At the time of the American Revolution the executive office in the British Isles was held in a way quite unlike the Teuton ideal, and local self-government had, owing to economic changes, sunk to a low level. The king and a few of the landed gentry controlled Parliament and the election of a large proportion of its members.[114-1] When, therefore, the Americans framed their system of government, they had before them an executive example on which they wished to improve. They accordingly created a king who could not initiate or prevent legislation; who was automatically recalled every four years; and who, in common with all other citizens, held no title that could be inherited. Most of the state governments, affected by the same ideas, have gone further. They have even taken from the executive the appointment of judges, making them also elective, though a few states and the national government continue the system of appointing the judiciary through the executive. Further checks to the president's power were devised in making his appointments to the executive and judicial services as well as his negotiations of treaties subject to confirmation by the Senate. Thus the American president is a modified eighteenth-century British king. After America had become independent and had {115} framed its federal government, the British Isles electorate gradually reasserted its power, and took back into the keeping of its elected representatives the control of executive affairs.[115-1] That return to earlier ideas has produced a spokesman who is elected for five years but may be, and usually is, recalled before the expiration of this term,--by the shifting opinion of the voters manifested in the votes of their representatives in Parliament. This spokesman is no longer called a king but a prime minister. "The imperial sovereignty which is exercised in the name of the King actually resides in the British Prime Minister, a gentleman who holds his office at the pleasure of the majority of the British House of Commons."[115-2] He and his associates, chosen from the members of Parliament, constitute a ministry, of which a portion is called the cabinet. It is this cabinet, this managing committee, that both executes the laws of the British Isles and takes charge of the legislation desired, supposedly, by a majority of the British voters. As the voters elect the members of Parliament and the latter elect the ministry, and as the ministry cannot continue in office in the face of an opposing majority in Parliament, this cabinet executive control is called a "responsible government," _i.e._ responsible directly to the people. {116}