Presidential and Parliamentary Govern A very important classification of con stitutional governments is that which divides them into Presidential and Parliamentary.
Presidential government, to accept the ex cellent definition of Burgess, "is that form in which the state, the sovereign, makes the ex ecutive independent of the legislature, both in tenure and prerogative, and furnishes him with sufficient power to prevent the legislature from trenching upon the sphere marked out by the state as executive independence and preroga tive.° Thus the governments of the United States and of Germany are of this type. Upon the other hand, "Parliamentary government is that form in which the state confers upon the legislature the complete control of the ad ministration of law. Under this form the legislature originates the tenure of the real (though perhaps not the nominal) executive, and terminates it at pleasure; and under this form the exercise of no executive prerogative, in any sense and manner, unapproved by the legislature, can be successfully undertaken.* As further descriptive of this parliamentary type it should he said that this controlling power thus vested in the legislature almost Inevitably tends to become concentrated in Its more popular chamber. The government of England best illustrates this form of govern ment. That of France may also be placed in this category.. Because the real executive power in a parliamentary government is almost always in the hands of a cabinet of officials holding office only so long as they are able to retain the support of the legislature, this form of political rule is often spoken of as Cabinet government.
The Sphere of Government.— The legal power of a constitutional government at any given time is determined by law. The sphere of political control thus marked out includes all those interests which the state has deter mined require public control. As we have already learned, legally the state is omnipotent, and therefore may subject to its regulation any matter that it sees fit. Actually, however, con siderations of utility and expediency of course control. Regarding the exercise of certain powers, no opportunity for the employment of discretion exists. In order to maintain itself as a sovereign, independent body-politic, it is absolutely necessary that the state should ob tain sufficient means, and exercise sufficient authority, to protect itself against attacks from foreign sources, and to maintain law and order, that is, to protect persons and their property throughout its own dominions. The powers, the exercise of which is thus called for may, therefore, be termed "essential powers,* and in the aggregate they constitute the essential sphere of the state. By some writers they are
spoken of as °police powers." German writers. however, it should be said, use this term some what differently, designating as a °Police State* (Polizesstaat) one that English and American writers denominate a 'Paternal Staten The propriety of the exercise by the political power of these essential duties is not denied by any one except the anarchist. Con trasted to these essential, or, to use the ad jective employed by President Wilson, the "constituent° functions of government, which must be exercised by a state in one way or another, are what may be called the non essential or ministrant functions which all civilized states to a greater or less extent exer cise. The activities included in this class are those performed by the state for the promo tion of the economic, physical and moral wel fare of its people.
As not being absolutely essential to the very existence of the state, there are many who while admitting the necessity for, and the ri gfit fulness of, political control in matters of police protection and national self-defense, assert that the assumption by the state of a right thus further to control the conduct of its citizens is an ethically unjustifiable interference with their freedom, even though the aim of such interference is to advance their own good. In order to maintain this position, however, they are obliged to fall back upon a doctrine of 'natural rights,' the invalidity of which is now all but universally recognized. Starting, as from a premise, with the right of a particular state or government to be, as determined by the principles already laid down in this article, the conclusion necessarily follows that, in each individual case, the question whether or not a given matter, whatever its character, shall be subjected to public control, is one the answer to which should be determined wholly by ex pediency — construing of course expediency so as to include moral as well as material consider ations. The arguments of those who urge the establishment of a socialistic or communistic regime are, therefore, not to be met by the simple predication of an abstract individualis tic, laissez-faire doctrine, according to which an extension of state activities beyond the mere maintenance of order and national independ ence is ethically unjustified whatever the re sults to which it may lead. The claims of socialists and communists, in other words, may properly be rejected only by showing that the actual results to which their proposed policies, if adopted, would in all probability lead, would be ethically unjust, or economically disastrous, or both.