called Spoils System, whereby holders of Federal offices have been turned out at the accession of a new President to make way for the aspirants whose services, past or future, he is expected to requite or secure by the gift of places.1

The right of the President to remove from office has given rise to long controversies on which I can only touch. In the Constitution there is not a word about removals; and very soon after it had come into force the question arose whether, as regards those offices for which the confirmation of the Senate is required, the President could remove without its consent. Hamilton had argued in the Federalist that the President could not so remove, because it was not to be supposed that the Constitution meant to give him so immense and dangerous a reach of power. Madison argued soon after the adoption of the Constitution that it did permit him so to remove, because the head of the executive must have subordinates whom he can trust, and may discover in those whom he has appointed defects fatal to their usefulness. This was also the view of ChiefJustice Marshall.2 When the question came to be settled by Congress during the presidency of Washington, Congress, influenced perhaps by respect for his perfect uprightness, took the Madisonian view and recognized the power of removal as vested in the President alone. So matters stood till a conflict arose in 1866 between President Johnson and the Republican majority in both Houses of Congress. In 1867, Congress fearing that the President would dismiss a great number of officials who sided with it against him, passed an Act, known as the Tenure of Office Act, which made the consent of the Senate necessary to the removal of office-holders, even of the President's (so-called) cabinet ministers, permitting him only to suspend them from office during the time when Congress was not sitting. The constitutionality of this Act has been much doubted, and its policy is now generally condemned. It was a blow struck in

1 See further as to the use of Federal patronage the chapter on the Spoils System in Vol. II.

2 Mr. Justice Story in his Commentaries on the Constitution, argues against the Madison doctrine, but he does so in view not of such questions as presented themselves in 1867, but of the conduct of President Jackson (who was in power when Story wrote) in making wholesale partisan removals. The whole subject of the President's appointing power is elaborately and judiciously treated in an article in the Papers of the American Historical Association, vol. i., by Lucy M. Salmon.

3 Mr. James G. Blaine, for instance, who was a member of the Congress which

the heat of passion. When President Grant succeeded in 1869, the Act was greatly modified, and it has now (1887) been with general approval repealed.

How dangerous it is to leave all offices tenable at the mere pleasure of a partisan Executive using them for party purposes, has been shown by the fruits of the Spoils system. On the other hand a President ought to be free to choose his chief advisers and ministers, and even in the lower ranks of the civil service it is hard to secure efficiency if a specific cause, such as could be proved to a jury, must be assigned for dismissal.

Although Congress has transferred many minor appointments to the courts and the heads of departments, and by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 has instituted competitive examinations for a number estimated at 14,000, many remain in the free gift of the President; and even as regards those which lie with his ministers, he may be invoked if disputes arise between the minister and politicians pressing the claims of their respective friends. The business of nominating is in ordinary times so engrossing as to leave the chief magistrate of the nation little time for his other functions.

Artemus Ward's description of Abraham Lincoln swept along from room to room in the White House by a rising tide of office seekers is hardly an exaggeration. From the 4th of March, when Mr. Garfield came into power, till he was shot in the July following, he was engaged almost incessantly in questions of patronage. Yet the President's individual judgment has little scope. He must reckon with the Senate; he must requite the supporters of the men to whom he owes his election: he must so distribute places all over the country as to keep the local wire-pullers in good humour, and generally strengthen the party by "doing something" for those who have worked or will work for it. Although the minor posts are practically left to the nomination of the senators or congressmen from the State or district, conflicting claims give infinite trouble, and the more lucrative offices are numerous enough to make the task of selection laborious as well as thankless and disagreeable. No one has passed the Act, has in his Twenty Years in Congress expressed his disapproval

of it.

1 It is related that a friend, meeting Mr. Lincoln one day during the war, observed, "You look anxious, Mr. President; is there bad news from the front?" "No," answered the President, "it isn't the war: it's that post-mastership at Brownsville, Ohio."

more to gain from a thorough scheme of civil service reform than the President. The present system makes a wire-puller of him. It throws work on him unworthy of a fine intellect, and for which a man of fine intellect may be ill qualified. On the other hand the President's patronage is, in the hands of a skilful intriguer, an engine of far-spreading potency. By it he can oblige a vast number of persons, can bind their interests to his own, can fill important places with the men of his choice. Such authority as he has over the party in Congress, and therefore over the course of legislation, such influence as he exerts on his party in the several States, and therefore over the selection of candidates for Congress, is due to his patronage. Unhappily, the more his patronage is used for these purposes, the more it is apt to be diverted from the aim of providing the country with the best officials.

In quiet times the power of the President is not great. He is hampered at every turn by the necessity of humouring his party. He is so much engrossed by the trivial and mechanical parts of his work as to have little leisure for framing large schemes of policy, while in carrying them out he needs the cooperation of Congress, which may be jealous, or indifferent, or hostile. He has less influence on legislation,-that is to say, his individual volition makes less difference to the course legislation takes, than the Speaker of the House of Representatives. In troublous times it is otherwise, for immense responsibility is then thrown on one who is both the commander-in-chief and the head of the civil executive. Abraham Lincoln wielded more authority than any single Englishman has done since Oliver Cromwell. It is true that the ordinary law was for some purposes practically suspended during the War of Secession. But it will always have to be similarly suspended in similar crises, and the suspension enures to the benefit of the President, who becomes a sort of dictator.

Setting aside these exceptional moments, the dignity and power of the President have, except in respect to the increase in the quantity of his patronage, been raised but little during the last fifty years, that is, since the time of Andrew Jackson, the last President who, not so much through his office as by his personal ascendency and the vehemence of his character, led and guided his party from the chair. Here, too, one sees how a rigid or supreme Constitution serves to keep things as they were.

But for its iron hand, the office would surely, in a country where great events have been crowded on one another and opinion changes rapidly under the teaching of events, have either risen or fallen, have gained strength or lost it.

In no European country is there any personage to whom the President can be said to correspond. If we look at parliamentary countries like England, Italy, Belgium, he resembles neither the sovereign nor the prime minister, for the former is not a party chief at all, and the latter is palpably and confessedly nothing else. The President enjoys more authority, if less dignity, than a European king. He has powers for the moment narrower than a European prime minister, but these powers are more secure, for they do not depend on the pleasure of a parliamentary majority, but run on to the end of his term. One naturally compares him with the French president, but the latter has a prime minister and cabinet, dependent on the chamber, at once to relieve and to eclipse him in America the President's cabinet is a part of himself and has nothing to do with Congress. The president of the Swiss Confederation is merely the chairman for a year of the Administrative Federal Council (Bundesrath), and can hardly be called the executive chief of the nation.

The difficulty in forming a just estimate of the President's power arises from the fact that it differs so much under ordinary and under extraordinary circumstances. This is a result which republics might seem specially concerned to prevent, and yet it is specially frequent under republics, as witness the cases of Rome and of the Italian commonwealths of the Middle Ages. In ordinary times the President may be compared to the senior or managing clerk in a large business establishment, whose chief function is to select his subordinates, the policy of the concern being in the hands of the board of directors. 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, nor 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 by and through them, and makes him powerful even against the legislature. This is a fact to be remembered by those Europeans who seek in the strengthening of the monarchical principle a cure for the faults of government by assemblies. And it also suggests the risk that attaches to power vested in the hands of a leader directly chosen by the people. A high authority observes1:

"Our holiday orators delight with patriotic fervour to draw distinctions between our own and other countries, and to declare that here the law is master and the highest officer but the servant of the law, while even in free England the monarch is irresponsible and enjoys the most complete personal immunity. But such comparisons are misleading, and may prove mischievous. In how many directions is not the executive authority in America practically superior to what it is in England? And can we say that the President is really in any substantial sense any more the servant of the law than is the Queen? Perhaps if we were candid we should confess that the danger that the executive may be tempted to a disregard of the law may justly be believed greater in 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 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

1 Judge T. M. Cooley, in the International Review for Jan. 1875. He quotes the words of Edward Livingston: "The gloss of zeal for the public service is always spread over acts of oppression, and the people are sometimes made to consider that as a brilliant exertion of energy in their favour which, when viewed in its true light, would be found a fatal blow to their rights. In no government is this effect so easily produced as in a free republic; party spirit, inseparable from its existence, aids the illusion, and a popular leader is allowed in many instances impunity, and sometimes rewarded with applause, for acts which would make a tyrant tremble on his throne."