For these reasons, though we may use the present Constitution of France as a useful aid to our imaginations, in conceiving of a purely Parliamentary Republic, of a monarchy minus the monarch, we must not think of it as much more.  It is too singular in its nature and too peculiar in its accidents to be a guide to anything except itself.

In this essay I made many remarks on the American Constitution, in comparison with the English; and as to the American Constitution we have had a whole world of experience since I first wrote.  My great object was to contrast the office of President as an executive officer and to compare it with that of a Prime Minister; and I devoted much space to showing that in one principal respect the English system is by far the best.  The English Premier being appointed by the selection, and being removable at the pleasure, of the preponderant Legislative Assembly, is sure to be able to rely on that Assembly.  If he wants legislation to aid his policy he can obtain that legislation; he can carry out that policy.  But the American President has no similar security.  He is elected in one way, at one time, and Congress (no matter which House) is elected in another way, at another time.  The two have nothing to bind them together, and in matter of fact, they continually disagree.

This was written in the time of Mr. Lincoln, when Congress, the President, and all the North were united as one man in the war against the South.  There was then no patent instance of mere disunion.  But between the time when the essays were first written in the Fortnightly, and their subsequent junction into a book, Mr. Lincoln was assassinated, and Mr. Johnson, the Vice-President, became President, and so continued for nearly four years.  At such a time the characteristic evils of the Presidential system were shown most conspicuously.  The President and the Assembly, so far from being (as it is essential to good government that they should be) on terms of close union, were not on terms of common courtesy.  So far from being capable of a continuous and concerted co-operation they were all the while trying to thwart one another.  He had one plan for the pacification of the South and they another; they would have nothing to say to his plans, and he vetoed their plans as long as the Constitution permitted, and when they were, in spite of him, carried, he, as far as he could (and this was very much), embarrassed them in action.  The quarrel in most countries would have gone beyond the law, and come to blows; even in America, the most law-loving of countries, it went as far as possible within the law.  Mr. Johnson described the most popular branch of the legislature—­ the House of Representatives—­as a body “hanging on the verge of government”; and that House impeached him criminally, in the hope that in that way they might get rid of him civilly.  Nothing could be so conclusive against the American Constitution, as a Constitution, as that incident.  A hostile legislature and a hostile executive were so tied together, that the legislature tried, and tried in vain, to rid itself of the executive by accusing it of illegal practices.  The legislature was so afraid of the President’s legal power that it unfairly accused him of acting beyond the law.  And the blame thus cast on the American Constitution is so much praise to be given to the American political character.