POLITICAL RETROSPECT AND PROLPECT. 653 



of evolution, everywhere showing advance in specialization, 

 suggest rather that one or both of such two bodies, now 

 characterizing developed political organizations, will further 

 differentiate. Indeed we have at the present moment indi 

 cations that such a change is likely to take place in cm 

 own House of Commons. To the objection that the duality 

 of a legislative body impedes the making of laws, the reply 

 is that a considerable amount of hindrance to change is 

 desirable. Even as it is now among ourselves, immense mis 

 chiefs are done by ill-considered legislation ; and any change 

 which should further facilitate legislation would increase 

 such mischiefs. 



Concerning the ultimate executive agency, it appears to be 

 an unavoidable inference that it must become, in some way 

 or other, elective ; since hereditary political headship is a 

 trait of the developed militant type, and forms a part of that 

 regime of status which is excluded by the hypothesis. 

 Guided by such evidence as existing advanced societies 

 afford us, we may infer that the highest State-office, in what 

 ever way filled, will continue to decline in importance ; and 

 that the functions to be discharged by its occupant will 

 become more and more automatic. There requires an instru 

 mentality having certain traits which we see in our own 

 executive, joined with certain traits which we see in the 

 executive of the United States. On the one hand, it is need 

 ful that the men who have to carry out the will of the 

 majority as expressed through the legislature, should be 

 removable at pleasure; so that there may be maintained the 

 needful subordination of their policy to public opinion. On 

 the other hand, it is needful that displacement of them shall 

 leave intact all that part of the executive organization re 

 quired for current administrative purposes. In our own case 

 these requirements, fulfilled to a considerable ex tent, fall short 

 of complete fulfilment in the respect that the political head 

 is not elective, and still exercises, especially over the foreign 

 policy of the nation, a considerable amount of power. In 



