at stake to bring about that combination. If your ships of war go to the bottom the Secretary of the Navy tells you that he spent all the money Congress would give him, and that they did not give him what he wanted; if extravagant sums are spent on the navy, you are told that Congress appropriated and ordered it. But if you try to vent your disapproval on Congress, you find that you are dealing with a body for whom responsibility has no meaning. Can you search for the votes? Can you find out who was to blame? Can you go to committee-room deliberations to search for the real parties in fault? Can you reach any Congressman but your own representative? Will changing your party satisfy your desire to disapprove? It is these difficulties which render responsibility unknown to us. It is only when you confer on a man power to do something that you can bring reward or blame home to him when the thing is done well or ill; and it is only when you bring blame home to a man that you can inflict consequences which bear upon the future.
Some critics of responsible government have said that everybody was responsible to everybody else throughout the whole system but that there was no starting point, or point of reaction, for the whole. This is, in fact, its great merit. There is no irresponsible authority or arbitrary power in it; it embodies the idea which the old writers were trying to express in their theory of checks and balances. The true system of self-government for a nation comes nearest to self-government in a man; the man who governs himself must find the resources for reform, resolution, and self-control in himself, and the great system of responsible self-government in a nation is, in like manner, only a part of the national life with its springs, motives, and forces in the nation itself. The
