I repeat, however, that the main reliance for
tempering the ascendancy of the majority can be placed in a Second
Chamber of any kind. The character of a representative government is
fixed by the constitution of the popular House. Compared with this,
all other questions relating to the form of government are
insignificant.
Chapter 14
Of the Executive in a Representative Government.
IT WOULD be out of place, in this treatise, to discuss the
question into what departments or branches the executive business of
government may most conveniently be divided. In this respect the
exigencies of different governments are different; and there is little
probability that any great mistake will be made in the
classification of the duties when men are willing to begin at the
beginning, and do not hold themselves bound by the series of accidents
which, in an old government like ours, has produced the existing
division of the public business. It may be sufficient to say that
the classification of functionaries should correspond to that of
subjects, and that there should not be several departments independent
of one another to superintend different parts of the same natural
whole; as in our own military administration down to a recent
period, and in a less degree even at present. Where the object to be
attained is single (such as that of having an efficient army), the
authority commissioned to attend to it should be single likewise.
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