incessant small motions in Parliament about it, which is the way to popularise their view.  And in the end I do not doubt that they would have prevailed.  They would have had to teach a lesson both pleasant and true, and such lessons are soon learned.  On the whole, therefore, the result of the comparison is that a Presidential government makes it much easier than the Parliamentary to maintain a great surplus of income over expenditure, but that it does not give the same facility for examining whether it be good or not good to maintain a surplus, and, therefore, that it works blindly, maintaining surpluses when they do extreme harm just as much as when they are very beneficial.

In this point the contrast of Presidential with Parliamentary government is mixed; one of the defects of Parliamentary government probably is the difficulty under it of maintaining a surplus revenue to discharge debt, and this defect Presidential government escapes, though at the cost of being likely to maintain that surplus upon inexpedient occasions as well as upon expedient.  But in all other respects a Parliamentary government has in finance an unmixed advantage over the Presidential in the incessant discussion.  Though in one single case it produces evil as well as good, in most cases it produces good only.  And three of these cases are illustrated by recent American experience.  First, as Mr. Goldwin Smith—­no unfavourable judge of anything American—­justly said some years since, the capital error made by the United States Government was the “Legal Tender Act,” as it is called, by which it made inconvertible paper notes issued by the Treasury the sole circulating medium of the country.  The temptation to do this was very great, because it gave at once a great war fund when it was needed, and with no pain to any one.  If the notes of a Government supersede the metallic currency medium of a country to the extent of $80,000,000, this is equivalent to a recent loan of $80,000,000 to the Government for all purposes within the country.  Whenever the precious metals are not required, and for domestic purposes in such a case they are not required, notes will buy what the Government want, and it can buy to the extent of its issue.  But, like all easy expedients out of a great difficulty, it is accompanied by the greatest evils; if it had not been so, it would have been the regular device in such cases, and the difficulty would have been no difficulty at all; there would have been a known easy way out of it.  As is well known, inconvertible paper issued by Government is sure to be issued in great quantities, as the American currency soon was; it is sure to be depreciated as against coin; it is sure to disturb values and to derange markets; it is certain to defraud the lender; it is certain to give the borrower more than he ought to have.  In the case of America there was a further evil.  Being a new country, she ought in her times of financial want to borrow of old countries; but the old countries