Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/500

436 He may communicate information, and recommend measures to the consideration of Congress (Art. II., Sec. III.), but he cannot directly set in motion any scheme of legislation; he must await the definitive action of the two houses, and add or refuse his consent to their perfected work.

It is evident that our own national legislature is, in respect to the power of the Executive, copied from that of Great Britain, which consists of three orders—King, Lords, and Commons. But here, as in many other important features of the American civil polity, it is dangerous to push the analogy too far. While the resemblance between the power of the Crown and that of the President lies on the very surface and at once arrests attention, the differences, which lie deeper, are far more important, both in theory and in practice. These differences inhere in the very constitution of the British Parliament, as compared with that of the American Congress. In pure theory, the Parliament is composed of King, Lords, and Commons. At one time this theory represented an existing and potent fact. Its outward form is preserved to the present day, and not a statute is now passed which does not purport to be "enacted by the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty, by and with the consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same." But, while the form is clung to, the substance is gone; the crown is a mere pageant; the executive department is virtually merged in the legislative; the ministers, who are and must be members of Parliament, possess, as such members, the function of originating measures; but the power to refuse the executive consent to measures that have passed the two Houses has practically ceased to exist. While, therefore, the words which are generally used to describe the legislative function of the British Crown are far stronger than those which define the similar capacity of the American President, the substantial power of the latter is by far the greater. It is said that the King has the prerogative of an absolute veto: the exercise of this prerogative would doubtless produce a revolution. As the ministers who constitute the responsible executive are members of Parliament, it follows, as a matter of course, that the British Legislature has grasped and now wields both the creative and the administrative function, and that the assent of two Houses or branches only is practically necessary to the enactment of law.

The President's power of legislation is far more substantial. His independence of the Congress constitutes him an effective check upon the acts of that body. Nothing less than a two-thirds majority of both Houses can reduce him to the level of the British Crown. The doctrine has been advanced and maintained with