How will those functions be exercised? It is impossible to say, except that there is no education like the education of responsibility.
I have likened a Constitution to a pyramid, the base of which is the People, and the apex the Executive Authority. In all pyramids, it is the apex that first catches the eye, not the base; yet it is from the base upward that democratic constitutions are built. Usually it happens in most countries that the Executive masters the Law-making body, and that the Law-making body in turn masters the People. It is therefore necessary to remember, and to emphasise, that the true order is the other way about, the People being the master of the Law-making body, and the Law-making body the master of the Executive. In the degree in which that true order is asserted, and observed, the health of the State is preserved. In the degree in which it is neglected, or frustrated, there is suspicion, irritation, discontent. And as it is always the Executive which tends naturally, where it does not intrigue deliberately, to upset that order, by gathering all power into its hands, obviously the provisions respecting the formation and maintenance of Executive Power are the most critical part of every Constitution.
It was a wise man, and an experienced, who said that it did not matter to him who had the making of laws, so long as he had the administration of them. "For forms of government let fools contest," said the poet; "That which is best administered is best." And as the administration of a State is reposed in the care of the Executive Power, for the most part beyond the sight of the Law-making Assembly of the people, it is essential that the Constitution should provide that the Executive should at all times, and with the utmost flexibility, lie in the control of the Legislature. Otherwise, whatever safeguards may be provided that laws carry the consent of the people, the people will in the end find themselves baffled, unable to track into the thicket of secret decisions the will that they have elsewhere endeavoured plainly to express.
It is therefore the plain duty of every Constitution to keep the Executive simple and flexible, responsive always to the will of the Legislature, as the Legislature should always be responsive to the will of the people. Crises will arise in the history of every nation when the powers of the Executive require to be strengthened; and at such times those powers will be readily conceded. But it is the Legislature and the people which must decide; and the Constitution must leave them free to do so. It is no part of the duty of a Constitution to provide for a time of crisis, and to make that provision fixed and rigid for all later times, when circumstances will have completely changed.