“Mr. Fillmore,” he is writing in November, 1850, “stands to his congress very much in the same relation in which I stood to my assembly in Jamaica.  There is the same absence of effective responsibility in the conduct of legislation, the same want of concurrent action between the parts of the political machine.  The whole business of legislation in the American congress, as well as in the state legislatures, is conducted in the manner in which railway business was conducted in the House of Commons at a time when it is to be feared that, notwithstanding the high standard of honour in the British parliament, there was a good deal of jobbing.  For instance, our reciprocity measure was pressed by us at Washington last session just as a railway bill in 1845 or 1846 would have been pressed in parliament There was no government to deal with.  The interests of the union as a whole, distinct from local and sectional interests, had no organ in the representative bodies; it was all a question of canvassing this member of congress or the other.  It is easy to perceive that, under such a system, jobbing must become not the exception but the rule,”—­remarks as true in 1901 as in 1850.

It is important also to dwell on the fact that in Canada the permanency of the tenure of public officials and the introduction of the secret ballot have been among the results of responsible government.  Through the influence and agency of the same system, valuable reforms have been made in Canada in the election laws, and the trial of controverted elections has been taken away from partisan election committees and given to a judiciary independent of political influences.  In these matters the irresponsible system of the United States has not been able to effect any needful reforms.  Such measures can be best carried by ministers having the initiation and direction of legislation and must necessarily be retarded when power is divided among several authorities having no unity of policy on any question.

Party government undoubtedly has its dangers arising from personal ambition and unscrupulous partisanship, but as long as men must range themselves in opposing camps on every subject, there is no other system practicable by which great questions can be carried and the working of representative government efficiently conducted.  The framers of the constitution of the United States no doubt thought they had succeeded in placing the president and his officers above party when they instituted the method of electing the former by a body of select electors chosen for that purpose in each state, who were expected to act irrespective of all political considerations.  A president so selected would probably choose his officers also on the same basis.  The practical results, however, have been to prove that in every country of popular and representative institutions party government must prevail.  Party elects men to the presidency and to the floor of the Senate and House of Representatives, and the election