LIMITED AUTOCRACY. Government." Everywhere, in fact, out of England the
"Person," as Cromwell called the Head of the State, and the Parliament tend towards dangerous or irreconcilable conflict.
The difficulty is in no way lessened, is rather increased, by exchanging a King for a President. A King may be satisfied with his social rank, and his utility as passive pivot of the poli- tical machine, his inevitable place in history, or his unrivalled command over the intellectual and physical luxuries of our age ; but a President is sure to want to make his place in history, sure also to be so far an able man as to have impressed the people, truly or falsely, with his qualities. If he is fettered he seems wasted, and struggles for more power, more individual weight over affairs ; if he is unfettered, he either quarrels with the representatives, like Andrew Johnson and M. Thiers, or, agreeing with them, leaves at his removal, like Abraham Lin- coln, or Leopold of Belgium—who was, in fact, a President, being responsible,—or Frederick of Denmark, who offered to be President and would have been elected, too enormous and dangerous a gap. The disappearance of a very perfect President is much more dangerous than that of a constitutional monarch, because it leaves so much to be filled up. Have constitutional monarchs every- where, suggests the average Briton, men who will efface them- selves ; but unfortunately, self-effacing men seem to all people but the English useless men. The Ruler elsewhere if a King believes he ought to rule, and if a President must be a ruling man, the electors preferring men of will and character and achievements, and refusing to be enthusiastic for dummies in their own degree.
Is there literally no way out of this endless conflict, no method by which the historic Head of the State or the man of individual force can be utilized without, on the one hand, destroying freedom, and without, on the other, making him a mere registrar of Parliamentary will? Mr. Freeman the historian, in a paper he has recently republished among his "Essays," a paper devoted to a subtle analysis of the various shades of Kingship, maintains that there is, that it is not necessary to extinguish one-man power, as in England or Switzerland, where the President is only a Chairman of the Executive Committee, in order to protect freedom. That may be equally well protected by schemes which leave to the individual his free volition, but limit the area within which his authority can operate. The plan has been more often tried than Englishmen always remember, and has been found quite compatible with a large measure of permanent liberty. In Sweden and Norway, for instance, the King is as far as possible from a despot, indeed in Norway the Diet can pass laws over his head; but within his functions,—for example, in choosing execu- tive officers, he is responsible to no one. If he orders ten regi- ments to Stockholm, say, or makes an Ensign a General, no one either in law or in constitutional etiquette has right of objection. Opinion might prevent either act, but there is no legal remedy of any sort. The King is authorized to decide, and does decide. In America, again, the function of the Person is enormously wide, covers everything that we mean by executive government, there is no check on his action within his area except the shortness of the Presidential term, and yet liberty exists. Mr. Jackson virtually conquered South Carolina by exercising his power of moving the Army where he pleased, and could not be called to account, while if Mr. Lincoln had made a negro Commander-in-Chief he would have been within his right. "It is I," he was accustomed to say, "who in the end must decide." The volition of an American President while in office is as perfect as that of a Czar, but is strictly limited in area. So by etiquette and custom, though not by law—for by law he is more absolute than any King, being able to pass an Act of Parliament valid for six months of his own mere fiat—is the Viceroy of India, who, within his function, is absolutely irresponsible while continued in office —might, for instance, legally order Calcutta to be sacked, yet could not interfere in the smallest private suit. He would be roughly told from below to mind his own business, and would be recalled.
May it not be in this direction, by combining, a strict limita- tion in the area of power granted to King or President with perfect freedom from all but opinion in the exercise of that power, that the problem of liberty in Europe may for a time be solved, rather than by such an effacement of the ruler that no man not born both a king and a weak man will put up with such restraints ? We cannot imagine a King of Prussia who is not a Commander-in-Chief in the full sense, but we can very well imagine his surrendering the right of veto on all laws not affecting the Army. We cannot imagine a French President or
King without a policy—he would be scorned—but we can their responsibility on those who have less means, but for that very well imagine him without any control over legislation very reason have less difficulty in obscuring the true bearings of except a veto, or over anything, such as the action of the Law Courts, not strictly political. That was the situa- tion of Leopold of Belgium and of our own William III., and it worked very fairly, might, if the term of office were limited, work very well indeed. We English should certainly be unwilling to surrender the principle in the case of the Judges, who, within their strictly limited functions, are both in law and practice entirely above control. It is not so good a system, it may be, as Parliamentary Government ; but Parliamentary Government on the Continent does not work, because the executive ruler wishes to fill, and his people think he ought to fill, a definite sphere of his own, within which he can work on his own opinion, and not on other people's. If he does not do that he is despised, and despises himself. It is a noteworthy fact that on the Continent the only thoroughly free State—Switzerland—has been obliged to dispense alto- gether with political individualities, has never produced any known out of their own country, and very few known within it. That is a very great loss, perhaps in great countries an irreparable loss, government by impersonal Councils having hitherto been found inconsistent with sway over great aggre- gates of free persons or events of very great calibre,—the only exception, Venice, having been governed on a permanent system of terror. It would, of course, be very difficult to make such a system consistent with hereditary tenure,— though even that was accomplished in England in 1688, and is accomplished in Sweden now ; but there seems no complete reason why it should not be consistent with election either for long or short terms, the ruler, if incom- petent or impracticable within his area of duty, being at last dismissed, but until dismissal remaining more than a mere agent of the majority. If Parliaments on the Continent cannot, as it seems probable they cannot, either bridle or agree with the individualities, whether Kings or Persons, the next best device is surely to divide power with them, and so preserve liberty, and the practice of free political education, without dispensing with leaders, natural or elected. Mr. Freeman has evidently an idea that on the whole the Person is as necessary as the Parliament, and though we cannot assent to that, we can be- lieve that in certain states of society the visible leader who initiates and controls, who acts of himself without the neces- sity of consultation, may be a very useful officer. Only then his area of action must be limited, or the liberties of the nation are once more surrendered to an individual will.
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