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
favouritism; 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 an 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 an 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 certainly have hoped
that by this time such a crude elective machinery would have been
reduced to a secondary part. But, in fact, the gr