It is not remarkable, then, that our own Federal government, which is essentially a copy of the British government of its day, should have incorporated this feature of the recall, which in England had just passed from its revolutionary to its legal stage.  It was beginning to be recognized then that a vote of the people’s representatives could recall a monarch, and the English monarchy is now essentially elective.  But to make assurance doubly sure, the British government, in its later evolution, has been practically separated from the monarch’s person, and any government may be simply overthrown or “recalled” by a vote of lack of confidence in the House of Commons, followed, if need be, by a defeat in a general election.  We have not yet adopted this feature.  Our President is still the head of our government, and he and all other elected Federal officers serve their terms out, no matter whether the people have confidence in them or not.  But the makers of our Constitution improved on the British government as they found it.  They made the term of the executive four years instead of life and systematized the “recall” by providing for impeachment proceedings—­a plan already recognized in Britain in the case of certain administrative and judicial officers.

As it stands at present we have a temporary elective monarch with more power, even nominally, than most European constitutional monarchs and more actually than many so-called absolute monarchs such as the Czar or the Sultan.  In case he should abuse the power that we have given him, he may be removed from office after due trial, by our elected representatives.

In following out these ideas in later years, we are gradually evolving a form of government that is both more despotic and more democratic.  We are combining the legislative and executive power in the hands of a few persons, hampering them very little in their exercise of it, and making it possible to recall them by direct vote of the body of citizens that elected them.  I think we may describe the tendency of public thought in governmental matters as a tendency toward a despotism under legalized democratic control.  It may be claimed, I think, that the best features of despotism and democracy may thus be utilized, with a minimum of the evils of each.

It was believed by the ancients, and we frequently see it stated today, that the ideal government would he government by a perfectly good despot.  This takes the citizens into account only as persons who are governed, and not as persons who govern or help to govern.  It is pleasant, perhaps, to have plenty of servants to wait upon one, but surely health, physical, mental and moral, waits on him who does most things for himself.  I once heard Lincoln Steffens say:  “What we want is not ‘Good Government’; it is Self-Government.”  But is it not possible to get the advantage of government by a few, with its possibilities of continuous policy and its freedom from “crowd-psychology,”