The English Constitution (II): the efficient parts

The efficient secret of the English Constitution may be described as the close union, the nearly complete fusion of the executive and legislative powers. This connecting link is the cabinet. By this I mean a committee of the legislative body selected to be the executive body. The legislature has many committees, but this is its greatest. It chooses for this, its main committee, the men in whom it has most confidence. Thus, whereas the Queen is at the head of the dignified part of the constitution, the prime minister is at the head of the efficient part. However, this first magistrate differs from the American. He is not elected directly by the people; he is elected by the representatives of the people. He is an example of "double election". The legislature chosen to make laws, in fact finds its principal business in making and in keeping an executive. The leading minister so selected has to choose his associates, but he only does so among a charmed circle. This patronage is exercised under close and imperative restrictions by the legislature. 

The cabinet, though it is a committee of the legislative assembly, is a committee with a power which no assembly would have been persuaded to entrust to any committee. It is a committee which can dissolve the assembly which appointed it; it is a committee with a suspensive veto, a committee with a power of appeal. The chief committee of the legislature has the power of dissolving the predominant part of the legislature and, in fact, on critical occasions the legislature itself. The English system, therefore, is not an absorption of the executive power by the legislative power; it is a fusion of the two. Either the cabinet legislate and act, or, if not, it can dissolve. It is a creature, but it has the power of destroying its creators.
The English system has its great competitor in the presidential system. The characteristic of it is that the President is elected from the people by one process, and the House of Representatives by another. The independence of the legislative and executive powers is the specific quality of presidential government, just as their fusion and combination is the precise principle of cabinet government.

From The English Constitution; by Walter Bagehot (1867)