lotteries and gambling houses, to improve the care of the blind, the insane, and the poor, which testify to a warm and increasing interest in all good works. These measures are to be explained, not merely by that power which an active and compact minority enjoys of getting its own way against a crowd of men bent each on his own private gain, and therefore not working together for other purposes, but also by the real sympathy which many of the legislators, especially in the rural districts, feel for morality and for suffering. Even the corrupt politicians of Albany were moved by the appeals of the philanthropic ladies to whom I have referred; much more then would it be an error to think of the average legislator as a bad man, merely because he will join in a job, or deal unfairly with a railroad. The moral standard of Western America is not quite the same as that of England, just as the standard of England differs from that of Germany or France. It is both higher and lower. Some sins excite more anger or disgust than they do in England; some are more lightly forgiven, or more quickly forgotten. Laxity in the discharge of a political trust belongs to the latter category. The newspapers accuse everybody; the ordinary citizen can seldom tell who is innocent and who is guilty. He makes a sort of compromise in his own mind by thinking nobody quite black, but everybody gray. And he goes on to think that what everybody does cannot be very sinful.

CHAPTER XLV

REMEDIES FOR THE FAULTS OF STATE GOVERNMENTS

THE defects in State governments, which our examination of their working has disclosed, are not those we should have expected. It might have been predicted, and it was at one time believed, that these authorities, consumed by jealousy and stimulated by ambition, would have been engaged in constant efforts to extend the sphere of their action and encroach on the National government. This does not happen, and seems most unlikely to happen. The people of each State are now not more attached to the government of their own commonwealth than to the Federal government of the nation, whose growth has made even the greatest State seem insignificant beside it.

A study of the frame of State government, in which the executive department is absolutely severed from the legislative, might have suggested that the former would become too independent, misusing its powers for personal or party purposes, while public business would suffer from the want of concert between the two great authorities, that which makes and that which carries out the law.

This also has proved in practice to be no serious evil. The legislature might indeed conceivably work better if the governor, or some of his chief officials, could sit in it

Such an

and exercise an influence on its deliberations. adaptation of the English cabinet system has, however, never been thought of for American States; and the example of the Provincial legislatures of Canada, in each of which there is a responsible ministry sitting in the legislature, does not seem to recommend it for imitation. Those who founded the State governments did not desire to place any executive leaders in a representative assembly. Probably they were rather inclined to fear that the governor, not being accountable to the legislature, would retain too great an independence. The recent creation of various administrative officers or Boards has gone some way to meet the difficulties which the incompetence of the legislatures causes, for these officers or Boards frequently prepare bills which some member of the legislature introduces, and which are put through without opposition, perhaps even without notice, except from a handful of members. On the whole, the executive arrangements of the State work well, though they might, in the opinion of some judicious publicists, be improved by vesting the appointment of the chief officials in the governor, instead of leaving it to direct popular election. This would tend to give more unity of purpose and action to the administration. The collisions which occur in practice between the governor and the legislature relate chiefly to appointments, that is to say, to personal matters, not involving issues of State policy.

The real blemishes in the system of State government are all found in the composition or conduct of the legislatures. They are the following

Inferiority in point of knowledge, of skill, and some

times of conscience, of the bulk of the men who fill these bodies.

Improvidence in matters of finance.

Heedlessness in passing administrative bills.

Want of proper methods for dealing with local and special bills.

Failure of public opinion adequately to control legis

lation, and particularly special bills.

The practical result of these blemishes has been to create a large mass of State and local indebtedness which ought never to have been incurred, to allow foolish experiments in law-making to be tried, and to sanction a vast mass of private enterprises, in which public rights and public interests become the sport of speculators, or a source of gain to monopolists, with the incidental consequence of demoralizing the legislators themselves and creating an often unjust prejudice against all corporate undertakings.

What are the checks or remedies which have been provided to limit or suppress these evils? Any one who has followed the account given of the men who compose the legislatures and the methods they follow will have felt that these checks must be considerable, else the results would have been worse than those we see. All remedies are directed against the legislative power, and may be arranged under four heads.

First, there is the division of the legislature into two houses. A job may have been smuggled through one house, but the money needed to push it through the other may be wanting. Some wild scheme, professing to benefit the farmers, or the cattlemen, or the railroad employés, may, during its passage through the Assembly, rouse enough attention from sensible people to enable them to stop it in the Senate. The mere tendency of two chambers to disagree with one another is deemed a benefit by those who hold, as the Americans do, that

every new measure is prima facie likely to do more. harm than good. Most bills are bad-ergo, kill as many as you can. Each house, moreover, has, even in such demoralized State legislatures as those of New York or Pennsylvania, a satisfaction, if not an interest, in unveiling the tricks of the other.

Secondly, there is the veto of the governor. How much the Americans value this appears from the fact that, whereas in 1789 there was only one State, Massachusetts, which vested this power in the chief magistrate, all of the present thirty-eight States except four (only one of these a new State) give it to him. Some Constitutions contain the salutary provision that the governor may reject one or more items of an appropriation bill while approving the bill as a whole; and this has been found to strengthen his hands immensely in checking the waste of public money on bad enterprises. This veto power, the great stand-by of the people of the States, illustrates admirably the merits of concentrated responsibility. The citizens, in choosing the governor to represent the collective authority of the whole State, lay on him the duty of examining every bill on its merits. He cannot shelter himself behind the will of the representatives of the people, because he is appointed to watch and check those representatives as a policeman watches a suspect. He is bound to reject the bill, not only if it seems to him to infringe the Constitution of the State, but also if he thinks it in any wise injurious to the public, on pain of being himself suspected of carelessness, or of complicity in some corrupt design. The legislature may, of course, pass the bill over his veto by a two-thirds vote; but although there may exist a two-thirds majority in favour of the measure, they may fear, after the veto has turned the lamp of