American Institutions and Their Influence. Alexis de Tocqueville

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СКАЧАТЬ of all they ordain. The president is also the executor of the laws, but he does not really co-operate in their formation, since the refusal of his assent does not annul them. He is therefore merely to be considered as the agent of the sovereign power. But not only does the king of France exercise a portion of the sovereign power, he also contributes to the nomination of the legislature, which exercises the other portion. He has the privilege of appointing the members of one chamber, and of dissolving the other at his pleasure; whereas the president of the United States has no share in the formation of the legislative body, and cannot dissolve any part of it. The king has the same right of bringing forward measures as the chambers; a right which the president does not possess. The king is represented in each assembly by his ministers, who explain his intentions, support his opinions, and maintain the principles of the government. The president and his ministers are alike excluded from congress; so that his influence and his opinions can only penetrate indirectly into that great body. The king of France is therefore on an equal footing with the legislature, which can no more act without him, than he can without it. The president exercises an authority inferior to, and depending upon, that of the legislature.

      Even in the exercise of the executive power, properly so called, the point upon which his position seems to be almost analogous to that of the king of France—the president labors under several causes of inferiority. The authority of the king, in France, has, in the first place, the advantage of duration over that of the president: and durability is one of the chief elements of strength; nothing is either loved or feared but what is likely to endure. The president of the United States is a magistrate elected for four years. The king, in France, is an hereditary sovereign.

      In the exercise of the executive power the president of the United States is constantly subject to jealous scrutiny. He may make, but he cannot conclude a treaty; he may designate, but he cannot appoint, a public officer.135 The king of France is absolute in the sphere of the executive power.

      The president of the United States is responsible for his actions; but the person of the king is declared inviolable by the French charter.

      Nevertheless, the supremacy of public opinion is no less above the head of one than of the other. This power is less definite, less evident, and less sanctioned by the laws in France than in America, but in fact exists. In America it acts by elections and decrees; in France it proceeds by revolutions; but notwithstanding the different constitutions of these two countries, public opinion is the predominant authority in both of them. The fundamental principle of legislation—a principle essentially republican—is the same in both countries, although its consequences may be different, and its results more or less extensive. Whence I am led to conclude, that France with its king is nearer akin to a republic, than the Union with its president is to a monarchy.

      In what I have been saying I have only touched upon the main points of distinction; and if I could have entered into details, the contrast would have been rendered still more striking.

      I have remarked that the authority of the president in the United States is only exercised within the limits of a partial sovereignty, while that of the king, in France, is undivided. I might have gone on to show that the power of the king's government in France exceeds its natural limits, however extensive they may be, and penetrates in a thousand different ways into the administration of private interests. Among the examples of this influence may be quoted that which results from the great number of public functionaries, who all derive their appointments from the government. This number now exceeds all previous limits; it amounts to 138,000136 nominations, each of which may be considered as an element of power. The president of the United States has not the exclusive right of making any public appointments, and their whole number scarcely exceeds 12,000.137

      {Those who are desirous of tracing the question respecting the power of the president to remove every executive officer of the government without the sanction of the senate, will find some light upon it by referring to 5th Marshall's Life of Washington, p. 196: 5 Sergeant and Rawle's Reports (Pennsylvania), 451: Elliot's Debates on the Federal Constitution, vol iv., p. 355, contains the debate in the House of Representatives, June 16, 1799, when the question was first mooted: Report of a committee of the senate in 1822, in Niles's Register of 29th August in that year. It is certainly very extraordinary that such a vast power, and one so extensively affecting the whole administration of the government, should rest on such slight foundations, as an inference from an act of congress, providing that when the secretary of the treasury should be removed by the president, his assistant should discharge the duties of the office. How congress could confer the power, even by a direct act, is not perceived. It must be a necessary implication from the words of the constitution, or it does not exist. It has been repeatedly denied in and out of congress, and must be considered, as yet, an unsettled question.—American Editor.}

      ACCIDENTAL CAUSES WHICH MAY INCREASE THE INFLUENCE OF THE EXECUTIVE

      External security of the Union.—Army of six thousand Men.—Few Ships.—The President has no Opportunity of exercising his great Prerogatives.—In the Prerogatives he exercises he is weak.

      If the executive power is feebler in America than in France, the cause is more attributable to the circumstances than to the laws of the country.

      It is chiefly in its foreign relations that the executive power of a nation is called upon to exert its skill and vigor. If the existence of the Union were perpetually threatened, and its chief interest were in daily connexion with those of other powerful nations, the executive government would assume an increased importance in proportion to the measures expected of it, and those which it would carry into effect. The president of the United States is the commander-in-chief of the army, but of an army composed of only six thousand men; he commands the fleet, but the fleet reckons but few sail; he conducts the foreign relations of the Union, but the United States are a nation without neighbors. Separated from the rest of the world by the ocean, and too weak as yet to aim at the dominion of the seas, they have no enemies, and their interests rarely come into contact with those of any other nation of the globe.

      The practical part of a government must not be judged by the theory of its constitution. The president of the United States is in the possession of almost royal prerogatives, which he has no opportunity of exercising; and those privileges which he can at present use are very circumscribed: the laws allow him to possess a degree of influence which circumstances do not permit him to employ.

      On the other hand, the great strength of the royal prerogative in France arises from circumstances far more than from the laws. There the executive government is constantly struggling against prodigious obstacles, and exerting all its energies to repress them; so that it increases by the extent of its achievements, and by the importance of the events it controls, without, for that reason, modifying its constitution. If the laws had made it as feeble and as circumscribed as it is in the Union, its influence would very soon become much greater.

      WHY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES DOES NOT REQUIRE THE MAJORITY OF THE TWO HOUSES IN ORDER TO CARRY ON THE GOVERNMENT

      It is an established axiom in Europe that a constitutional king cannot persevere in a system of government which is opposed by the two other branches of the legislature. But several presidents of the United States have been known to lose the majority in the legislative body, without being obliged to abandon the supreme power, and without inflicting a serious evil upon society. I have heard this fact quoted as an instance of the independence and power of executive government in America: a moment's reflection will convince us, on the contrary, that it is a proof of its extreme weakness.

      A king in Europe requires the support of the legislature to enable him to perform the duties imposed upon him by the constitution, because those duties are enormous. A constitutional king in Europe is not merely the executor of the law, but the execution of its provisions СКАЧАТЬ