Few nations, perhaps scarcely any nation, could have borne such a trial so easily and so perfectly.  This was the most striking instance of disunion between the President and the Congress that has ever yet occurred, and which probably will ever occur.  Probably for very many years the United States will have great and painful reason to remember that at the moment of all their history, when it was most important to them to collect and concentrate all the strength and wisdom of their policy on the pacification of the South, that policy was divided by a strife in the last degree unseemly and degrading.  But it will be for a competent historian hereafter to trace out this accurately and in detail; the time is yet too recent, and I cannot pretend that I know enough to do so.  I cannot venture myself to draw the full lessons from these events; I can only predict that when they are drawn, those lessons will be most important, and most interesting.  There is, however, one series of events which have happened in America since the beginning of the Civil War, and since the first publication of these essays, on which I should wish to say something in detail—­I mean the financial events.  These lie within the scope of my peculiar studies, and it is comparatively easy to judge of them, since whatever may be the case with refined statistical reasoning, the great results of money matters speak to and interest all mankind.  And every incident in this part of American financial history exemplifies the contrast between a Parliamentary and Presidential government.

The distinguishing quality of Parliamentary government is, that in each stage of a public transaction there is a discussion; that the public assist at this discussion; that it can, through Parliament, turn out an administration which is not doing as it likes, and can put in an administration which will do as it likes.  But the characteristic of a Presidential government is, in a multitude of cases, that there is no such discussion; that when there is a discussion the fate of Government does not turn upon it, and, therefore, the people do not attend to it; that upon the whole the administration itself is pretty much doing as it likes, and neglecting as it likes, subject always to the check that it must not too much offend the mass of the nation.  The nation commonly does not attend, but if by gigantic blunders you make it attend, it will remember it and turn you out when its time comes; it will show you that your power is short, and so on the instant weaken that power; it will make your present life in office unbearable and uncomfortable by the hundred modes in which a free people can, without ceasing, act upon the rulers which it elected yesterday, and will have to reject or re-elect to-morrow.  In finance the most striking effect in America has, on the first view of it, certainly been good.  It has enabled the Government to obtain and to keep a vast surplus of revenue over expenditure.  Even before the Civil