America than in countries where the chief magistrate comes to his office without the selection of the people; and where consequently their vigilance is quickened by a natural distrust."

Although few Presidents have shown any disposition to strain their authority, it has often been the fashion in America to be jealous of the President's action, and to warn citizens against what is called "the one man power." General Ulysses S. Grant was hardly the man to make himself a tyrant, yet the hostility to a third term of office which moved many people who had not been alienated by the faults of his administration, rested not merely on reverence for the example set by Washington, but also on the fear that a President repeatedly chosen would become dangerous to republican institutions. This particular alarm seems to a European groundless. I do not deny that a really great man might exert ampler authority from the presidential chair than most of its occupants have done. The same observation applies to the Popedom and even to the English throne. The President has a position of immense dignity, an unrivalled platform from which to impress his ideas (if he has any) upon the people. But it is hard to imagine a President overthrowing the existing Constitution. He has no standing army, and he cannot create one. Congress can checkmate him by stopping supplies. There is no aristocracy to rally round him. Every State furnishes an independent centre of resistIf he were to attempt a coup d'état, it could only be by appealing to the people against Congress, and Congress could hardly, considering that it is re-elected every two years, attempt to oppose the people. One must suppose a condition bordering on civil war, and the President putting the resources of the executive at the service of one of the intending belligerents, already strong and organized, in order to conceive a case in which he will be formidable to freedom. If there be any danger, it would seem to lie in another direction. The larger a community becomes the less does it seem to respect an assembly, the more is it attracted by an individual man. A bold President who knew himself to be supported by a majority in the country, might be tempted to override the law, and deprive the minority of the protection which the law affords it. He might be a tyrant, not against the masses, but with the masses. But nothing in the present state of American politics gives weight to such apprehensions.

ance.

CHAPTER VII

OBSERVATIONS ON THE PRESIDENCY

ALTHOUGH the President has been, not that independent good citizen whom the framers of the Constitution contemplated, but, at least since 1829, a party man, sometimes not much above the average in character or abilities, the office has attained the main objects for which it was created. Such mistakes as have been made in foreign policy, or in the conduct of the administrative departments, have been rarely owing to the constitution of the office or to the errors of its holder. This is more than one who should review the history of Europe during the last hundred years could say of any European marchy. Nevertheless, the faults chargeable on hereditary kingship, faults more serious than Englishmen, who have watched with admiration the wisdom of the Crown ever since the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837, usually realize, must not make us overlook certain defects incidental to the American presidency, perhaps to any plan of vesting the headship of the State in a person elected for a limited period.

In a country where there is no hereditary throne nor hereditary aristocracy, an office raised far above all other offices offers too great a stimulus to ambition. This glittering prize, always dangling before the eyes of prominent statesmen, has a power stronger than any dignity under a European crown to lure them (as it lured Clay and Webster) from the path of straightforward consistency. One who aims at the presidency - and all prominent politicians do aim at it has the strongest possible motives to avoid making enemies. Now a great statesman ought to be prepared to make enemies. It is one thing to try to be popular- an unpopular man will be uninfluential -it is another to seek popularity by courting every section of your party. This is the temptation of presidential aspirants.

A second defect is that the presidential election, occurring once in four years, throws the country for several months inte

a state of turmoil, for which there may be no occasion. Perhaps there are no serious party issues to be decided, perhaps the best thing would be that the existing Administration should pursue the even tenor of its way. The Constitution, however, requires an election to be held, so the whole costly and complicated machinery of agitation is put in motion; and if issues do not exist, they have to be created.1 Professional politicians who have a personal interest in the result, because it involves the gain or loss of office to themselves, conduct what is called a "campaign," and the country is forced into a (possibly factitious) excitement from midsummer, when each party selects the candidate whom it will nominate, to the first week of November, when the contest is decided. There is some political education in the process, but it is bought dearly, not to add that business, and especially finance, is disturbed, and much money spent unproductively.

Again, these regularly recurring elections produce a discontinuity of policy. Even when the new President belongs to the same party as his predecessor, he usually nominates a new cabinet, having to reward his especial supporters. Many of the inferior offices are changed; men who have learned their work make way for others who have everything to learn. If the new President belongs to the opposite party, the change of officials is far more sweeping, and involves larger changes of policy. The evil would be more serious were it not that in foreign policy, where the need for continuity is greatest, the United States has had comparatively little to do, and that the co-operation of the Senate in this department qualifies the divergence of the ideas of one President from those of another.

Fourthly. The fact that he has been deemed re-eligible once, but (practically) only once (at least in continuation of his existing term 2), has operated unfavourably on the President. He is

1 In England, also, there is necessarily a campaign once at least in every five years, when a general election takes place, and sometimes oftener. But note that in England (1) this is the only season of disturbance, whereas in America the Congressional elections furnish a second; (2) the period is usually shorter (three to six weeks, not four months); (3) there are usually real and momentous issues, dividing the great parties, which the nation has to settle. There was however some talk of nominating Mr. Cleveland after an interval from his second term, and no precedent, except the failure in Grant's case, exists to dissuade this.

2 See p. 45 supra.

tempted to play for a re-nomination by pandering to sections of his own party, or using his patronage to conciliate influential politicians. On the other hand, if he is in his second term of office, he has no longer much motive to regard the interests of the nation at large, because he sees that his own political death is near. It may be answered that these two evils will correct one another, that the President will in his first term be anxious to win the respect of the nation, in his second he will have no motive for yielding to the pressure of party wirepullers; while in reply to the suggestion that if he were held ineligible for the next term, but eligible for any future term, both sets of evils might be avoided, and both sets of benefits secured, it can be argued that such a provision would make that breach in policy which may now happen only once in eight years, necessarily happen once in four years. It would, for instance, have prevented the re-election of Abraham Lincoln in 1864.

The founders of the Southern Confederacy of 1861-65 were so much impressed by the objections to the present system that they provided that their President should hold office for six years, but not be re-eligible. It has recently been suggested that the Constitution might be amended in this sense.

Fifthly. An outgoing President is a weak President. During the four months of his stay in office after his successor has been chosen, he declines, except in cases of extreme necessity, to take any new departure, to embark on any executive policy which cannot be completed before he quits office. This is, of course, even more decidedly the case if his successor belongs to the opposite party.1

Lastly. The result of an election may be doubtful, not from equality of votes, for this is provided against, but from a dispute as to the validity of votes given in or reported from the

1 Freeman (History of Federal Government, 302) adduces from Polybius (iv. 6, 7) a curious instance showing that the same mischief arose in the Achaian League: "The Etolians chose for an inroad the time when the official year (of the Achaian General) was drawing to its close, as a time when the Achaian counsels were sure to be weak. Aratos, the General elect, was not yet in office; Timoxenos, the outgoing General, shrank from energetic action so late in his year, and at last yielded up his office to Aratos before the legal time." This effort of Timoxenos to escape from the consequences of the system could not have occurred in governments like those of Rome, England, or the United States, where "the reign of law" is far stricter than it was in the Greek republics.

States. The difficulty which arose in 1876 cannot, owing to the legislation of 1887, recur in quite the same form. But cases may arise in which the returns from a State of its electoral votes will, because notoriously obtained by fraud or force, fail to be recognized as valid by the party whose candidate they prejudice. Few presidential elections have passed without charges of this kind, and these charges are not always unfounded. Should manifest unfairness coincide with popular excitement over a really important issue, the self-control of the people, which in 1877, when no such issue was involved, held in check the party passions of their leaders, might prove unequal to the strain of such a crisis.

Further observations on the President, as a part of the machinery of government, will be better reserved for the discussion of the relations of the executive and legislative departments. I will therefore only observe here that, even when we allow for the defects last enumerated, the presidential office, if not one of the best features of the American Constitution, is nowise to be deemed a failure. The problem of constructing a stable executive in a democratic country is indeed so immensely difficult that anything short of a failure deserves to be called a success. Now the President has, for more than a century, carried on the internal administrative business of the nation with due efficiency. As he has the ear of the country, he can force upon its attention questions which Congress may be neglecting, and if he be a man of constructive ideas and definite aims, he may guide and inspire its political thought. Once or twice, as when Jefferson purchased Louisiana, and Lincoln emancipated the slaves in the revolted States, he has courageously ventured on stretches of authority, held at the time to be doubtfully constitutional, yet necessary, and approved by the judgment of posterity. He has kept the machinery working quietly and steadily when Congress has been distracted by party strife, or paralyzed by the dissensions of the two Houses, or enfeebled by the want of first-rate leaders. The executive has been able, at moments of peril, to rise almost to a dictatorship, as during the War of Secession, and when peace returned, to sink back into its proper constitutional position. It has shown no tendency so far to rise above and override other authorities as to pave the way for a monarchy.

Europeans are struck by the faults of a plan which plunges