The great advantages of the English, or Canadian, system lie in the interest created among all classes of the people by the discussions of the different legislative bodies. Parliamentary debate involves the fate of cabinets, and the public mind is consequently led to study all issues of importance. The people know and feel that they must be called upon sooner or later to decide between the parties contending on the floor of the legislature, and consequently are obliged to give an intelligent consideration to public affairs. Let us see what Bagehot, ablest of critics, says on this point:-- "At present there is business in their attention (that is to say, of the English or Canadian people). They assist at the determining crisis; they assist or help it. Whether the government will go out or remain is determined by the debate and by the division in parliament And the opinion out of doors, the secret pervading disposition of society, has a great influence on that division. The nation feels that its judgment is important, and it strives to judge. It succeeds in deciding because the debates and the discussions give it the facts and arguments. But under the presidential government the nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence; it has not the ballot-box before it; its virtue is gone and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns. There are doubtless debates in the legislature, but they are prologues without a play. The prize of power is not in the gift of the legislature. No presidential country needs to form daily delicate opinions, or is helped in forming them." Then when the people do go to the ballot-box, they cannot intelligently influence the policy of the government. If they vote for a president, then congress may have a policy quite different from his; if they vote for members of congress, they cannot change the opinions of the president. If the president changes his cabinet at any time, they have nothing to say about it, for its members are not important as wheels in the legislative machinery. Congress may pass a bill of which the people express their disapproval at the first opportunity when they choose a new congress, but still it may remain on the statute-book because the senate holds views different from the newly elected House, and cannot be politically changed until after a long series of legislative elections. As Professor Woodrow Wilson well puts it in an able essay:--[31]