Volume 20 — REPUBLICANISM VS. GRANTISM.

THE PRESIDENCY A TRUST, NOT A PLAYTHING AND PERQUISITE.—PERSONAL GOVERNMENT AND PRESIDENTIAL PRETENSIONS.—REFORM AND PURITY IN GOVERNMENT.

Speech in the Senate, May 31, 1872.

Socrates. Then whom do you call the good?

Alcibiades. I mean by the good those who are able to rule in the city.

Socrates. Not, surely, over horses?

Alcibiades. Certainly not.

Socrates. But over men?

Alcibiades. Yes.

Plato, Dialogues: First Alcibiades. Tr. Jowett, Vol. IV. p. 545.

Amongst the foremost purposes ought to be the downfall of this odious, insulting, degrading, aide-de-campish, incapable dictatorship. At such a crisis, is this country to be left at the mercy of barrack councils and mess-room politics?—Letter of Lord Durham to Henry Brougham, August, 1830: Life and Times of Henry Lord Brougham, Vol. III. p. 44.

It is a maxim in politics, which we readily admit as undisputed and universal, that a power, however great, when granted by law to an eminent magistrate, is not so dangerous to Liberty as an authority, however inconsiderable, which he acquires from violence and usurpation.

Hume, Essays, Part II.: Essay X., Of Some Remarkable Customs.

SPEECH.

The Sundry Civil Appropriation Bill coming up as unfinished business, Mr. Sumner moved to postpone indefinitely its consideration, and after remarking on the Report of the Committee on the Sale of Arms to French Agents, he said:—

MR. PRESIDENT,—I have no hesitation in declaring myself a member of the Republican Party, and one of the straitest of the sect. I doubt if any Senator can point to earlier or more constant service in its behalf. I began at the beginning, and from that early day have never failed to sustain its candidates and to advance its principles. For these I have labored always by speech and vote, in the Senate and elsewhere,—at first with few only, but at last, as success began to dawn, then with multitudes flocking forward. In this cause I never asked who were my associates or how many they would number. In the consciousness of right I was willing to be alone. To such a party, with which so much of my life is intertwined, I have no common attachment. Not without regret can I see it suffer; not without a pang can I see it changed from its original character, for such a change is death. Therefore do I ask, with no common feeling, that the peril which menaces it may pass away. I stood by its cradle; let me not follow its hearse.

ORIGIN AND OBJECT OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

Turning back to its birth, I recall a speech of my own at a State Convention in Massachusetts, as early as September 7, 1854, where I vindicated its principles and announced its name in these words: “As Republicans we go forth to encounter the Oligarchs of Slavery.”[45] The report records the applause with which this name was received by the excited multitude. Years of conflict ensued, in which the good cause constantly gained. At last, in the spring of 1860, Abraham Lincoln was nominated by this party as its candidate for the Presidency; and here pardon me, if I refer again to myself. On my way home from the Senate I was detained in New York by the invitation of party friends to speak at the Cooper Institute on the issues of the pending election. The speech was made July 11, and, I believe, was the earliest of the campaign. As published at the time, it was entitled “Origin, Necessity, and Permanence of the Republican Party,” and to exhibit these was its precise object. Both the necessity and permanence of the party were asserted. A brief passage, which I take from the report in the “New York Herald,” will show the duty and destiny I ventured then to hold up. After dwelling on the evils of Slavery and the corruptions it had engendered, including the purchase of votes at the polls, I proceeded as follows:—

“Therefore, just so long as the present false theories of Slavery prevail, whether concerning its character morally, economically, and socially, or concerning its prerogatives under the Constitution, just so long as the Slave Oligarchy, which is the sleepless and unhesitating agent of Slavery in all its pretensions, continues to exist as a political power, the Republican Party must endure. [Applause.] If bad men conspire for Slavery, good men must combine for Freedom. [‘Good! good!’] Nor can the Holy War be ended until the barbarism now dominant in the Republic is overthrown, and the Pagan power is driven from our Jerusalem. [Applause.] And when this triumph is won, securing the immediate object of our organization, the Republican Party will not die, but, purified by its long contest with Slavery and filled with higher life, it will be lifted to yet other efforts and with nobler aims for the good of man. [Applause, with three cheers for Lincoln.]”[46]

Such, on the eve of the Presidential election, was my description of the Republican Party and my aspiration for its future. It was not to die, but, “purified by its long contest with Slavery and filled with higher life,” we were to behold it “lifted to yet other efforts and with nobler aims for the good of man.” Here was nothing personal, nothing mean or petty. The Republican Party was necessary and permanent, and always on an ascending plane. For such a party there was no death, but higher life and nobler aims; and this was the party to which I gave my vows. But, alas, how changed! Once country was the object, and not a man; once principle was inscribed on the victorious banners, and not a name only.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY SEIZED BY THE PRESIDENT.

It is not difficult to indicate when this disastrous change, exalting the will of one man above all else, became not merely manifest, but painfully conspicuous. Already it had begun to show itself in personal pretensions, to which I shall refer soon, when, suddenly and without any warning through the public press or any expression from public opinion, the President elected by the Republican Party precipitated upon the country an ill-considered and ill-omened scheme for the annexion of a portion of the island of San Domingo, in pursuance of a treaty negotiated by a person of his own household styling himself “Aide-de-Camp to the President of the United States.” Had this effort, however injudicious in object, been confined to ordinary and constitutional proceedings, with proper regard for a coördinate branch of the Government, it would have soon dropped out of sight and been remembered only as a blunder. But it was not so. Strangely and unaccountably, it was pressed for months by every means and appliance of power, whether at home or abroad, now reaching into the Senate Chamber, and now into the waters about the island. Reluctant Senators were subdued to its support, while, treading under foot the Constitution in one of its most distinctive republican principles, the President seized the war powers of the nation, instituted foreign intervention, and capped the climax of usurpation by menace of violence to the Black Republic of Hayti, where the colored race have begun the experiment of self-government,—thus adding manifest outrage of International Law to manifest outrage of the Constitution, while the long-suffering African was condemned to new indignity. All these things, so utterly indefensible and aggravating, and therefore to be promptly disowned, found defenders on this floor. The President who was the original author of the wrongs continued to maintain them, and appealed to Republican Senators for help,—thus fulfilling the eccentric stipulation with the Government of Baez executed by his Aide-de-Camp.

At last a Republican Senator, who felt it his duty to exhibit these plain violations of the Constitution and of International Law, and then in obedience to the irresistible promptings of his nature and in harmony with his whole life pleaded for the equal rights of the Black Republic, who declared that he did this as a Republican and to save the party from this wretched complicity,—this Republican Senator, engaged in a patriotic service, and anxious to save the colored people from outrage, was denounced on this floor as a traitor to the party; and this was done by a Senator speaking for the party, and known to be in intimate relations with the President guilty of these wrongs. Evidently the party was in process of change from that generous association dedicated to Human Rights and to the guardianship of the African race. Too plainly it was becoming the instrument of one man and his personal will,—no matter how much he set at defiance the Constitution and International Law, or how much he insulted the colored people. The President was to be maintained at all hazards, notwithstanding his aberrations, and all who called them in question were to be struck down.

In exhibiting this autocratic pretension, so revolutionary and unrepublican in character, I mean to be moderate in language and to keep within the strictest bounds. The facts are indisputable, and nobody can deny the gross violation of the Constitution and of International Law with insult to the Black Republic,—the whole case being more reprehensible, as also plainly more unconstitutional and more illegal, than anything alleged against Andrew Johnson on his impeachment. Believe me, Sir, I should gladly leave this matter to the judgment already recorded, if it were not put in issue again by the extraordinary efforts, radiating on every line of office, to press its author for a second term as President; and since silence gives consent, all these efforts are his efforts. They become more noteworthy when it is considered that the name of the candidate thus pressed has become a sign of discord and not of concord, dividing instead of uniting the Republican Party, so that these extraordinary efforts tend directly to the disruption of the party,—all of which he witnesses, and again by his silence ratifies. “Let the party split,” says the President, “I will not renounce my chance of a second term.” The extent of this personal pressure and the subordination of the party to the will of an individual compel us to consider his pretensions. These, too, are in issue.

PRESIDENTIAL PRETENSIONS.

“Upon what meat doth this our Cæsar feed,” that he should assume so much? No honor for victory in war can justify disobedience to the Constitution and to Law; nor can it afford the least apology for any personal immunity, privilege, or license in the Presidential office. A President must turn into a King before it can be said of him that he can do no wrong. He is responsible always. As President he is foremost servant of the Law, bound to obey its slightest mandate. As the elect of the people he owes not only the example of willing obedience, but also of fidelity and industry in the discharge of his exalted office, with an absolute abnegation of all self-seeking. Nothing for self, but all for country. And now, as we regard the career of this candidate, we find to our amazement how little it accords with this simple requirement. Bring it to the touchstone and it fails.

Not only are Constitution and Law disregarded, but the Presidential office itself is treated as little more than a plaything and a perquisite,—when not the former, then the latter. Here the details are ample, showing how from the beginning this august trust has dropped to be a personal indulgence, where palace-cars, fast horses, and seaside loiterings figure more than duties; how personal aims and objects have been more prominent than the public interest; how the Presidential office has been used to advance his own family on a scale of nepotism dwarfing everything of the kind in our history, and hardly equalled in the corrupt governments where this abuse has most prevailed; how in the same spirit office has been conferred upon those from whom he had received gifts or benefits, thus making the country repay his personal obligations; how personal devotion to himself, rather than public or party service, has been made the standard of favor; how the vast appointing power conferred by the Constitution for the general welfare has been employed at his will to promote his schemes, to reward his friends, to punish his opponents, and to advance his election to a second term; how all these assumptions have matured in a personal government, semi-military in character and breathing the military spirit,—being a species of Cæsarism or personalism, abhorrent to republican institutions, where subservience to the President is the supreme law; how in maintaining this subservience he has operated by a system of combinations, military, political, and even senatorial, having their orbits about him, so that, like the planet Saturn, he is surrounded by rings,—nor does the similitude end here, for his rings, like those of the planet, are held in position by satellites; how this utterly unrepublican Cæsarism has mastered the Republican Party and dictated the Presidential will, stalking into the Senate Chamber itself, while a vindictive spirit visits good Republicans who cannot submit; how the President himself, unconscious that a President has no right to quarrel with anybody, insists upon quarrelling until he has become the great Presidential quarreller, with more quarrels than all other Presidents together, all begun and continued by himself; how his personal followers back him in quarrels, insult those he insults, and then, not departing from his spirit, cry out, with Shakespeare, “We will have rings and things and fine array”; and, finally, how the chosen head of the Republic is known chiefly for Presidential pretensions, utterly indefensible in character, derogatory to the country, and of evil influence, making personal objects a primary pursuit, so that, instead of a beneficent presence, he is a bad example, through whom republican institutions suffer and the people learn to do wrong.

Would that these things could be forgotten! but since through officious friends the President insists upon a second term, they must be considered and publicly discussed. When understood, nobody will vindicate them. It is easy to see that Cæsarism even in Europe is at a discount, that “personal government” has been beaten on that ancient field, and that “Cæsar with a Senate at his heels” is not the fit model for our Republic. King George the Third of England, so peculiar for narrowness and obstinacy, had retainers in Parliament who went under the name of “The King’s Friends.” Nothing can be allowed here to justify the inquiry, “Have we a King George among us?”—or that other question, “Have we a party in the Senate of ‘The King’s Friends’?”

PERSONAL GOVERNMENT UNREPUBLICAN.

Personal Government is autocratic. It is the One-Man Power elevated above all else, and is therefore in direct conflict with republican government, whose consummate form is tripartite, being executive, legislative, and judicial,—each independent and coëqual. From Mr. Madison, in “The Federalist,” we learn that the accumulation of these powers “in the same hands” may justly be pronounced “the very definition of Tyranny.”[47] And so any attempt by either to exercise the powers of another is a tyrannical invasion, always reprehensible in proportion to its extent. John Adams tells us, in most instructive words, that “it is by balancing each of these powers against the other two that the efforts in human nature towards tyranny can alone be checked and restrained, and any degree of freedom preserved in the Constitution.”[48]

Then, again, the same authority says that the perfection of this great idea is “by giving each division a power to defend itself by a negative.”[49] In other words, each is armed against invasion by the others. Accordingly, the Constitution of Virginia, in 1776, famous as an historical precedent, declared expressly: “The legislative, executive, and judiciary departments shall be separate and distinct, so that neither exercise the powers properly belonging to the other; nor shall any person exercise the powers of more than one of them at the same time.”[50]

The Constitution of Massachusetts, dating from 1780, embodied the same principle in memorable words: “In the government of this Commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them; the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them; the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.”[51]

A government of laws and not of men is the object of republican government; nay, more, it is the distinctive essence without which it becomes a tyranny. Therefore personal government in all its forms, and especially when it seeks to sway the action of any other branch or overturn its constitutional negative, is hostile to the first principles of republican institutions, and an unquestionable outrage. That our President has offended in this way is unhappily too apparent.

THE PRESIDENT AS A CIVILIAN.

To comprehend the personal government that has been installed over us we must know its author. His picture is the necessary frontispiece,—not as soldier, let it be borne in mind, but as civilian. The President is titular head of the Army and Navy of the United States, but his office is not military or naval. As if to exclude all question, he is classed by the Constitution among “civil officers.” Therefore as civilian is he to be seen. Then, perhaps, may we learn the secret of the policy so adverse to republicanism in which he perseveres.

To appreciate his peculiar character as a civilian it is important to know his triumphs as a soldier, for the one is the natural complement of the other. The successful soldier is rarely changed to the successful civilian. There seems an incompatibility between the two, modified by the extent to which one has been allowed to exclude the other. One always a soldier cannot late in life become a statesman; one always a civilian cannot late in life become a soldier. Education and experience are needed for each. Washington and Jackson were civilians as well as soldiers.

In the large training and experience of Antiquity the soldier and civilian were often united; but in modern times this has been seldom. The camp is peculiar in the influence it exercises; it is in itself an education; but it is not the education of the statesman. To suppose that we can change without preparation from the soldier to the statesman is to assume that training and experience are of less consequence for the one than the other,—that a man may be born a statesman, but can fit himself as a soldier only by four years at West Point, careful scientific study, the command of troops, and experience in the tented field. And is nothing required for the statesman? Is his duty so slight? His study is the nation and its welfare, turning always to history for example, to law for authority, and to the loftiest truth for rules of conduct. No knowledge, care, or virtue, disciplined by habit, can be too great. The pilot is not accepted in his trust until he knows the signs of the storm, the secrets of navigation, the rocks of the coast,—all of which are learned only by careful study with charts and soundings, by coasting the land and watching the crested wave. But can less be expected of that other pilot who is to steer the ship which contains us all?

The failure of the modern soldier as statesman is exhibited by Mr. Buckle in his remarkable work on the “History of Civilization.” Writing as a philosopher devoted to liberal ideas, he does not disguise that in Antiquity “the most eminent soldiers were likewise the most eminent politicians”; but he plainly shows the reason when he adds, that “in the midst of the hurry and turmoil of camps these eminent men cultivated their minds to the highest point that the knowledge of that age would allow.”[52] The secret was culture not confined to war. In modern Europe few soldiers have been more conspicuous than Gustavus Adolphus and Frederick sometimes called the Great; but we learn from our author that both “failed ignominiously in their domestic policy, and showed themselves as short-sighted in the arts of peace as they were sagacious in the arts of war.”[53] The judgment of Marlborough is more pointed. While portraying him as “the greatest conqueror of his age, the hero of a hundred fights, the victor of Blenheim and of Ramillies,” the same philosophical writer adds that he was “a man not only of the most idle and frivolous pursuits, but was so miserably ignorant that his deficiencies made him the ridicule of his contemporaries,” while his politics were compounded of selfishness and treachery.[54] Nor was Wellington an exception. Though shining in the field without a rival, and remarkable for integrity of purpose, an unflinching honesty, and high moral feeling, the conqueror of Waterloo is described as “nevertheless utterly unequal to the complicated exigencies of political life.”[55] This judgment of the philosopher is confirmed by that of Metternich, the renowned statesman, who, after encountering Wellington at the Congresses of Vienna and Verona, did not hesitate to write of him as “the great Baby.”[56] Such are the examples of history, each with its warning.

It would be hard to find anything in the native endowments or in the training of our chieftain to make him an illustrious exception; at least nothing of this kind is recorded. Was Nature more generous with him than with Marlborough or Wellington, Gustavus Adolphus or Frederick called the Great? or was his experience of life a better preparation than theirs? And yet they failed, except in war. It is not known that our chieftain had any experience as a civilian until he became President, nor does any partisan attribute to him that double culture which in Antiquity made the same man soldier and statesman. It has often been said that he took no note of public affairs, never voting but once in his life, and then for James Buchanan. After leaving West Point he became a captain in the Army, but soon abandoned the service, to reappear at a later day as a successful general. There is no reason to believe that he employed this intermediate period in any way calculated to improve him as a statesman. One of his unhesitating supporters, my colleague, [Mr. Wilson,] in a speech intended to commend him for reëlection, says: “Before the war we knew nothing of Grant. He was earning a few hundred dollars a year in tanning hides in Galena.”[57] By the war he passed to be President; and such was his preparation to govern the Great Republic, making it an example to mankind! Thus he learned to deal with all questions, domestic and foreign, whether of peace or war, to declare Constitutional Law and International Law, and to administer the vast appointing power, creating Cabinet officers, judges, foreign ministers, and an uncounted army of office-holders!

To these things must be added, that when this soldier first began as civilian he was already forty-six years old. At this mature age, close upon half a century, when habits are irrevocably fixed, when the mind has hardened against what is new, when the character has taken its permanent form, and the whole man is rooted in his own unchangeable individuality, our soldier entered abruptly upon the untried life of a civilian in its most exalted sphere. Do not be surprised, that, like other soldiers, he failed; the wonder would be had he succeeded. There is a French saying, that at forty a man has given his measure. At least his vocation is settled,—how completely is seen, if we suppose the statesman, after traversing the dividing point, abruptly changed to the soldier. And yet at an age nearly seven years later our soldier precipitately changed to the statesman.

This sudden metamorphosis cannot be forgotten, when we seek to comprehend the strange pretensions which ensued. It is easy to see how some very moderate experience in civil life, involving of course the lesson of subordination to republican principles, would have prevented indefensible acts.

TESTIMONY OF THE LATE EDWIN M. STANTON.

Something also must be attributed to individual character. And here I express no opinion of my own; I shall allow another to speak in solemn words echoed from the tomb.

On reaching Washington at the opening of Congress in December, 1869, I was pained to hear that Mr. Stanton, lately Secretary of War, was in failing health. Full of gratitude for his unsurpassed services, and with a sentiment of friendship quickened by common political sympathies, I lost no time in seeing him, and repeated my visits until his death, toward the close of the same month. My last visit was marked by a communication never to be forgotten. As I entered his bedroom, where I found him reclining on a sofa, propped by pillows, he reached out his hand, already clammy cold, and in reply to my inquiry, “How are you?” answered, “Waiting for my furlough.” Then at once, with singular solemnity, he said, “I have something to say to you.” When I was seated, he proceeded without one word of introduction: “I know General Grant better than any other person in the country can know him. It was my duty to study him, and I did so night and day, when I saw him and when I did not see him; and now I tell you what I know: he cannot govern this country.” The intensity of his manner and the positiveness of his judgment surprised me; for, though I was aware that the late Secretary of War did not place the President very high in general capacity, I was not prepared for a judgment so strongly couched. At last, after some delay, occupied in meditating his remarkable words, I observed, “What you say is very broad.” “It is as true as it is broad,” he replied promptly. I added, “You are tardy; you tell this late: why did you not say it before his nomination?” He answered, that he was not consulted about the nomination, and had no opportunity of expressing his opinion upon it, besides being much occupied at the time by his duties as Secretary of War and his contest with the President. I followed by saying, “But you took part in the Presidential election, and made a succession of speeches for him in Ohio and Pennsylvania.” “I spoke,” said he, “but I never introduced the name of General Grant. I spoke for the Republican Party and the Republican cause.” This was the last time I saw Mr. Stanton. A few days later I followed him to the grave where he now rests. As the vagaries of the President became more manifest, and the Presidential office seemed more and more a plaything and perquisite, this dying judgment of the great citizen who knew him so well haunted me constantly, day and night; and I now communicate it to my country, feeling that it is a legacy which I have no right to withhold. Beyond the intrinsic interest from its author, it is not without value as testimony in considering how the President could have been led into that Quixotism of personal pretension which it is my duty to expose.[58]

DUTY TO MAKE EXPOSURE.

Pardon me, if I repeat that it is my duty to make this exposure, spreading before you the proofs of that personal government, which will only pass without censure when it passes without observation. Insisting upon reëlection, the President challenges inquiry and puts himself upon the country. But even if his pressure for reëlection did not menace the tranquillity of the country, it is important that the personal pretensions he has set up should be exposed, that no President hereafter may venture upon such ways, and no Senator presume to defend them. The case is clear as noon.

TWO TYPICAL INSTANCES.

In opening this catalogue I select two typical instances,—Nepotism, and Gift-Taking with repayment by office, each absolutely indefensible in the head of a Republic, most pernicious in example, and showing beyond question that surpassing egotism which changed the Presidential office into a personal instrumentality, not unlike the trunk of an elephant, apt for all things, small as well as great, from provision for a relation to forcing a treaty on a reluctant Senate, or forcing a reëlection on a reluctant people.

NEPOTISM OF THE PRESIDENT.

Between these two typical instances I hesitate which to place foremost: but since the nepotism of the President is a ruling passion, revealing the primary instincts of his nature,—since it is maintained by him in utter unconsciousness of its offensive character,—since, instead of blushing for it as an unhappy mistake, he continues to uphold it,—since it has been openly defended by Senators on this floor,—and since no true patriot anxious for republican institutions can doubt that it ought to be driven with hissing and scorn from all possibility of repetition,—I begin with this undoubted abuse.

There has been no call of Congress for a return of the relations holding office, stipend, or money-making opportunity under the President. The country is left to the press for information on this important subject. If there is any exaggeration, the President is in fault,—since, knowing the discreditable allegations, he has not hastened to furnish the precise facts, or at least his partisans have failed in not calling for the official information. In the mood which they have shown in this Chamber, it is evident that any resolution calling for it, moved by a Senator not known to be for his reëlection, would meet with opposition, and an effort to vindicate republican institutions would be denounced as an assault on the President. But the newspapers have placed enough beyond question for judgment on this extraordinary case, although thus far there has been no attempt to appreciate it, especially in the light of history.

One list makes the number of beneficiaries as many as forty-two, being probably every known person allied to the President by blood or marriage. Persons seeming to speak for the President, or at least after careful inquiries, have denied the accuracy of this list, reducing it to thirteen. It will not be questioned that there is at least a baker’s dozen in this category,—thirteen relations of the President billeted on the country, not one of whom but for this relationship would have been brought forward, the whole constituting a case of nepotism not unworthy of those worst governments where office is a family possession.

Beyond the list of thirteen are other revelations, showing that this strange abuse did not stop with the President’s relations, but that these obtained appointments for others in their circle,—so that every relation became a centre of influence, while the Presidential family extended indefinitely.

Hitherto only one President has appointed relations, and that was John Adams; but he found public opinion, inspired by the example of Washington, so strong against it, that, after a slight experiment, he replied to an applicant, “You know it is impossible for me to appoint my own relations to anything, without drawing forth a torrent of obloquy.”[59] The judgment of the country found voice in Thomas Jefferson, who, in a letter written shortly after he became President, used these strong words: “Mr. Adams degraded himself infinitely by his conduct on this subject.”[60] But John Adams, besides transferring his son John Quincy Adams from one diplomatic post to another, appointed only two relations. Pray, Sir, what words would Jefferson use, if he were here to speak on the open and multifarious nepotism of our President?

ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF NEPOTISM.

The Presidential pretension is so important in every aspect, and the character of republican institutions is so absolutely compromised by its toleration, that it cannot be treated in any perfunctory way. It shall not be my fault, if hereafter there is any doubt with regard to it.

The word “Nepotism” is of Italian origin. First appearing at Rome when the Papal power was at its height, it served to designate the authority and influence exercised by the nephews, or more generally the family, of a Pope: all the family of a Pope were nephews, and the Pope was universal uncle. From Italian the word passed into other European languages, but in the lapse of time or process of naturalization it has come to denote the misconduct of the appointing power, and has amplified so as to embrace others besides Popes who appoint relations to office. Johnson in his Dictionary defines it simply as “Fondness for nephews”; but our latest and best lexicographer, Worcester, supplies a definition more complete and satisfactory: “Favoritism shown to relations; patronage bestowed in consideration of family relationship and not of merit.” Such undoubtedly is the meaning of the word as now received and employed.

The character of this pretension appears in its origin and history. As far back as 1667 this undoubted abuse occupied attention to such a degree that it became the subject of an able historical work, entitled “Il Nipotismo di Roma,” which is full of instruction and warning even for our Republic. In the early days of the Church Popes are described as discarding all relationship, whether of blood or alliance, and inclining to merit alone in their appointments, although there were some with so large a number of nephews, grand-nephews, brothers-in-law, and relations, as to baffle belief; and yet it is recorded that no sooner did the good Pope enter the Vatican, which is the Executive Mansion of Rome, than relations fled, brothers-in-law hid themselves, grand-nephews removed away, and nephews got at a long distance.[61] Such was the early virtue. Nepotism did not exist, and the word itself was unknown.

At last, in 1471, twenty-one years before the discovery of America by Columbus, Sixtus the Fourth became Pope, and with him began that nepotism which soon became famous as a Roman institution.[62] Born in 1414, the son of a fisherman, the eminent founder was already fifty-seven years old, and he reigned thirteen years, bringing to his functions large experience as a successful preacher and as general of the Franciscan friars. Though cradled in poverty, and by the vows of his Order bound to mendicancy, he began at once to heap office and riches upon the various members of his family, so that his conduct, from its barefaced inconsistency with the obligation of his life, excited, according to the historian, “the amazement and wonder of all.”[63] The useful reforms he attempted are forgotten, and this remarkable pontiff is chiefly remembered now as the earliest nepotist. Different degrees of severity are employed by different authors in characterizing this unhappy fame. Bouillet, in his Dictionary of History,[64] having Catholic approbation, describes him as “feeble toward his nephews”; and our own Cyclopædia,[65] in a brief exposition of his character, says “he made himself odious by excessive nepotism.” But in all varieties of expression the offence stands out for judgment.

The immediate successor of Sixtus was Innocent the Eighth, whom the historian describes as “very cold to his relations,”[66] since three only obtained preferment at his hands. But the example of the founder so far prevailed that for a century nepotism, as was said, “lorded it in Rome,”[67] except in a few instances worthy of commemoration and example.

Of these exceptions, the first in time was Julius the Second, founder of St. Peter’s at Rome, whose remarkable countenance is so beautifully preserved by the genius of Rafael. Though the nephew of the nepotist, and not declining to appoint all relations, he did it with such moderation that Rome was said to have been “almost without nepotism” in his time.[68] Adrian the Sixth, early teacher of Charles the Fifth, and successor of Leo the Tenth, set a better example by refusing absolutely; but so accustomed had Rome become to this abuse, that not only the ambassadors, but the people, condemned him as “too rude” with his relations. A son of his cousin, studying in Siena, started for Rome, trusting to obtain important recognition; but the Pope, without seeing him, sent him back on a hired horse. Relations thronged from other places, and even from across the Alps, longing for that greatness which other Popes had lavished on family; but Adrian dismissed them with a slight change of clothing and an allowance of money for the journey: one who from poverty came on foot was permitted to return on foot. This Pope carried abnegation of his family so far as to make relationship an excuse for not rewarding one who had served the Church well.[69] Similar in character was Marcellus the Second, who became Pope in 1555. He was unwilling that any of his family should come to Rome; even his brother was forbidden: but this good example was closed by death, after a reign of twenty days only; and yet this brief period of exemplary virtue has made this pontiff famous. Kindred in spirit was Urban the Seventh, who reigned thirteen days only in 1590, but long enough to repel his relations,—and also Leo the Eleventh, who reigned twenty-five days in 1605. To this list may be added Innocent the Ninth, who died after two months of service. It is related that his death displeased his relations much, and dissolved the air-castles they had built. They had hurried from Bologna, but, except a grand-nephew, all were obliged to return poor as they came.[70] In this list I must not forget Pius the Fifth, who reigned from 1566 to 1572. He set himself so completely against aggrandizing his own family, that he was with difficulty persuaded to make a sister’s son cardinal,—and would not have done it, had not all the cardinals united, on grounds of conscience, against the denial of this dignity to one most worthy of it.[71] Such virtue was part of that elevated character which caused his subsequent canonization.

These good Popes were short-lived,—their reigns for the most part counting by days only; but they opened happy glimpses of an administration where the powers of government were not treated as a personal perquisite. The opposite list had the advantage of time.

Conspicuous among nepotists was Alexander the Sixth, whose family name of Borgia is damned to fame. With him nepotism assumed its most brutal and barbarous development, reflecting the character of its pontifical author, who was without the smallest ray of good. Other Popes were less cruel and bloody, but not less determined in providing for their families. Paul the Third, who was of the great house of Farnese, would have had the estates of the Church a garden for the “lilies” which flourish on the escutcheon of his family.[72] It is related that when Urban the Eighth, who was a Barberini, began his historic reign, all his relations at a distance flew to Rome like the “bees” on the family arms, to suck the honey of the Church, but not leaving behind the sting with which they pricked while they sucked.[73] Whether lilies or bees, it was the same. The latter pontiff gave to nepotism fulness of power when he resolved “to have no business with any one not dependent upon his house.”[74] In the same spirit he excused himself from making a man cardinal because he had “always been the enemy of his nephews.”[75] Although nothing so positive is recorded of Paul the Fifth, who was a Borghese, his nepotism appears in the Roman saying, that, “while serving the Church as a good shepherd, he gave too much wool to his nephews.”[76] These instructive incidents, illustrating the pontifical pretension, reflect light on the history of palaces and galleries at Rome, now admired by the visitor from distant lands. If not created, they were at least enlarged by nepotism.

It does not always appear how many relations a Pope endowed. Often it was all, as in the case of Gregory the Thirteenth, who, besides advancing a nephew actually at Rome, called thither all his nephews and grand-nephews, whether from brothers or sisters, and gave them offices, dignities, governments, lordships, prelacies, and abbacies.[77] Cæsar Borgia and his sister Lucretia were not the only relations of Alexander the Sixth. I do not find the number adopted by Sixtus, the founder of the system. Pius the Fourth, who was of the grasping Medicean family, favored no less than twenty-five.[78] Alexander the Seventh, of the Chigi family, had about him five nephews and one brother, which a contemporary characterized as “nepotism all complete.”[79] This pontiff began his reign by forbidding his relations to appear at Rome, which redounded at once to his credit throughout the Christian world, while the astonished people discoursed of his holiness and the purity of his life, expecting even to see miracles. In making the change, he yielded evidently to immoral pressure and the example of predecessors.

The performances of papal nephews figure in history. After the Borgias were the Caraffas, who obtained power through Paul the Fourth; but at last becoming too insolent and rapacious, their uncle was compelled to strip them of their dignities and drive them from Rome.[80] Sometimes nephews were employed chiefly in ministering to pontifical pleasures, as in the case of Julius the Third, who, according to the historian, “thought of nothing but banqueting with this one and that one, keeping his relations in Rome rather to accompany him at banquets than to aid him in the government of the holy Church, about which he thought little.”[81] This occasion for relations does not exist at Rome now, as the pontiff leads a discreet life, always at home, and never banquets abroad.

These historic instances make us see nepotism in its original seat. Would you know how it was regarded there? Sometimes it was called a hydra with many heads, sprouting anew at the election of a pontiff,[82] then again it was called Ottoman rather than Christian in character.[83] The contemporary historian who has described it so minutely says that those who merely read of it without seeing it will find it difficult to believe or even imagine.[84] The qualities of a Pope’s relation were said to be “ignorance and cunning.”[85] It is easy to believe that this prostitution of the head of the Church was one of the abuses which excited the cry for Reform, and awakened even in Rome the echoes of Martin Luther. A Swedish nobleman visiting Rome is recorded as declaring himself unwilling to be the subject of a pontiff who was himself the subject of his own relations.[86] But even this pretension was not without open defenders, while the general effrontery with which it was maintained assumed that it was above question. If some gave with eyes closed, most gave with eyes open. It was said that Popes were not to neglect their own blood, that they should not show themselves worse than the beasts, not one of which fails to caress its relations; and the case of bears and lions, the most ferocious of all, was cited as authority for this recognition of one’s own blood.[87] All this was soberly said, and it is doubtless true. Not even a Pope can justly neglect his own blood; but help and charity must be at his own expense, and not at the expense of his country. In appointments to office, merit and not blood is the only just recommendation.

That nepotism has ceased to lord itself in Rome, that no pontiff billets his relations upon the Church, that the appointing power of the Pope is treated as a public trust and not as a personal perquisite,—all this is the present testimony with regard to that government which knows from experience the baneful character of this abuse.

AMERICAN AUTHORITIES ON NEPOTISM.

The nepotism of Rome was little known in our country, and I do not doubt that Washington, when declining to make the Presidential office a personal perquisite, was governed by that instinct of duty and patriotism which rendered him so preëminent. Through all the perils of a seven years’ war he had battled with that kingly rule which elevates a whole family without regard to merit, fastening all upon the nation, and he had learned that this royal system could find no place in a republic. Therefore he rejected the claims of relations, and in nothing was his example more beautiful. His latest biographer, Washington Irving, records him as saying:—

“So far as I know my own mind, I would not be in the remotest degree influenced in making nominations by motives arising from the ties of family or blood.”[88]

Then again he declared his purpose to “discharge the duties of the office with that impartiality and zeal for the public good which ought never to suffer connections of blood or friendship to intermingle so as to have the least sway on decisions of a public nature.”[89]

This excellent rule of conduct is illustrated by the advice to his successor with regard to the promotion of his son, John Quincy Adams. After giving it as his “decided opinion” that the latter “is the most valuable public character we have abroad,” and promises to be “the ablest of all our diplomatic corps,” Washington declares:—

“If he was now to be brought into that line, or into any other public walk, I could not, upon the principle which has regulated my own conduct, disapprove of the caution which is hinted at in the letter.”[90]

Considering the importance of the rule, it were better for the country if it had prevailed over parental regard and the extraordinary merits of the son.

In vindicating his conduct at a later day, John Adams protested against what he called “the hypersuperlative public virtue” of Washington, and insisted: “A President ought not to appoint a man because he is his relation; nor ought he to refuse or neglect to appoint him for that reason.”[91] With absolute certainty that the President is above all prejudice of family and sensitive to merit only, this rule is not unreasonable; but who can be trusted to apply it?

Jefferson developed and explained the true principles in a manner worthy of republican institutions. In a letter to a relation immediately after becoming President, he wrote:

“The public will never be made to believe that an appointment of a relative is made on the ground of merit alone, uninfluenced by family views; nor can they ever see with approbation offices, the disposal of which they intrust to their Presidents for public purposes, divided out as family property. Mr. Adams degraded himself infinitely by his conduct on this subject, as General Washington had done himself the greatest honor. With two such examples to proceed by, I should be doubly inexcusable to err.”[92]

After his retirement from the Presidency, in a letter to a kinsman, he asserts the rule again:—

“Towards acquiring the confidence of the people, the very first measure is to satisfy them of his disinterestedness, and that he is directing their affairs with a single eye to their good, and not to build up fortunes for himself and family; and especially that the officers appointed to transact their business are appointed because they are the fittest men, not because they are his relations. So prone are they to suspicion, that, where a President appoints a relation of his own, however worthy, they will believe that favor, and not merit, was the motive. I therefore laid it down as a law of conduct for myself, never to give an appointment to a relation.”[93]

That statement is unanswerable. The elect of the people must live so as best to maintain their interests and to elevate the national sentiment. This can be only by an example of unselfish devotion to the public weal which shall be above suspicion. A President suspected of weakness for his relations is already shorn of strength.

In saying that his predecessor “degraded himself infinitely by his conduct on this subject,” Jefferson shows the rigor of his requirement. Besides the transfer of his son, John Quincy Adams, from one diplomatic mission of lower grade to another of a higher, John Adams is responsible for the appointment of his son-in-law, Colonel Smith, as surveyor of the port of New York, and his wife’s nephew, William Cranch, as chief-justice of the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia,—both persons of merit, and the former “serving through the war with high applause of his superiors.”[94] The public sentiment appears in the condemnation of these appointments. In refusing another of his relations, we have already seen[95] that John Adams wrote: “You know it is impossible for me to appoint my own relations to anything without drawing forth a torrent of obloquy.” But this torrent was nothing but the judgment of the American people unwilling that republican institutions at that early day should suffer.

Thus far John Adams stands alone. If any other President has made appointments from his own family, it has been on so petty a scale as not to be recognized in history. John Quincy Adams, when President, did not follow his father. An early letter to his mother foreshadows a rule not unlike that of Jefferson:—

“I hope, my ever dear and honored mother, that you are fully convinced from my letters, which you have before this received, that upon the contingency of my father’s being placed in the first magistracy I shall never give him any trouble by solicitation for office of any kind. Your late letters have repeated so many times that I shall in that case have nothing to expect, that I am afraid you have imagined it possible that I might form expectations from such an event. I had hoped that my mother knew me better; that she did me the justice to believe that I have not been so totally regardless or forgetful of the principles which my education had instilled, nor so totally destitute of a personal sense of delicacy, as to be susceptible of a wish tending in that direction.”[96]

To Jefferson’s sense of public duty John Quincy Adams added the sense of personal delicacy, both strong against such appointment of relations. To the irresistible judgment against this abuse, a recent moralist, of lofty nature, Theodore Parker, imparts new expression, when he says, “It is a dangerous and unjust practice.”[97] This is simple and monitory.

PRESIDENTIAL APOLOGIES FOR NEPOTISM.

Without the avalanche of testimony against this Presidential pretension, it is necessary only to glance at the defences sometimes set up; for such is the insensibility bred by Presidential example, that even this intolerable outrage is not without voices speaking for the President. Sometimes it is said, that, his salary being far from royal, the people will not scan closely an attempt to help relations,—which, being interpreted, means that the President may supplement the pettiness of his salary by the appointing power. Let John Adams, who did not hesitate to bestow office upon a few relations of unquestioned merit, judge this pretension. I quote his words:—

“Every public man should be honestly paid for his services.… But he should be restrained from every perquisite not known to the laws, and he should make no claims upon the gratitude of the public, nor ever confer an office within his patronage upon a son, a brother, a friend, upon pretence that he is not paid for his services by the profits of his office.”[98]

It is impossible to deny the soundness of this requirement and its completeness as an answer to one of the apologies.

Sometimes the defender is more audacious, insisting openly upon the Presidential prerogative without question, until we seem to hear in aggravated form the obnoxious cry, “To the victor belong the spoils.” I did not suppose that this old cry could be revived in any form; but since it is heard again, I choose to expose it; and here I use the language of Madison, whose mild wisdom has illumined so much of constitutional duty. In his judgment the pretension was odious, “that offices and emoluments were the spoils of victory, the personal property of the successful candidate for the Presidency”; and he adds in words not to be forgotten at this moment:—

“The principle, if avowed without the practice, or practised without the avowal, could not fail to degrade any Administration,—both together, completely so.”[99]

This is strong language. The rule in its early form could not fail to degrade any Administration. But now this degrading rule is extended, and we are told that to the President’s family belong the spoils.

Another apology, vouchsafed even on this floor, is, that, if the President cannot appoint his relations, they alone of all citizens are excluded from office,—which, it is said, should not be. But is it not for the public good that they should be excluded? Such was the wise judgment of Jefferson, and such is the testimony from another quarter. That eminent prelate, Bishop Butler, who has given to English literature one of its most masterly productions, known as “Butler’s Analogy,” after his elevation to the see of Durham with its remarkable patronage, was so self-denying with regard to his family that a nephew said to him, “Methinks, my Lord, it is a misfortune to be related to you.”[100] Golden words of honor for the English Bishop! But none such have been earned by the American President.

Assuming that in case of positive merit designating a citizen for a particular post the President might appoint a relation, it would be only where the merit was so shining that his absence would be noticed. At least it must be such as to make the citizen a candidate without regard to family. But no such merit is attributed to the beneficiaries of our President, some of whom have done little but bring scandal upon the public service. At least one is tainted with fraud; and another, with the commission of the Republic abroad, has been guilty of indiscretions inconsistent with his trust. Appointed originally in open defiance of republican principles, they have been retained in office after their unfitness became painfully manifest. By the testimony before a Congressional Committee, one of these, a brother-in-law, was implicated in bribery and corruption. It is said that at last, after considerable delay, the President has consented to his removal.

Here I leave for the present this enormous unrepublican pretension, waiting to hear if it can again find an apologist. Is there a single Senator who will not dismiss it to judgment?

GIFT-TAKING,—AND REPAYMENT WITH OFFICE.

From one typical abuse I pass to another. From a dropsical Nepotism swollen to elephantiasis, which nobody can defend, I pass to Gift-Taking, which with our President has assumed an unprecedented form. Sometimes public men even in our country have taken gifts, but it is not known that any President before has repaid the patron with office. For a public man to take gifts is reprehensible; for a President to select Cabinet councillors and other officers among those from whom he has taken gifts is an anomaly in republican annals. Observe, Sir, that I speak of it gently, unwilling to exhibit the indignation which such a Presidential pretension is calculated to arouse. The country will judge it, and blot it out as an example.

There have been throughout history corrupt characters in official station; but, whether in ancient or modern times, the testimony is constant against the taking of gifts, and nowhere with more force than in our Scriptures, where it is said: “Thou shalt not wrest judgment, thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift; for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise.”[101] Here is the inhibition, and also the reason, which slight observation shows to be true. Does not a gift blind the eyes of the wise? The influence of gifts is represented by Plutarch in the life of a Spartan king:—

“For he thought those ways of entrapping men by gifts and presents, which other kings use, dishonest and inartificial; and it seemed to him to be the most noble method and most suitable to a king to win the affections of those that came near him by personal intercourse and agreeable conversation, since between a friend and a mercenary the only distinction is, that we gain the one by one’s character and conversation, the other by one’s money.”[102]

What is done under the influence of a gift is mercenary; but whether from ruler to subject or from subject to ruler, the gift is equally pernicious. An ancient patriot “feared the Greeks bearing gifts,”[103] and these words have become a proverb; but there are Greeks bearing gifts elsewhere than at Troy. A public man can traffic with such only at his peril. At their appearance the prayer should be said, “Lead us not into temptation.”

The best examples testify. Thus, in the autobiography of Lord Brougham, posthumously published, it appears that at a great meeting in Glasgow five hundred pounds were subscribed as a gift to him for his public service, to be put into such form as he might think best. He hesitated. “This required,” he records, “much consideration, as such gifts were liable to be abused.” Not content with his own judgment, he assembled some friends to discuss it,—“Lord Holland, Lord Erskine, Romilly, and Baring,”—and he wrote to Earl Grey, afterward Prime-Minister, who replied:—

“Both Grenville and I accepted from the Catholics of Glasgow a piece of plate—of no great value indeed—after we were turned out in 1807.… If you still feel scruples, I can only add that it is impossible to err on the side of delicacy with respect to matters of this nature.”

It ended in his declining to accept anything more than the small top of a gold inkstand.[104]

In our country Washington keeps his lofty heights, setting himself against gift-taking as against nepotism. In 1785, while in private life, two years after he ceased to be commander-in-chief of our armies and four years before he became President, he could not be induced to accept a certain amount of canal stock offered him by the State of Virginia, as appears in an official communication:—

“It gives me great pleasure to inform you that the Assembly yesterday, without a dissenting voice, complimented you with fifty shares in the Potomac Company and one hundred in the James River Company.”[105]

Fully to appreciate the reply of Washington, it must be borne in mind, that, according to Washington Irving, his biographer, “some degree of economy was necessary, for his financial concerns had suffered during the war, and the products of his estate had fallen off.”[106] But he was not tempted. Thus he wrote:—

“How would this matter be viewed by the eye of the world, and what would be the opinion of it, when it comes to be related that George Washington has received twenty thousand dollars and five thousand pounds sterling of the public money as an interest therein?… Under whatever pretence, and however customarily these gratuitous gifts are made in other countries, should I not thenceforward be considered as a dependant?”[107]

And subsequently to Jefferson:—

“I never for a moment entertained an idea of accepting it.”[108]

How admirably he touches the point when he asks, “Should I not thenceforward be considered as a dependant?” According to our Scripture the gift blinds the eyes; according to Washington it makes the receiver a dependant.

In harmony with this sentiment was his subsequent refusal, when President, as is recorded by an ingenuous writer:—

“He was exceedingly careful about committing himself; would receive no favors of any kind, and scrupulously paid for everything.… A large house was set apart for him on Ninth Street, [Philadelphia,] on the grounds now covered by the Pennsylvania University, which he refused to accept.”[109]

By such instances, brought to light recently, and shining in contrast with our times, we learn to admire anew the virtue of Washington.

It would be easy to show how in all ages the refusal of gifts has been recognized as the sign of virtue, if not the requirement of duty. The story of St. Louis of France is beautiful and suggestive. Leaving on a crusade, he charged the Queen, who remained behind, “not to accept presents for herself or her children.”[110] Such was one of the injunctions by which this monarch, when far away on a pious expedition, impressed himself upon his country.

My own strong convictions on this Presidential pretension were aroused in a conversation which it was my privilege to enjoy with John Quincy Adams, as he sat in his sick-chamber at his son’s house in Boston, a short time before he fell at his post of duty in the House of Representatives. In a voice trembling with age and with emotion, he said that no public man could take gifts without peril; and he confessed that his own judgment had been quickened by the example of Count Romanzoff, the eminent Chancellor of the Russian Empire, who, after receiving costly gifts from foreign sovereigns with whom he had negotiated treaties, felt a difficulty of conscience in keeping them, and at last handed over their value to a hospital, as he related to Mr. Adams, then Minister at St. Petersburg.[111] The latter was impressed by this Russian example, and through his long career, as Minister abroad, Secretary of State, President, and Representative, always refused gifts, unless a book or some small article in its nature a token and not a reward or bribe.

The Constitution testifies against the taking of gifts by officers of the United States, when it provides that “no person holding any office of profit or trust under them shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present or emolument from any king, prince, or foreign State.” The acceptance of a present or emolument from our own citizens was left without constitutional inhibition, to be constrained by the public conscience and the just aversion to any semblance of bargain and sale, or bribery, in the public service.

The case of our President is exceptional. Notoriously he has taken gifts while in the public service, some at least after he had been elected President, until “the Galena tanner of a few hundred dollars a year”—to borrow the words of my colleague [Mr. Wilson], one of his supporters—is now rich in houses, lands, and stock, above his salary, being probably the richest President since George Washington. Notoriously he has appointed to his Cabinet several among these “Greeks bearing gifts,” without seeming to see the indecorum, if not the indecency, of the transaction. At least two, if not three, of these Greeks, having no known position in the Republican Party, or influence in the country, have been selected as his counsellors in national affairs and heads of great departments of government. Again do I repeat the words of our Scriptures, “A gift doth blind the eyes of the wise”; again the words of Washington, “Should I not thenceforward be considered as a dependant?”

Nor does the case of the first Secretary of State differ in character from that of the other three Cabinet officers referred to. The President, feeling under personal obligation to Mr. Washburne for important support, gave him a complimentary nomination, with the understanding that after confirmation he should forthwith resign. I cannot forget the indignant comment of the late Mr. Fessenden, as we passed out of the Senate Chamber immediately after the confirmation. “Who,” said he, “ever heard before of a man nominated Secretary of State merely as a compliment?” But this is only another case of the public service subordinated to personal considerations.

Not only in the Cabinet, but in other offices, there is reason to believe that the President has been under the influence of patrons. Why was he so blind to Thomas Murphy? The custom-house of New York, with all its capacity as a political engine, was handed over to this agent, whose want of recognition in the Republican Party was outbalanced by Presidential favor, and whose gifts have become notorious. And when the demand for his removal was irresistible, the President accepted his resignation with an effusion of sentiment natural toward a patron, but without justification in the character of the retiring officer.

Shakespeare, who saw intuitively the springs of human conduct, touches more than once on the operation of the gift. “I’ll do thee service for so good a gift,” said Gloster to Warwick.[112] Then, again, how truly spoke the lord, who said of Timon,—

And such were the returns made by the President.

Thus much for gifts, reciprocated by office. The instance is original and without precedent in our history.

THE PRESIDENCY A PERQUISITE.

I have now completed the survey of the two typical instances—Nepotism, and Gift-Taking with repayment by office—in which we are compelled to see the President. In these things he shows himself. Here is no portrait drawn by critic or enemy; it is the original who stands forth, saying: “Behold the generosity I practise to my relations at the expense of the public service! also the gifts I take, and then my way of rewarding the patrons, always at the expense of the public service!” In this open exhibition we see how the Presidency, instead of a trust, has become a perquisite. Bad as are these two capital instances, and important as is their condemnation, so that they may not become a precedent, I dwell on them now as illustrating character. A President who can do such things, and not recognize at once the error he has committed, shows that supereminence of egotism under which Constitution, International Law, and Municipal Law, to say nothing of Republican Government in its primary principles, are all subordinated to the Presidential will; and this is Personal Government. Add an insensibility to the honest convictions of others, and you have a natural feature of this pretension.

Lawyers cite what are called “Leading Cases.” A few of these show the Presidential will in constant operation with little regard to precedent or reason, so as to be a caprice, if it were not a pretension. Imitating the Popes in Nepotism, the President has imitated them in ostentatious assumption of Infallibility.

THE PRESIDENT’S INAUGURAL ADDRESS.

Other Presidents have entered upon their high office with a certain modesty and distrust. Washington in his Inaugural Address declared his “anxieties,” also his sense of “the magnitude and difficulty of the trust,” “awakening a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications.”[114] Jefferson, in his famous Inaugural, so replete with political wisdom, after declaring his “sincere consciousness that the task is above his talents,” says: “I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments which the greatness of the charge and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire, … and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking.”[115]

Our soldier, absolutely untried in civil life, entirely a new man, entering upon the sublimest duties, before which Washington and Jefferson had shrunk, said in his Inaugural: “The responsibilities of the position I feel, but accept them without fear.”[116] Great predecessors, with ample preparation for the responsibilities, had shrunk back with fear. He had none. Either he did not see the responsibilities, or the Cæsar began to stir in his bosom.

SELECTION OF HIS CABINET.

Next after the Inaugural Address, his first official act was the selection of his Cabinet; and here the general disappointment was equalled by the general wonder. As the President was little known except from the victories which had commended him, it was not then seen how completely characteristic was this initial act. Looking back upon it, we recognize the pretension by which all tradition, usage, and propriety were discarded, by which the just expectations of the party that had elected him were set at nought, and the safeguards of constitutional government were subordinated to the personal pretensions of One Man. In this Cabinet were persons having small relations with the Republican Party and little position in the country, some absolutely without claims from public service, and some actually disqualified by the gifts they had made to the President. Such was the political phenomenon presented for the first time in American history, while reported sayings of the President showed the simplicity with which he acted. To a committee he described his Cabinet as his “family,” with which no stranger could be allowed to interfere, and to a member of Congress he announced that he selected his Cabinet “to please himself and nobody else,”—being good rules unquestionably for the organization of a household and the choice of domestics, to which the Cabinet seem to have been likened. This personal government flowered in the Navy Department, where a gift-bearing Greek was suddenly changed to a Secretary. No less a personage than the grand old Admiral, the brave, yet modest Farragut, was reported as asking, on the fifth of March, the very day when the Cabinet was announced, in unaffected ignorance, “Do you know anything of Borie?” And yet this unconspicuous citizen, bearer of gifts to the President, was constituted the naval superior of that historic character. If others were less obscure, the Cabinet as a unit was none the less notable as the creature of Presidential will, where Chance vied with Favoritism as arbiter.

All this is so strange, when we consider the true idea of a Cabinet. Though not named in the Constitution, yet by virtue of unbroken usage among us, and in harmony with constitutional governments everywhere, the Cabinet has become a constitutional body, hardly less than if expressly established by the Constitution itself. Its members, besides being the heads of great departments, are the counsellors of the President, with the duty to advise him of all matters within the sphere of his office, being nothing less than the great catalogue in the Preamble of the Constitution, beginning with duty to the Union, and ending with the duty to secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity. Besides undoubted fitness for these exalted responsibilities, as head of a department and as counsellor, a member should have such acknowledged position in the country that his presence inspires confidence and gives strength to the Administration. How little these things were regarded by the President need not be said.

Unquestionably the President has a discretion in the appointment of his Cabinet; but it is a constitutional discretion, regulated by regard for the interests of the country and not by mere personal will, by statesmanship and not by favoritism. A Cabinet is a national institution and not a Presidential perquisite,—unless our President is allowed to copy the example of Imperial France. In all constitutional governments, the Cabinet is selected on public reasons, and with a single eye to the public service; it is not in any respect the “family” of the sovereign, nor is it “to please himself and nobody else.” English monarchs have often accepted statesmen personally disagreeable, when they had become representatives of the prevailing party,—as when George the Third, the most obstinate of rulers, accepted Fox, and George the Fourth, as prejudiced as his father was obstinate, accepted Canning, each bringing to the service commanding faculties. It is related that the Duke of Wellington, with military frankness, encountered the personal objections of the King in the latter case, by saying: “Your Majesty is the sovereign of England, with duties to your people far above any to yourself; and these duties render it imperative that you should at this time employ the abilities of Mr. Canning.”[117] By such instances in a constitutional government is the Cabinet fixed as a constitutional and not a personal body. It is only by some extraordinary hallucination that the President of a Republic dedicated to Constitutional Liberty can imagine himself invested with a transforming prerogative above that of any English sovereign, by which his counsellors are changed from public officers to personal attendants, and a great constitutional body, in which all citizens have a common interest, is made a perquisite of the President.

APPROPRIATION OF THE OFFICES.

Marked among the spectacles which followed, and kindred in character with the appropriation of the Cabinet as individual property, was the appropriation of the offices of the country, to which I refer in this place even at the expense of repetition. Obscure and undeserving relations, marriage connections, personal retainers, army associates, friends of unknown fame and notable only as personal friends or friends of his relations, evidently absorbed the Presidential mind during those months of obdurate reticence when a generous people supposed the Cabinet to be the all-absorbing thought. Judging by the facts, it would seem as if the chief and most spontaneous thought was how to exploit the appointing power to his own personal behoof. At this period the New York Custom-House presented itself to the imagination, and a letter was written consigning a military dependant to the generosity of the Collector. You know the rest. Dr. Johnson, acting as executor in selling the distillery of Mr. Thrale, said: “We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice.”[118] If the President did not use the sounding phrase of the great English moralist, it is evident that his military dependant felt in that letter all the “potentiality” advertised in the earlier case, and acted accordingly.

It is not necessary to say that in these things there was departure from the requirements of law, whether in the appointment of his Cabinet or of personal favorites, even in return for personal benefactions, although it was plainly unrepublican, offensive, and indefensible. But this same usurping spirit, born of an untutored egotism, brooking no restraint, showed itself in another class of transactions, to which I have already referred, where Law and Constitution were little regarded.

PRESIDENTIAL ASSAULT ON A SAFEGUARD OF THE TREASURY.

First in time and very indigenous in character was the Presidential attempt against one of the sacred safeguards of the Treasury, the original workmanship of Alexander Hamilton, being nothing less than the “Act to establish the Treasury Department.” Here was an important provision, “that no person appointed to any office instituted by this Act shall directly or indirectly be concerned or interested in carrying on the business of trade or commerce”; and any person so offending was declared guilty of a high misdemeanor, and was to forfeit to the United States three thousand dollars, with removal from office, and forever thereafter to be incapable of holding any office under the United States.[119] From the beginning this statute had stood unquestioned, until it had acquired the character of fundamental law. And yet the President, by a special message, dated March 6, 1869, being the second day of his first service as a civilian, asked Congress to set it aside, so as to enable Mr. Stewart, of New York already nominated and confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury, to enter upon the duties of this office.[120] This gentleman was unquestionably the largest merchant who had transacted business in our country, and his imports were of such magnitude as to clog the custom-house. If the statute was anything but one of those cobwebs which catch the weak, but yield to the rich, this was the occasion for it, and the President should have yielded to no temptation against it. The indecorum of his effort stands out more painfully when it is considered that the merchant for whom he wished to set aside a time-honored safeguard was one of those from whom he had received gifts.

Such was the accommodating disposition of the Senate, that a bill exempting the Presidential benefactor from the operation of the statute was promptly introduced, and even read twice, until, as it seemed about to pass, I felt it my duty to object to its consideration, saying, according to the Globe, “I think it ought to be most profoundly considered before it is acted on by the Senate.”[121] This objection caused its postponement. The country was startled. By telegraph the general anxiety was communicated to Washington. Three days later the President sent a message requesting permission to withdraw the former message.[122] But he could not withdraw the impression produced by such open disregard of the law to promote his personal desire.

ILLEGAL MILITARY RING AT THE EXECUTIVE MANSION.

The military spirit, which failed in the effort to set aside a fundamental law as if it were a transient order, was more successful at the Executive Mansion, which at once assumed the character of military head-quarters. To the dishonor of the civil service, and in total disregard of precedent, the President surrounded himself with officers of the Army, and substituted military forms for those of civil life, detailing for this service members of his late staff. The earliest public notice of this military occupation appeared in the “Daily Morning Chronicle” of March 8, 1869, understood to be the official organ of the Administration:—

“President Grant was not at the White House yesterday, but the following members of his staff were occupying the Secretaries’ rooms and acting as such: Generals Babcock, Porter, Badeau, and Dent.”

This is to be regarded not only in its strange blazonry of the Presidential pretension, but also as the first apparition of that minor military ring in which the President has lived ever since.

Thus installed, Army officers became secretaries of the President, delivering his messages to both Houses of Congress, and even authenticating Presidential acts as if they were military orders. Here, for instance, is an official communication:—

Executive Mansion, Washington, D. C., March 15, 1869.

Robert Martin Douglas, Esq.:

Sir,—You are hereby appointed Assistant Private Secretary to the President, to date from the 15th March, 1869.

By order of the President,

Horace Porter, Brevet Brigadier-General, Secretary.[123]

Mark the words, “By order of the President,” and then the signature, “Horace Porter, Brevet Brigadier-General, Secretary.”

The Presidential pretension which I exhibit on the simple facts, besides being of doubtful legality, to say the least, was of evil example, demoralizing alike to the military and civil service, and an undoubted reproach to republican institutions in that primary principle, announced by Jefferson in his first Inaugural Address, “the supremacy of the civil over the military authority.”[124] It seemed only to remain that the President should sign his Messages, “Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the United States.” Evidently a new order of things had arrived.

Observe the mildness of my language, when I call this Presidential pretension “of doubtful legality.” The law shall speak for itself. Obviously it was the same for our military President as for his predecessors, and it was recent also:—

“The President is hereby authorized to appoint a private secretary at an annual salary of $3,500, an assistant secretary at an annual salary of $2,500, a short-hand writer at an annual salary of $2,500, a clerk of pardons at an annual salary of $2,000, and three clerks of the fourth class.”[125]

It cannot be doubted that this provision was more than ample; for Congress, by Act of July 20, 1868, repealed so much as authorized a clerk of pardons, and also one of the three clerks of the fourth class.[126] Therefore there could be no necessity for a levy of soldiers to perform the duties of secretaries, and the conduct of the President can be explained only by the supposition that he preferred to be surrounded by Army officers rather than by civilians, continuing in the Executive Mansion the traditions of head-quarters: all which, though agreeable to him and illustrating his character, was an anomaly and a scandal.

In extenuation of this indefensible pretension, we have been reminded of two things: first, that according to the record Washington sent his first message by General Knox,—when in fact General Knox held no military office at that time, but was actually Secretary of War; and, secondly, that the military officers now occupying the Executive Mansion are detailed for this service without other salary than that of their grade. As the Knox precedent is moonshine, the minor military ring can be vindicated only as a “detail” for service in the Executive Mansion.

Here again the law shall speak. By Act of Congress of March 3, 1863, it is provided that “details to special service shall only be made with the consent of the commanding officer of forces in the field”;[127] but this, it will be seen, refers to a state of war. Congress, by Act of July 16, 1866, authorized the President to “detail from the Army all the officers and agents of this Bureau” [for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees];[128] also, by Act of July 28, 1866, to “detail” officers of the Army, not exceeding twenty at any time, “to act as president, superintendent, or professor” in certain colleges.[129] And then again, by Act of July 15, 1870, it provided that “any retired officer may, on his own application, be detailed to serve as professor in any college.”[130] As there is no other statute authorizing details, this exceptional transfer of Army officers to the Executive Mansion can be maintained only on some undefined prerogative.

The Presidential pretension, which is continued to the present time, is the more unnatural when it is considered that there are at least three different statutes in which Congress has shown its purpose to limit the employment of military officers in civil service. As long ago as July 5, 1838, it was positively provided that no Army officers should be separated from their regiments and corps “for employment on civil works of internal improvement, or be allowed to engage in the service of incorporated companies”; nor any line officer to be acting paymaster or disbursing agent for the Indian Department, “if such extra employment require that he be separated from his regiment or company, or otherwise interfere with the performance of the military duties proper.”[131] Obviously the will of Congress is here declared, that officers should not be allowed to leave their posts for any service which might interfere with the performance of the military duties proper. This language is explicit. Then came the Act of March 30, 1868, which provides that “any officer of the Army or Navy of the United States, who shall, after the passage of this Act, accept or hold any appointment in the diplomatic or consular service of the Government, shall be considered as having resigned his said office, and the place held by him in the military or naval service shall be deemed and taken to be vacant.”[132] To a considerate and circumspect President, who recognized the law in its spirit as well as its letter, this provision, especially when reinforced by the earlier statute, would have been a rule of action in analogous cases, and therefore an insurmountable obstacle to a pretension which takes Army officers from their proper duties and makes them Presidential secretaries. A later statute adds to the obstacle. By Act of Congress of July 15, 1870, it is provided:—

“That it shall not be lawful for any officer of the Army of the United States on the active list to hold any civil office, whether by election or appointment; and any such officer accepting or exercising the functions of a civil office shall at once cease to be an officer of the Army, and his commission shall be vacated thereby.”[133]

It is difficult to imagine anything plainer than these words. No Army officer not on the retired list can hold any civil office; and then, to enforce the inhibition, it is provided that in “accepting or exercising the functions” of such office the commission is vacated. Now the Blue Book, which is our political almanac, has under the head of “Executive Mansion” a list of “secretaries” and “clerks,” beginning as follows: “Secretaries, General F. T. Dent, General Horace Porter, General O. E. Babcock,” when, in fact, there are no such officers authorized by law. Then follow the “Private Secretary,” “Assistant Private Secretary,” and “Executive Clerks,” authorized by law, but placed below those unauthorized. Nothing is said of being detailed for this purpose. They are openly called “Secretaries,” which is a title of office; and since it is at the Executive Mansion, it must be a civil office; and yet, in defiance of law, these Army officers continue to exercise its functions, and some of them enter the Senate with messages from the President. The apology that they are “detailed” for this service is vain; no authority can be shown for it. But how absurd to suppose that a rule against the exercise of a civil office can be evaded by a “detail”! If it may be done for three Army officers, why not for three dozen? Nay, more, if the civil office of Secretary at the Executive Mansion may be created without law, why not some other civil office? And what is to hinder the President from surrounding himself not only with secretaries, but with messengers, stewards, and personal attendants, even a body-guard, all detailed from the Army? Why may he not enlarge the military circle at the Executive Mansion indefinitely? If the President can be justified in his present course, there is no limit to his pretensions in open violation of the statute. Here the Blue Book testifies again; for it records the names of the “secretaries” in their proper places as Army officers,—thus presenting them as holding two incompatible offices.

I dismiss this transaction as another instance of Presidential pretension, which, in the interest of Republican Government, should be arrested.

UNREPUBLICAN SUBORDINATION OF THE WAR DEPARTMENT TO THE GENERAL-IN-CHIEF.

From the Executive Mansion pass now to the War Department, and there we witness the same Presidential pretensions by which law, usage, and correct principle are lost in the will of One Man. The supremacy of the civil power over the military is typified in the Secretary of War, a civilian, from whom Army officers receive orders. But this beautiful rule, with its lesson to the military of subordination, was suddenly set aside by our President, and the Secretary of War degraded to be a clerk. The 5th of March witnessed a most important order from the President, placing the Military Departments under officers of his choice,—purporting to be signed by the Assistant Adjutant-General by command of the General of the Army, but actually ignoring the Secretary of War.[134] Three days later, March 8th, witnessed another order professing to proceed from the President, whereby in express terms the War Department was subordinated to the General-in-Chief, being William T. Sherman, who at the time was promoted to that command. Here are the words:

“The chiefs of staff corps, departments, and bureaus will report to and act under the immediate orders of the General commanding the Army.”[135]

This act of revolution, exalting the military power above the civil, showed instant fruits in an order of the General, who, upon assuming command, proceeded to place the several bureau officers of the War Department upon his military staff,[136] so that for the time there was a military dictatorship with the President at its head, not merely in spirit but in actual form. By-and-by John A. Rawlins, a civilian by education and a respecter of the Constitution, became Secretary of War, and, though bound to the President by personal ties, he said, “Check to the King.” By General Order, issued from the War Department March 26, 1869, and signed by the Secretary of War, the offensive order was rescinded, and it was enjoined that “all official business which by law or regulations requires the action of the President or Secretary of War will be submitted by the chiefs of staff corps, departments, and bureaus to the Secretary of War.”[137] Public report said that this restoration of the civil power to its rightful supremacy was not obtained without an intimation of resignation on the part of the Secretary.

THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY BY DEPUTY.

Kindred in character was the unprecedented attempt to devolve the duties of the Navy Department upon a deputy, so that orders were to be signed “A. E. Borie, Secretary of the Navy, per D. D. Porter, Admiral,” as appears in the official journal of May 11, 1869,—or, according to another instance, “David D. Porter, Vice-Admiral, for the Secretary of the Navy.” The obvious object of this illegal arrangement was to enable the incumbent, who stood high on the list of gift-makers, to be Secretary without being troubled with the business of the office. Notoriously he was an invalid, unused to public business, who, according to his own confession, modestly pleaded that he could not apply himself to work more than an hour a day; but the President soothed his anxieties by promising a deputy who would do the work. And thus was this great department made a plaything; but public opinion and other counsels arrested the sport. Here I mention, that, when this incumbent left his important post, it is understood that he was allowed to nominate his successor.

PRESIDENTIAL PRETENSION AT THE INDIAN BUREAU.

At the same time occurred the effort to absorb the Indian Bureau into the War Department, changing its character as part of the civil service. Congress had already repudiated such an attempt;[138] but the President, not disheartened by legislative failure, sought to accomplish it by manipulation and indirection. First elevating a member of his late staff to the head of the Bureau, he then, by a military order dated May 7, 1869,[139] proceeded to detail for the Indian service a long list of “officers left out of their regimental organizations by the consolidation of the infantry regiments,”—assuming to do this by authority of the Act of Congress of June 30, 1834, which, after declaring the number of Indian agents, and how they shall be appointed, provides that “it shall be competent for the President to require any military officer of the United States to execute the duties of Indian agent.”[140] Obviously this provision had reference to some exceptional exigency, and can be no authority for the general substitution of military officers, instead of civilians confirmed by the Senate and bound with sureties for the faithful discharge of their duties. And yet upward of sixty Army officers were in this way foisted into the Indian service. The Act of Congress of July 15, 1870, already quoted,[141] creating an incompatibility between military and civil service, was aimed partly at this abuse, and these officers ceased to be Indian agents. But this attempt is another illustration of Presidential pretension.

MILITARY INTERFERENCE AT ELECTIONS.

Then followed military interference in elections, and the repeated use of the military in aid of the revenue law under circumstances of doubtful legality, until at last General Halleck and General Sherman protested: the former in his report of October 24, 1870, saying, “I respectfully repeat the recommendation of my last Annual Report, that military officers should not interfere in local civil difficulties, unless called out in the manner provided by law;”[142] and the latter, in his Report of November 10, 1870, “I think the soldiers ought not to be expected to make individual arrests, or to do any act of violence, except in their organized capacity as a posse comitatus duly summoned by the United States marshal, and acting in his personal presence.”[143] And so this military pretension, invading civil affairs, was arrested.

PRESIDENTIAL PRETENSION AGAIN.

Meanwhile this same Presidential usurpation, subordinating all to himself, became palpable in another form. It was said of Gustavus Adolphus, that he drilled his Diet to vote at the word of command. Such at the outset seemed to be the Presidential policy with regard to Congress. We were to vote as he desired. He did not like the Tenure-of-Office Act, and during the first month of his administration his influence was felt in both branches of Congress to secure its repeal; all of which seemed more astonishing when it was considered that he entered upon his high trust with the ostentatious avowal that all laws would be faithfully executed, whether they met his approval or not, and that he should have no policy to enforce against the will of the people.[144] That beneficent statute, which he had upheld in the impeachment of President Johnson, was a limitation on the Presidential power of appointment, and he could not brook it. Here was plain interference with his great perquisite of office, and Congress must be coerced to repeal it. The House acted promptly and passed the desired bill. In the Senate there was delay and a protracted debate, during which the official journal announced: “The President, in conversation with a prominent Senator a few days since, declared that it was his intention not to send in any nominations of importance until definite action was taken by Congress upon the Tenure-of-Office Bill.”[145]

Here I venture to add, that a member of the Cabinet pressed me to withdraw my opposition to the repeal, saying that the President felt strongly upon it. I could not understand how a Republican President could consent to weaken the limitations upon the Executive, and so I said,—adding, that in my judgment he should rather reach forth his hands and ask to have them tied. Better always a government of law than of men.

PRESIDENTIAL INTERFERENCE IN LOCAL POLITICS.

In this tyrannical spirit, and in the assumption of his central imperialism, he has interfered with political questions and party movements in distant States, reaching into Missouri, and then into New York, to dictate how the people should vote, then manipulating Louisiana through a brother-in-law appointed Collector. With him a custom-house seems less a place for the collection of revenue than an engine of political influence, through which his dictatorship may be maintained.

Authentic testimony places this tyrannical abuse beyond question. New York is the scene, and Thomas Murphy, Collector, the Presidential lieutenant. Nobody doubts the intimacy between the President and the Collector, who are bound in friendship by other ties than those of seaside neighborhood. The Collector was determined to obtain the control of the Republican State Convention, and appealed to a patriot citizen for help, who replied, that in his judgment “it would be a delicate matter for office-holders to undertake to dictate to the associations in the different districts who should go from them to the State Convention, and still more delicate to attempt to control the judgments of men employed in the different departments as to the best men to represent them.” The brave Collector lieutenant of the President said, “that he should not hesitate to do it; that it was General Grant’s wish, and General Grant was the head of the Republican Party, and should be authority on this subject.”[146] Plainly, the Republican Party was his perquisite, and all Republicans were to do his bidding. From other testimony it appears that the President, according to the statement of his lieutenant, “wanted to be represented in the Convention,” being the Republican State Convention of New York,—“wanted to have his friends there in the Convention”; and the Presidential lieutenant, being none other than the famous Collector, offered to appoint four men in the custom-house for the witness, if he would secure the nomination of certain persons as delegates from his district, and he promised “that he would immediately send their names on to Washington and have them appointed.”[147] And so the Presidential dictatorship was administered. Offices in the custom-house were openly bartered for votes in the State Convention. Here was intolerable tyranny, with demoralization like that of the slave-market.

But New York is not the only scene of this outrage. The Presidential pretension extends everywhere; nor is it easy to measure the arrogance of corruption or the honest indignation it quickens into life.

PRESIDENTIAL CONTRIVANCE AGAINST SAN DOMINGO.

These Presidential pretensions, in all their variety, personal and military, with reckless indifference to law, naturally ripened in the contrivance, nursed in hot-house secrecy, against the peace of the island of San Domingo: I say deliberately, against the peace of that island, for under the guise of annexing a portion there was menace to the Black Republic of Hayti. This whole business, absolutely indefensible from beginning to end, being wrong at every point, is the special and most characteristic product of the Administration, into which it infused and projected itself more than into anything else. In this multiform disobedience we behold our President. Already I have referred to this contrivance as marking an epoch in Presidential pretensions. It is my duty now to show its true character as a warning against its author.