Walter Bagehot

France elects its ruler in the streets of Paris.

But, in fact, the greatest nation (or, perhaps, after the exploits of Bismarck, I should say one of the two greatest nations of the Continent) vacillates between the Revolutionary and the Parliamentary, and now is governed under the…

By the Dictatorial, or Revolutionary, sort of government, I mean that very important sort in which the sovereign--the absolute sovereign--is selected by insurrection.

There is no security that an hereditary king will be competent to choose a good chief Minister, and thousands of such kings have chosen millions of bad Ministers.

The hereditary king may be weak; may be under the government of women; may appoint a Minister from childish motives; may remove one from absurd whims.

The nation can tell what a Parliamentary member is by the open test of Parliament; but no one, save from actual contact, or by rare position, can tell anything certain of a Presidential Minister.

But he has an opportunity for singular favouritism; the Minister lurks in the office; he need do nothing in public; he need not show for years whether he is a fool or wise.

At each change of party the President distributes (as here) the principal offices to his principal supporters.

The President has the principal anomaly of a Parliamentary government without having its corrective.

In the United States party intensity is aggravated by concentrating an overwhelming importance on a single contest, and the efficiency of promised offices as a means of corruption is augmented, because the victor can give what he likes to…

The managers of the contest have that greatest possible facility in using what I may call patronage--bribery.

The whole issue is based on a single election--on the choice of President; by that internecine conflict all else is won or lost.

If the whole official class change when a new party goes out or comes in, a good official system is impossible.

Of these I have shown that, as now worked in America, the Presidential form of government is incompatible with a skilled bureaucracy.

There are but four important forms of government in the present state of the world--the Parliamentary, the Presidential, the Hereditary, and the Dictatorial, or Revolutionary.

At any rate, none of the competing forms of government have nearly so effectual a procedure for putting a good untechnical Minister to correct and impel the routine ones.

The very nature of Parliamentary government answers for the discovery of substantial incompetence.

A fool, who has publicly to explain great affairs, who has publicly to answer detective questions, who has publicly to argue against able and quick opponents, must soon be shown to be a fool.

A considerable Cabinet Minister has to defend his department in the face of mankind; and though distant observers and sharp writers may depreciate it, this is a very difficult thing.

There is every reason to expect that a Parliamentary statesman will be a man of quite sufficient intelligence, quite enough various knowledge, quite enough miscellaneous experience, to represent effectually general sense in opposition to…

If the function of a Parliamentary Minister is to be an outsider to his office, we must not choose one who, by habit, thought, and life, is acclimatised to its ways.

Impelling power and restraining wisdom are as opposite as any two things, and are rarely found together.

Still less are the critical function and the animating function of a Parliamentary Minister likely to be perfectly exercised by one and the same man.

If his function is to bring a representative of outside sense and outside animation in contact with the inside world, he ought often to be changed.

As soon as we take the true view of Parliamentary office we shall perceive that, fairly, frequent change in the official is an advantage, not a mistake.