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, 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.