ction of most important
measures, and the defence and explanation of them, to other hands. On
this point, Mr. Justice Story remarks: "Thus, that open and public
responsibility for measures, which properly belongs to the executive in
all governments, especially in a republican government, as its greatest
security and strength, is completely done away. The executive is
compelled to resort to secret and unseen influence,--to private
interviews and private arrangements,--to accomplish its own appropriate
purposes, instead of proposing and sustaining its own duties and
measures by a bold and manly appeal to the nation in the face of its
representatives. One consequence of this state of things is, that there
never can be traced home to the executive any responsibility for the
measures which are planned and carried at its suggestion. Another
consequence will be--if it has not yet been--that measures will be
adopted or defeated by private intrigues, political combinations,
irresponsible recommendations, by all the blandishments of office, and
all the deadening weight of silent patronage; ... ministers may conceal
or evade any expression of their opinions."

In charity it should be presumed that in all nations which possess
anything worthy of the name of free institutions, the ablest men of the
political majority constitute the Cabinet; and, by the enactment we are
considering, all this talent is excluded from the councils of the
nation, whereas all the talent of the Opposition may be there arrayed
against their measures. I confess it is beyond my penetration, to see
how this can be reconciled to justice or common sense; in no one
principle of their Government did they more completely ignore the wisdom
and experience of the mother country, and in the object they had in view
they appear to have most completely failed. It is but fair to the
democrats to say it is no act of theirs; they inherited the misfortune,
and are likely to keep it, as it is one of the fundamental principles of
their Constitution, and they have a salutary dread--much to their
praise--of tinkering up any flaw they find in that document, lest in
mending one hole they make two. They have, as a nation, so greatly
prospered under its combined enactments, and possess such an unlimited
independence in their individual States, that although the exclusion of
the Cabinet is now very generally admitted to be an error, I saw no
inclination to moot the question; probably,