When, therefore, the new communities of the colonised world have to choose a government, they must choose one in which all the institutions are of an obvious evident utility.  We catch the Americans smiling at our Queen with her secret mystery, and our Prince of Wales with his happy inaction.  It is impossible, in fact, to convince their prosaic minds that constitutional royalty is a rational government, that it is suited to a new age and an unbroken country, that those who start afresh can start with it.  The princelings who run about the world with excellent intentions, but an entire ignorance of business, are to them a locomotive advertisement that this sort of government is European in its limitations and mediaeval in its origin; that though it has yet a great part to play in the old States, it has no place or part in new States.  The realisme impitoyable which good critics find in a most characteristic part of the literature of the nineteenth century, is to be found also in its politics.  An ostentatious utility must characterise its creations.

The deepest interest, therefore, attaches to the problem of this essay.  If hereditary royalty had been essential to Parliamentary government, we might well have despaired of that government.  But accurate investigation shows that this royalty is not essential; that, upon an average, it is not even in a high degree useful; that though a king with high courage and fine discretion—­a king with a genius for the place—­is always useful, and at rare moments priceless, yet that a common king, a king such as birth brings, is of no use at difficult crises, while in the common course of things his aid is neither likely nor required—­he will do nothing, and he need do nothing.  But we happily find that a new country need not fall back into the fatal division of powers incidental to a Presidential government; it may, if other conditions serve, obtain the ready, well-placed, identical sort of sovereignty which belongs to the English Constitution, under the unroyal form of Parliamentary government.

No.  VIII.

The prerequisites of Cabinet government, and the peculiar form which
they have assumed in England.

Cabinet government is rare because its prerequisites are many.  It requires the co-existence of several national characteristics which are not often found together in the world, and which should be perceived more distinctly than they often are.  It is fancied that the possession of a certain intelligence, and a few simple virtues, are the sole requisites.  The mental and moral qualities are necessary, but much else is necessary also.  A Cabinet government is the government of a committee selected by the legislature, and there are therefore a double set of conditions to it:  first, those which are essential to all elective governments as such; and second, those which are requisite to this particular elective government.  There are prerequisites for the genus, and additional ones for the species.