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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 77

Elected Executive

Elected Executive.

But, if the Elective Upper House be an academic issue, and the Referendum per contra perhaps the most burning question of the age, what are we to say of that third proposed measure—the direct election of the Cabinet by the House of Representatives? Earnestly would I say that, not only do I doubt whether the advantage of such a method over present forms is much more than academic, but that I am actually afraid of it. Without going as far as the Premier, who said, if my memory serves me, "I fear it would lead to chaos," we may recognise a certain danger that the break with traditions and forms that are dear to Britons all over the world, might render more difficult the consolidation of our Empire and even operate unsatisfactorily in New Zealand alone. The danger, however we may estimate its magnitude, hardly seems worth incurring for the sake of so very problematic an advantage. It is true that the plural elected Execute—elected, not by the people, but by the Legislature—has proved itself the ideal Administrative Committee where alone it is at present tried, viz., in Switzerland. In the Federal Palace at Berne, I have stood in the Chamber of the Swiss "Bandesrath,"—that Supreme Executive Council of the Swiss Republic, that Cabinet of seven members, each with a portfolio of his own, who are elected by the Federal Assembly and who administer the laws of the Confederation. And never have I felt such a thrill, politically, as when an attendant ushered me into this empty chamber where holds its sessions the ideal executive government of the earth. Well can I understand the feelings with which, in the remotest hamlets of Switzerland, householders hang up pictures of the Supreme Seven, even as in our village houses are to be found portraits of our King, and in American homes pictures of the President and Vice-President of the United States. These Seven Councillors are elected for three years by the two Houses of the Legislature sitting together from among their own number. They represent no party, they serve instead of leading the House, they are not required to initiate legislation, and, while retaining their seats, they lose their votes in the Federal Legislature, so as to impress on them that they are its honoured servants, but in nowise its masters. You see at once what a break the introduction of this system would involve in our organic structure. It would correspond to no gradual evolution where, in the words of the poet,

"Freedom slowly broadens down

From precedent to precedent."

It would resemble rather those sudden "mutations" in plant structure lately observed by Professor De Vries, which now threaten to profoundly modify the Darwinian theory. While cherishing the elected Executive as an ideal, and watching appreciatively its operation in the model republic of the world, and while seeking to accustom the Anglo-Saxon mind to the ideas which it embodies, I think we shall be wise to defer adopting it—at all events until our Empire has been transformed from its present somewhat amorphous condition into a more organic and consolidated whole.