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."

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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 (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 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, 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.

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 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, faults more serious than Englishmen, who have watched with admiration the wisdom of the Crown during the present reign, can easily 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 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.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 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 have little to do, and that the co-operation of the Senate in this department prevents the divergence of the ideas of one President from those of another from being so wide as it might otherwise be.

Fourthly. The fact that he is re-eligible once, but (practically) only once, operates unfavourably on the President. He is tempted to play his cards 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

1 In England, also, there is necessarily a campaign once at least in every six or seven 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 have usually been real and momentous issues, dividing the great parties, which the nation had to settle.