ative of outside
sense. "There is some one," says the true French saying, "who is more
able than Talleyrand, more able than Napoleon. Cest tout le monde."
That many-sided sense finds no microcosm in any single individual.
Still less are the critical function and the animating function of a
Parliamentary Minister likely to be perfectly exercised by one and the
same man. Impelling power and restraining wisdom are as opposite as any
two things, and are rarely found together. And even if the natural mind
of the Parliamentary Minister was perfect, long contact with the office
would destroy his use. Inevitably he would accept the ways of office,
think its thoughts, live its life. The "dyer's hand would be subdued to
what it works in". If the function of a Parliamentary Minister is to be
an outsider to his office, we must not choose one who, by habit,
thought, and life, is acclimatised 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,