Walter Bagehot

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

France elects its ruler in the streets of Paris.

Flatterers may suggest that the democratic empire will become hereditary, but close observers know that it cannot.

The idea of the Government is that the Emperor represents the people in capacity, in judgment, in instinct.

And such a Government is likely, whatever be its other defects, to have a far better and abler administration than any other Government.

The head of the Government must be a man of the most consummate ability.

He is sure to be active, because he knows that his power, and perhaps his head, may be lost if he be negligent.

The most difficult of all political problems is to be solved--the people are to be at once thoroughly restrained and thoroughly pleased.

The executive must be like a steel shirt of the Middle Ages--extremely hard and extremely flexible.

It must give way to attractive novelties which do not hurt; it must resist such as are dangerous; it must maintain old things which are good and fitting; it must alter such as cramp and give pain.

I admit that such a despot is a better selector of administrators than a Parliament; that he will know how to mix fresh minds and used minds better; that he is under a stronger motive to combine them well; that here is to be seen the best…

Objectors say we spend much more on our army than the great military monarchies, and yet with an inferior result.

But, then, what we attempt is incalculably more difficult.

The continental monarchies have only to defend compact European territories by the many soldiers whom they force to fight; the English try to defend without any compulsion--only by such soldiers as they persuade to serve--territories far…

I have no doubt too that any accomplished soldier of the Continent would reject as impossible what we after a fashion effect.

Our War Office attempts what foreign War Offices (perhaps rightly) would not try at; their officers have means of incalculable force denied to ours, though ours is set to harder tasks.

The naval art and the military art are both in a state of transition; the last discovery of to-day is out of date, and superseded by an antagonistic discovery to-morrow.

Any large accumulation of vessels or guns is sure to contain much that will be useless, unfitting, antediluvian, when it comes to be tried.

The progress of the military art is the most conspicuous, I was about to say the most SHOWY, fact in human history.