by habit, thought, and life, is acclimatized to its ways.

There is every reason to expect that a parliamentary statesman will be a man of quite sufficient intelligence, quite enough various knowledge, quite enough miscellaneous experience, to represent effectually general sense in opposition to bureaucratic sense. Most cabinet ministers in charge of considerable departments are men of superior ability; I have heard an eminent living statesman of long experience. say that in his time he only knew one instance to the contrary. And there is the best protection that it shall be so: a considerable cabinet minister has to defend his department in the face of mankind; and though distant observers and sharp writers may depreciate it, this is a very difficult thing. A fool who has publicly to explain great affairs, who has publicly to answer detective questions, who has publicly to argue against able and quick opponents, must soon be shown to be a fool. The very nature of parliamentary government answers for the discovery of substantial incompetence.

At any rate, none of the competing forms of government have nearly so effectual a procedure for putting a good untechnical minister to correct and impel the routine ones. There are but four important forms of government in the present state of the world,— the parliamentary, the presidential, the hereditary, and the dictatorial or revolutionary. Of these I have shown that as now worked in America, the presidential form of government is incompatible with a skilled bureaucracy if the whole official class change when a new party goes out or comes in, a good official system is impossible. Even if more officials should be permanent in America than now, still vast numbers will always be changed. The whole issue is based on a single election, -on the choice of President; by that internecine conflict all else is won or lost; the

managers of the contest have that greatest possible facility in using what I may call patronage bribery. Everybody knows that as a fact, the President can give what places he likes to what persons; and when his friends tell A B, "If we win, C D shall be turned out of Utica post-office, and you, A B, shall have it," A B believes it, and is justified in doing so: but no individual member of parliament can promise place effectually, -he may not be able to give the places; his party may come in, but he will be powerless. In the United States, party intensity is aggravated by concentrating an overwhelming importance on a single contest; and the efficiency of promised offices as a means of corruption is augmented because the victor can give what he likes to whom he likes.

Nor is this the only defect of a presidential government in reference to the choice of officers: the president has the principal anomaly of a parliamentary government without having its corrective. At each change of party the president distributes (as here) the principal offices to his principal supporters; but he has an opportunity for singular favoritism: the minister lurks in the office, he need do nothing in public, he need not show for years whether he is a fool or wise. The nation can tell what a parliamentary member is by the open test of parliament; but no one, save from actual contact or by rare position, can tell anything certain of a presidential minister.

The case of a minister under a hereditary form of government is yet worse: the hereditary king may be weak; may be under the government of women; may appoint a minister from childish motives, may remove one from absurd whims. There is no security that a hereditary king will be competent to choose a good chief minister, and thousands of such kings have chosen millions of bad ministers.

By the dictatorial or revolutionary sort of government, I mean that very important sort in which the sovereign - the absolute sovereign - is selected by insurrection. In theory, one would have certainly hoped that by this time such a crude elective machinery would have been reduced to a secondary part; but in fact the greatest nation (or perhaps, after the exploits of Bismarck, I should say one of the two greatest nations) of the Continent vacillates between the revolutionary and the parliamentary, and now is governed under the revolutionary form: France elects its ruler in the streets of Paris. Flatterers may suggest that the democratic Empire will become hereditary, but close observers know that it cannot. The idea of the government is that the Emperor represents the people in capacity, in judgment, in instinct; but no family through generations can have sufficient or half sufficient mind to do so, the representative despot must be chosen by fighting, as Napoleon I. and Napoleon III. were chosen. And such a government is likely, whatever be its other defects, to have a far better and abler administration than any other government: the head of the government must be a man of the most consummate ability; he cannot keep his place, he can hardly keep his life, unless he is. He is sure to be active, because he knows that his power, and perhaps his head, may be lost if he be negligent the whole frame of his state is strained to keep down revolution. The most difficult of all political problems is to be solved, - the people are to be at once thoroughly restrained and thoroughly pleased. The executive must be like a steel shirt of the Middle Ages, extremely hard and extremely flexible. It must give way to attractive novelties which do not hurt, it must resist such as are dangerous; it must maintain old things which are good and fitting, it must alter such as cramp and give pain. The dictator dare not appoint a bad minister if he would. I admit

that such a despot is a better selecter of administrators than a parliament; that he will know how to mix fresh minds and used minds better, that he is under a stronger motive to combine them well; that here is to be seen the best of all choosers with the keenest motives to choose: but I need not prove in England that the revolutionary selection of rulers obtains administrative efficiency at a price altogether transcending its value; that it shocks credit by its catastrophes; that for intervals it does not protect property or life; that it maintains an undergrowth of fear through all prosperity; that it may take years to find the true capable despot, that the interregna of the incapable are full of all evil; that the fit despot may die as soon as found, that the good administration and all else hang by the thread of his

life.

But if, with the exception of this terrible revolutionary government, a parliamentary government upon principle surpasses all its competitors in administrative efficiency, why is it that our English government, which is beyond comparison the best of parliamentary governments, is not celebrated through the world for administrative efficiency? It is noted for many things, why is it not noted for that? why, according to popular belief, is it rather characterized by the very contrary?

One great reason of the diffused impression is, that the English government attempts so much. Our military system is that which is most attacked: objectors say we spend much more on our army than the great military monarchies, and yet with an inferior result; but then, what we attempt is incalculably more difficult. The Continental monarchies have only to defend compact European territories by the many soldiers whom they force to fight; the English try to defend without any compulsion-only by such soldiers as they persuade to serve-territories far surpassing

all Europe in magnitude, and situated all over the habitable globe. Our Horse Guards and War Office may not be at all perfect, I believe they are not; but if they had sufficient recruits selected by force of law, if they had, as in Prussia, the absolute command of each man's time for a few years, and the right to call him out afterwards when they liked,we should be much surprised at the sudden ease and quickness with which they did things. I have no doubt, too, that any accomplished soldier of the Continent would reject as impossible what we after a fashion effect: he would not attempt to defend a vast scattered empire, with many islands, a long frontier line in every continent, and a very tempting bit of plunder at the center, by mere volunteer recruits, who mostly come from the worst class of the people, whom the Great Duke called the "scum of the earth," who come in uncertain numbers year by year, who by some political accident may not come in adequate numbers or at all in the year we need them most. Our War Office attempts what foreign war offices (perhaps rightly) would not try at; their officers have means of incalculable force denied to ours, though ours is set to harder tasks.

Again, the English navy undertakes to defend a line of coast and a set of dependencies far surpassing those of any Continental power; and the extent of our operations is a singular difficulty just now. It requires us to keep a large stock of ships and arms, but on the other hand there are most important reasons why we should not keep much: the naval art and the military art are both in a state of transition; the last discovery of to-day is out of date and superseded by an antagonistic discovery to-morrow; any large accumulation of vessels or guns is sure to contain much that will be useless, unfitting, antediluvian, when it comes to be tried. There are two cries against the Admiralty which go on side by side: one