But when foreign affairs become critical, or when disorders within the Union require his intervention, when, for instance, it rests with him to put down an insurrection or to decide which of two rival State governments he will recognize and support by arms, everything may depend on his judgment, his courage, and his hearty loyalty to the principles of the Constitution.

It used to be thought that hereditary monarchs were strong because they reigned by a right of their own, not derived from the people. A President is strong for the exactly opposite reason, because his rights come straight from the people. We shall have frequent occasion to observe that nowhere is the rule of public opinion so complete as in America, or so direct, that is to say, so independent of the ordinary machinery of government. Now the President is deemed to represent the people no less than do the members of the legislature. Public opinion governs by and through him no less than them, and makes him powerful even against a popularly elected Congress.

Although recent Presidents have shown no disposition to strain their authority, it is still 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 its recent 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 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 resistance. If he were to attempt a coup d'état, it could only be by appealing to the people against Congress. and Congress could hardly, con

sidering 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.

CHAPTER VI

OBSERVATIONS ON THE PRESIDENCY

ALTHOUGH the President has been, not that independent good citizen whom the framers of the Constitution contemplated, but, at least during the last sixty years, a party man, seldom 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 monarchy. Nevertheless, the faults chargeable on hereditary kingship, 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 into 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. 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.

Fourthly. The fact that he is re-eligible once, but (practically) only once, operates unfavourably on the President. He is tempted to play for a re-nomination by so pandering to active sections of his own party, or so using his patronage to conciliate influential politicians, as to make them put him forward at the next election. 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 unworthy 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 1861-5 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.

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.

But

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 States. The difficulty which arose in 1876 will not, owing to the legislation of 1887, recur in quite the same form. 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. No presidential election passes 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, restrained the party passions of their leaders, may 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