it happens that the relations of the Senate and the president are seldom cordial, much less confidential, even when he and the majority of the Senate belong to the same party, because the Senate and the president are rival powers jealous of one another.
Note on Army and Navy
The army and navy of the United States have greatly increased in recent years.
| Number of officers and men in the army was in 1889 | 26,235 | |
| In 1912 it was | Officers | 4,947 |
| Men | 87,279 | |
| The cost of the army was in 1889 | $42,381,671 | |
| In 1913 the army appropriations reached | $103,747,441 | |
| In the navy the number of officers and men was: | ||
| In 1889 | 9,831 | |
| In 1913 | 57,178 | |
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