But It Does Amount To Very Much; It Enables The
Senate To Fetter The President, If The Senate Should Be So Inclined,
Both As Regards Foreign Politics And Home Politics.
A Secretary for
Foreign Affairs at Washington may write what dispatches he pleases
without reference to the Senate; but the Senate interferes before
those dispatches can have resulted in any fact which may be
detrimental to the nation.
It is not only that the Senate is
responsible for such treaties as are made, but that the President is
deterred from the making of treaties for which the Senate would
decline to make itself responsible. Even though no treaty should
ever be refused its sanction by the Senate, the protecting power of
the Senate in that matter would not on that account have been less
necessary or less efficacious. Though the bars with which we
protect our house may never have been tried by a thief, we do not
therefore believe that our house would have been safe if such bars
had been known to be wanting. And then, as to that matter of State
appointments, is it not the fact that all governing power consists
in the selection of the agents by whom the action of government
shall be carried on? It must come to this, I imagine, when the
argument is pushed home. The power of the most powerful man depends
only on the extent of his authority over his agents. According to
the Constitution of the United States, the President can select no
agent either at home or abroad, for purposes either of peace or war,
or to the employment of whom the Senate does not agree with him.
Such a rule as this should save the nation from the use of
disreputable agents as public servants. It might perhaps have done
much more toward such salvation than it has as yet effected, and it
may well be hoped that it will in future do more.
Such are the executive powers of the Senate; and it is, I think,
remarkable that the Senate has always used these powers with extreme
moderation. It has never shown a factious inclination to hinder
government by unnecessary interference, or a disposition to clip the
President's wings by putting itself altogether at variance with him.
I am not quite sure whether some fault may not have lain on the
other side; whether the Senate may not have been somewhat slack in
exercising the protective privileges given to it by the
Constitution. And here I cannot but remark how great is the
deference paid to all governors and edicts of government throughout
the United States. One would have been disposed to think that such
a feeling would be stronger in an old country such as Great Britain
than in a young country such as the States. But I think that it is
not so. There is less disposition to question the action of
government either at Washington or at New York, than there is in
London. Men in America seem to be content when they have voted in
their governors, and to feel that for them all political action is
over until the time shall come for voting for others. And this
feeling, which seems to prevail among the people, prevails also in
both Houses of Congress. Bitter denunciations against the
President's policy or the President's ministers are seldom heard.
Speeches are not often made with the object of impeding the action
of government. That so small and so grave a body as the Senate
should abstain from factious opposition to the government when
employed on executive functions, was perhaps to be expected. It is
of course well that it should be so. I confess, however, that it
has appeared to me that the Senate has not used the power placed in
its hands as freely as the Constitution has intended, But I look at
the matter as an Englishman, and as an Englishman I can endure no
government action which is not immediately subject to parliamentary
control.
Such are the governing powers of the United States. I think it will
be seen that they are much more limited in their scope of action
than with us; but within that scope of action much more independent
and self-sufficient. And, in addition to this, those who exercise
power in the United States are not only free from immediate
responsibility, but are not made subject to the hope or fear of
future judgment. Success will bring no award, and failure no
punishment. I am not aware that any political delinquency has ever
yet brought down retribution on the head of the offender in the
United States, or that any great deed has been held as entitling the
doer of it to his country's gratitude. Titles of nobility they have
none; pensions they never give; and political disgrace is unknown.
The line of politics would seem to be cold and unalluring. It is
cold; and would be unalluring, were it not that as a profession it
is profitable. In much of this I expect that a change will
gradually take place. The theory has been that public affairs
should be in the hands of little men. The theory was intelligible
while the public affairs were small; but they are small no longer,
and that theory, I fancy, will have to alter itself. Great men are
needed for the government, and in order to produce great men a
career of greatness must be opened to them. I can see no reason why
the career and the men should not be forthcoming.
CHAPTER XI.
THE LAW COURTS AND LAWYERS OF THE UNITED STATES.
I do not propose to make any attempt to explain in detail the
practices and rules of the American courts of law. No one but a
lawyer should trust himself with such a task, and no lawyer would be
enabled to do so in the few pages which I shall here devote to the
subject.
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