. Any miscarriage of democracy here reacts against progress in
Great Britain.

If you seek the real meaning of most modern disparagement of popular or
parliamentary government, it is no more than this, that no politics will
suffice of themselves to make a nation's soul. What could be more true?
Who says it will? But we may depend upon it that the soul will be best
kept alive in a nation where there is the highest proportion of those
who, in the phrase of an old worthy of the seventeenth century, think it
a part of a man's religion to see to it that his country be well
governed.

Democracy, they tell us, is afflicted by mediocrity and by sterility.
But has not democracy in my country, as in yours, shown before now that
it well knows how to choose rulers neither mediocre nor sterile; men
more than the equals in unselfishness, in rectitude, in clear sight, in
force, of any absolutist statesman, that ever in times past bore the
scepter? If I live a few months, or it may be even a few weeks longer, I
hope to have seen something of three elections--one in Canada, one in
the United Kingdom, and the other here. With us, in respect of
leadership, and apart from height of social prestige, the personage
corresponding to the president is, as you know, the prime minister. Our
general election this time, owing to personal accident of the passing
hour, may not determine quite exactly who shall be the prime minister,
but it will determine the party from which the prime minister shall be
taken. On normal occasions our election of a prime minister is as direct
and personal as yours, and in choosing a member of Parliament people
were really for a whole generation choosing whether Disraeli or
Gladstone or Salisbury should be head of the government.

The one central difference between your system and ours is that the
American president is in for a fixed time, whereas the British prime
minister depends upon the support of the House of Commons. If he loses
that, his power may not endure a twelvemonth; if on the other hand, he
keeps it, he may hold office for a dozen years. There are not many more
interesting or important questions in political discussion than the
question whether our cabinet government or your presidential system of
government is the better. This is not the place to argue it.

Between 1868 and now--a period of thirty-six years--we have had eight
ministries. This would give an average life of four and a half years. Of
thes