This system was in part due to the confident belief of the framers of the Constitution in the Montesquieu doctrine of the division of government into three independent departments--legislative, executive and judicial; but experience has shown how difficult it is to apply this doctrine in its literal rigidity. One result of the doctrine was the mistaken attempt to keep the legislative and the executive as far apart as possible. The Cabinet system of parliamentary government was not adopted. While the President can appear before Congress and express his views, his Cabinet is without such right. In practice, the gulf is bridged by constant contact between the Cabinet and the committees of Congress, but this does not wholly secure speedy and efficient co-operation between the two departments. As I speak, a movement is in progress, with the sanction of President Harding, to permit members of his Cabinet to appear in Congress and thus defend directly and in person the policies of the Executive. This separation of the two departments, which causes so much friction, has been emphasized by one feature of the Constitution which again marks its distrust of democracy, namely the fixed tenure of office. The Constitution did not intend that public officials should rise or fall with the fleeting caprices of a constituency. It preferred to give the President and the members of Congress a fixed term of office, and, however unpopular they might become temporarily, they should have the right and the opportunity to proceed even with unpopular policies, and thus challenge the final verdict of the people. If a parliamentary form of government, immediately responsive to current opinion as registered in elections, is the great desideratum, then the fixed tenure of offices is the vulnerable Achilles-heel of our form of government. In other countries the Executive cannot survive a vote of want of confidence by the legislature. In America, the President, who is merely the Executive of the legislative will, continues for his prescribed term, though he may have wholly lost the confidence of the representatives of the people in Congress. While this makes for stability in administration and keeps the ship of state on an even keel, yet it also leads to the fatalism of our democracy, and often the "native hue" of its resolution is thus "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." Take a striking instance. I am confident that after the sinking of the _Lusitania_, the United States would have entered the world war, if President Wilson's tenure of power had then depended upon a vote of confidence. 6. _The sixth fundamental principle is the joint power of the Senate and the Executive over the foreign relations of the Government_.