Part 7

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.