to be called a success. Now the President has, during more than a hundred years, carried on the internal administrative business of the nation with due efficiency. 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 to dwarf the other authorities of the State as to pave the way for a monarchy.

Europeans are struck by the faults of a plan which plunges the nation into a whirlpool of excitement once every four years, and commits the headship of the State to a party leader chosen for a short period. But there is another aspect in which the presidential election may be regarded, and one whose importance is better appreciated in America than in Europe. The election is a solemn periodical appeal to the nation to review its condition, the way in which its business has been carried on, the conduct of the two great parties. It stirs and rouses the nation as nothing else does, forces every one not merely to think about public affairs but to decide how he judges the parties. It is a direct expression of the will of twelve millions of voters, a force before which everything must bow. It refreshes the sense of national duty; and at great crises it intensifies national patriotism.

A presidential election is sometimes, as in 1800, and as again. most notably in 1860 and 1864, a turning-point in history. In form it is nothing more than the choice of an administrator who cannot influence policy otherwise than by refusing his assent to bills. In reality it is the deliverance of the mind of the people upon all such questions as they feel able to decide. A curious parallel may in this respect be drawn between it and a general election of the House of Commons in England. A general election is in form a choice of representatives, with reference

primarily to their views upon various current questions. In substance it is often a national vote, committing executive power to some one prominent statesman. Thus the elections of 1868, 1874, 1880, were practically votes of the nation to place Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Disraeli at the head of the government. So conversely in America, a presidential election, which purports to be merely the selection of a man, is often in reality a decision upon issues of policy, a condemnation of the course taken by one party, a mandate to the other to follow some different course.

Socially regarded, the American presidency deserves nothing but admiration. The President is simply the first citizen of a free nation, depending for his dignity on no title, no official dress, no insignia of state. It was originally proposed, doubtless in recollection of the English Commonwealth of the seventeenth century, to give him the style of "Highness," and "Protector of the Liberties of the United States." Others suggested "Excellency "; and Washington is said to have had leanings to the Dutch style of "High Mightiness." The head of the ruling President does not appear on coins, nor even on postage stamps. His residence at Washington, called officially "the Executive Mansion," and familiarly "the White House," stands in a shrubbery, and has the air of a large suburban villa rather than of a palace. The rooms, though spacious, are not spacious enough for the crowds that attend the public receptions. The President's salary, which is only $50,000 a year, does not permit display, nor indeed is display expected from him.

Washington has now become one of the handsomest capitals in the world, and cultivates the graces and pleasures of life with eminent success. Besides its political society and its diplomatic society, it is becoming a winter resort for men of wealth and leisure from all over the continent. It is a place where a court might be created, did any one wish to create it. No President has made the attempt; and as the earlier career of the chief magistrate and his wife has seldom qualified them to lead the world of fashion, none is likely to make it.

1 In ridicule of this the more democratic members of Congress proposed to call that more ornamental than useful officer the Vice-President "His superfluous Excellency."

To a European observer, weary of the slavish obsequiousness and lip-deep adulation with which the members of reigning families are treated on the castern side of the Atlantic, fawned on in public and carped at in private, the social relations of an American President to his people are eminently refreshing.

There is a great respect for the office, and a corresponding respect for the man as the holder of the office, if he has done nothing to degrade it. There is no servility, no fictitious selfabasement on the part of the citizens, but a simple and hearty deference to one who represents the majesty of the nation, the sort of respect which the proudest Roman paid to the consulship, even if the particular consul was, like Cicero, a “new man." The curiosity of the visitors who throng the White House on reception days is sometimes too familiar; but this fault tends to disappear, and Presidents have now more reason to complain of the persecutions they endure from an incessantly observant journalism. After oscillating between the ceremonious state of George Washington, who drove to open Congress in his coach and six, with outriders and footmen in livery, and the ostentatious plainness of Citizen Jefferson, who would ride up alone and hitch his horse to the post at the gate,' the President has settled down into an attitude between that of the mayor of a great English town on a public occasion, and that of a European cabinet minister on a political tour. He is followed about and fêted, and in every way treated as the first man in the company; but the spirit of equality which rules the country has sunk too deep into every American nature for him to expect to be addressed with bated breath and whispering reverence. He has no military guard, no chamberlains or grooms-in-waiting; his everyday life is simple; his wife enjoys precedence over all other ladies, but is visited and received just like other ladies; he is surrounded by no such pomp and enforces no such etiquette as that which belongs to the governors even of second-class English colonies, not to speak of the viceroys of India and Ireland.

1 Mr. H. Adams (First Administration of Jefferson, vol. i. p. 197) has, however, shown that at his inauguration Jefferson walked.

CHAPTER VII

WHY GREAT MEN ARE NOT CHOSEN PRESIDENTS

EUROPEANS often ask, and Americans do not always explain, how it happens that this great office, the greatest in the world, unless we except the Papacy, to which any one can rise by his own merits, is not more frequently filled by great and striking men. In America, which is beyond all other countries the country of a career open to talents," a country, moreover, in which political life is unusually keen and political ambition widely diffused, it might be expected that the highest place would always be won by a man of brilliant gifts. But since the heroes of the Revolution died out with Jefferson and Adams and Madison, no person except General Grant has reached the chair whose name would have been remembered had he not been President, and no President except Abraham Lincoln has displayed rare or striking qualities in the chair.

Several reasons may be suggested for the fact, which Americans are themselves the first to admit.

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One is that the proportion of first-rate ability drawn into politics is smaller in America than in most European countries. This is a phenomenon whose causes must be elucidated later in the meantime it is enough to say that in France and Italy, where half-revolutionary conditions have made public life exciting and accessible; in Germany, where an admirably organized civil service cultivates and develops statecraft with unusual success; in England, where many persons of wealth and leisure seek to enter the political arena, while burning questions touch the interests of all classes and make men eager observers of the combatants, the total quantity of talent devoted to parliamentary or administrative work is larger, relatively to the population, than in America, where much of the best ability, both for thought and for action, for

planning and for executing, rushes into a field which is comparatively narrow in Europe, the business of developing the material resources of the country.

Another is that the methods and habits of Congress, and indeed of political life generally, give fewer opportunities for personal distinction, fewer modes in which a man may commend himself to his countrymen by eminent capacity in thought, in speech, or in administration, than is the case in the free countries of Europe.

A third reason is that eminent men make more enemies, and give those enemies more assailable points, than obscure men do. They are therefore in so far less desirable candidates. It is true that the eminent man has also made more friends, that his name is more widely known, and may be greeted with louder cheers. Other things being equal, the famous man is preferable. But other things never are equal. The famous man has probably attacked some leaders in his own party, has supplanted others, has expressed his dislike to the crotchet of some active section, has perhaps committed errors which are capable of being magnified into offences. No man stands long before the public and bears a part in great affairs without giving openings to censorious criticism. Fiercer far than the light which beats upon a throne is the light which beats upon a presidential candidate, searching out all the recesses of his past life. Hence, when the choice lies between a brilliant man and a safe man, the safe man is preferred. Party feeling, strong enough to carry in on its back a man without conspicuous positive merits, is not always strong enough to procure forgiveness for a man with positive faults

A European finds that this phenomenon needs in its turn to be explained, for in the free countries of Europe brilliancy, be it eloquence in speech, or some striking achievement in war or administration, or the power through whatever means of somehow impressing the popular imagination, is what makes a leader triumphant. Why should it be otherwise in America? Because in America party loyalty and party organization have been hitherto so perfect that any one put forward by the party will get the full party vote if his character is good and his "record," as they call it, unstained.