may be more easily fixed upon each member by his constituents.

87. The executive head of the community, be he President, Governor, or Mayor, ought to be elected by the people, and probably at less frequent intervals than the legislative body, as our Federal Constitution provides, because thus the government gains in stability of purpose, without danger to liberty.

88. The judges ought in no case to be elected, but should be appointed for life or good behavior by the executive. Thus only can the majesty and dignity of the courts of justice be maintained. It is absurd and wicked to degrade a judge by forcing him to appeal to the voters for election; because justice has nothing to do with political parties, and ought to be beyond the influence of partisan strife. A court does not deal with policies, but with principles.

89. It is sometimes urged that a President or Governor or Mayor may appoint an improper person as judge; and this is true; but even a bad man, placed for life in an exalted and entirely independent position, is likely to conduct himself well; and an executive officer, though he might make a careless or bad appointment to a temporary office, will think twice before he selects for a life office, and one so important as a judgeship, a man whose career, if it should be disgraceful, would be a constant reproach to him who created him judge.

90. The officers subordinate to the executive ought not to be elected, but appointed by their chief. Otherwise there is confusion in the government, because chief and subordinates deriving their authority from the same source, election, there arises necessarily division of responsibility, and the public business is left undone or is corruptly done.

91. The provisions of our Federal Constitution are very wise upon this point. The President may appoint and remove even so low a grade of officers as postmasters and minor revenue officers. It has sometimes been proposed to make the place of Postmaster elective—but to do so would be to make these officers irresponsible; and as the President could not remove them for incompetency or corruption, because

they would hold their places independently of him, and from the same source which gave him his, you can easily see that the Post-office Department would be exposed to the grossest mismanagement, without the possibility of a remedy.

92. What is true of this is true of all the executive departments. No officers charged with enforcing the laws ought to be elected, because they would thus be independent of their chief, be he President, Governor, or Mayor. The business of a government does not differ in this respect from that of a merchant or a railroad company; and no merchant could successfully conduct his business if his clerks, bookkeeper, and porters were appointed and removable, not by himself, but by his customers.

93. But in many of our states this blunder is made; and the people are obliged to elect many minor executive officers, and even those persons who form the cabinet of the Governor; and, as though to breed the extreme of confusion, in New York and some other states these subordinate officers are chosen at different times from their nominal chief, and are thus not merely independent of his will, but often his political opponents, disagreeing with his policy, and naturally inclined to make him inefficient by opposing or carelessly carrying out his orders.

94. This foolish system makes government difficult, favors corruption, and screens inefficiency, because it divides responsibility among many persons; and it is the cause of almost all the misgovernment from which so many of our states and cities have suffered and are still suffering.

95. It seems to have been the device of ingenious political demagogues, helped, as these usually are, by well-meaning but ignorant people, who were taken with the plausible appeal that to make the people elect all their officers would be to give them more power over public affairs. So long as it is tolerated in any part of our political system, so long the baser sort of politicians will continue to impose their "slates" upon the voters, disable these from exercising an intelligent control over their rulers, and make government a mockery.

96. For the people, busy with their own affairs, have not leisure to scrutinize the characters of a number of candidates presented to them on the same ticket; the press, occupied with a great variety of public interests and questions, is equally disabled. Every man, of perhaps a dozen, on a ticket, uses his influence to elect all the others, bad and good, as well as himself, and thus the popular vote is stultified. See how different is the case in a presidential election. Then the people are asked to vote for but three persons-the President, Vice-President, and a Member of Congress; and the character, abilities, political principles, and history of these three individuals receive the closest scrutiny from the press and public speakers during the canvass, so that every fault or evidence of unfitness is brought to light, and the people have a fair chance to vote intelligently.

97. Only the chief executive officer, in any system, ought to be elected by the people; and upon him should be placed the grave responsibility of selecting the subordinates by whose help he is to carry on the public business. If then he fail, he and his party may fairly he held responsible by the people, and punished at the next election.

XIII.

OF POLITICAL CONSTITUTIONS.

98. A political Constitution is the instrument or compact in which the rights of the people who adopt it, and the powers and responsibilities of their rulers, are described, and by which they are fixed.

99. The chief object of a constitution is to limit the power of majorities.

100. A moment's reflection will tell you that mere majority rule, unlimited, would be the most grinding of tyrannies; the minority at any time would be mere slaves, whose rights to life, property, and comfort no one who chose to join the majority would be bound to respect.

101. It is the object of constitutions to protect minorities in certain common rights, and to restrain the power of majorities, who may do, or enact, or cause to be done, only what in any case the Constitution permits; and have no right, no matter how numerically strong they may be, to invade the minority in those rights which the Constitution secures to all the citizens.

102. Out of this thought grow all the provisions of a political Constitution-as, for instance, under our own, no majority can deprive a criminal of trial by jury, or elect its candidates for longer than a prescribed term, or deprive the minority of life or property by unequal laws, or enact laws contrary to the provisions or outside of the limitations of the Constitution.

103. It is a merit in any constitution to be brief, and to state only general rules or principles, to be applied practically by the law-making power; because thus this instrument, which ought to be but rarely and cautiously altered, is more elastic, and more easily applied to changing circumstances, and to a great variety of life. It is the proper function of a constitution, for instance, to declare the term during which a President, a Member of Congress, or a Governor shall hold office, for that may and ought to be a permanent regulation; but it would be an error to fix in the constitution the amount of salary either ought to receive; or even to prohibit the reelection of an officer, for circumstances may occur making it expedient to re-elect. For instance, had the so-called "oneterm principle," which is not a principle at all, but a mere foolish expedient, been incorporated in our Constitution, we should not have re-elected Mr. Lincoln in 1864, an event which did more than any battle to bring the war to an end, by convincing the Southern people that the Federal policy would not suffer change. It has become a tradition having the force of a Constitutional provision that the President shall not be chosen for a third term. The example set by General Washington, in this respect, is likely to be followed; for if any President desired a third term, this would be plain

proof of inordinate and dangerous ambition in him, rendering him unfit for the office; and if in such a case a President used the power of his patronage to procure a nomination, it would be wise to vote against him at every hazard. But it is a proper constitutional regulation that salaries shall not be increased or diminished during the term of the incumbent; for a salary is in the nature of a contract, and ought to be beyond the reach of increase from corruption, or diminution from party malevolence. It is proper that the Constitution should prohibit human slavery; but it is better to declare by laws not only the penalties for smuggling, theft, etc., but also what constitutes these and other crimes-except treason, which, being a purely political offense, its definition ought to be immutably fixed, as it is in our Federal Constitution, and not left to the political passions of any period. But even here Congress, in the Constitution, is wisely charged to declare the penalty of treason. Again, it is proper that the Constitution should create a Supreme Court, as ours does; but it would be unwise that it should also fix the number or location of minor courts, because as the country grows these may have to be increased; and accordingly our Constitution leaves Congress to establish these minor courts.

XIV.

OF THE LEGISLATIVE OR LAW-MAKING BRANCH.

104. Legislative bodies have usually two Houses, as in our Congress and state Legislatures. In the Federal Congress, the Senators are chosen by the Legislatures of the different states, and are supposed to represent the states, while the representatives are chosen directly by the people in districts.

105. Action in a law-making body means change; and laws ought to be changed seldom, and never without full discussion and consideration.

106. All the arrangements of modern legislative bodies in