AS MINISTER TO GERMANY -1879 -1881 529 



interested me the admission of cabinet ministers to 

 take part in the debates of Congress. Mr. Hayes pre 

 sented the case in favor of their admission cogently; but 

 the Secretary of State overmatched his chief. This 

 greatly pleased me ; for I had been long convinced that, 

 next to the power given the Supreme Court, the best 

 thing in the Constitution of the United States is that 

 complete separation of the executive from the legislative 

 power which prevents every Congressional session be 

 coming a perpetual gladiatorial combat or, say, rather, 

 a permanent game of foot-ball. Again and again I have 

 heard European statesmen lament that their constitution- 

 makers had adopted, in this respect, the British rather 

 than the American system. What it is in France, with 

 cabals organized to oust every new minister as soon as he 

 is appointed, and to provide for a &quot;new deal&quot; from the 

 first instant of an old one, with an average of one or two 

 changes of ministry every year as a result, we all know; 

 and, with the exception of the German parliament, Con 

 tinental legislatures generally are just about as bad; in 

 deed, in some respects the Italian parliament is worse. 

 The British system would have certainly excluded such 

 admirable Secretaries of State as Thomas Jefferson and 

 Hamilton Fish; possibly such as John Quincy Adams, 

 Seward, and John Hay. In Great Britain, having been 

 evolved in conformity with its environment, it is suc 

 cessful; but it is successful nowhere else. I have always 

 looked back with great complacency upon such men as 

 those above named in the State Department, and such as 

 Hamilton, Gallatin, Chase, Stanton, and Gage in other 

 departments, sitting quietly in their offices, giving calm 

 thought to government business, and allowing the hea 

 then to rage at their own sweet will in both houses of 

 Congress. Under the other system, our Eepublic might 

 perhaps have become almost as delectable as Venezuela, 

 with its hundred and four revolutions in seventy years. 1 

 On the day following I dined with the Secretary of 



1 See Lord Lansdowne s speech, December, 1902. 



1. 34 



