has charge of diplomacy, holds in its grasp the sinews of peace and war, and in every conflict in either sphere, has always triumphed. . . . The danger of America rather lies in a possible over extension of the central authority, and the safeguard against this is only to be found in the firm resistance of minorities. . . . The enterprise of the new civilisation is environed with doubts and menaced by many perils. The strongest river cannot flow on without reverses. In this tangled nature of ours Vices and Virtues are twins: on the great threshing-floor of the world the chaff and the wheat are mingled. No constitutional checks can prevent selfishness, and the conquest of the unknown engenders an excessive spirit of speculation,' boasting, and vanity. But as regards the maintenance of order and law, and respect for property, we must remember that the wilder communities represent all races, and societies in all stages of development. Social life has not yet taken possession of the continent; it is only being spread over it. The pioneers in settlements touching on the wilderness, the home of hardship, of peril, and of chance, must be impatient of restraint and reckless of decorum. Daring in excess is not compatible with sedateness. If the desert is to be reclaimed at all it must be by men nearly in a state of nature. Nevertheless American Progress is less stained by crime than that of any other nation in a similar state or stage. The disorders of free governments cannot be concealed, and the rowdyism of the far South or the rude Western press flaunts the violence corresponding to the tyranny whose worst acts are, except for prying historians, buried in the archives of the Inquisition or the records of the Star Chamber.” I quote this, as appears to me, somewhat rose-coloured view of an observer of 1848, as representing the more favourable aspects of American politics; but the worst features of the new society are not to be found in the rowdyism of the West.

NOTE B.-PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

TERM OF OFFICE AND VETO POWER.

THE following extracts from the admirable Exposition of the Constitution by Judge Story, convey a clear idea of the designs of its framers with regard to the position and prerogatives of the Head of the Executive, and the extent to which they are in danger of being frustrated. I quote from Harper's one-volume edition of 1847, pp. 163-6-“The Electors" (selected, it must be understood, with some reservations, by the whole adult male population of each State for the purpose) "shall meet in their respective States and vote by ballot for President and VicePresident, one of whom at least shall not be an inhabitant of the same State with themselves. . . . The person having the greatest number of votes for President shall be President, if such number be a majority of

...

1 It has been said that no American doubts he can accomplish anything, but that he would rather make sixpence by a speculation than half-a-crown by ordinary trade.

the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers, not exceeding three, on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President the votes shall be taken by States, the representation of each State having one vote. . . . There is probably no part of the plan of the framers of the Constitution which, practically speaking, has so little realised the expectations of its friends as that which regards the choice of President. They undoubtedly intended that the electors should be left free to make the choice, according to their own judgment, of the relative merits and qualifications of the candidates for this high office; and that they should be under no pledge to any popular favourite, and should be guided by no sectional influences. In both respects the event has disappointed all these expectations. The Electors are now almost universally pledged to support a particular candidate before they receive their own appointment, and they do little more than register the previous decrees made by public and private meetings of the citizens of their own State. The President is, in no just sense, the unbiassed choice of the people or of the States. He is commonly the representative of a party, not of the Union."

P. 160. "The duration of the term of office of the Executive. should be long enough to enable a chief magistrate to carry fairly through a system of government according to the laws, and to stimulate him to personal firmness in the execution of his duties. If the term is very short he will feel very little of the just pride of office, from the precariousness of its tenure. He will act more with regard to immediate and temporary popularity than to permanent fame. His measures will tend more to ensure his own re-election (if he desires it) than to promote the good of his country. He will bestow office on mean dependants or fawning courtiers. . . . On the other hand, the period should not be so long as to impair the proper dependence of the Executive upon the people. . . . His administration should be known to come under the review of the people at short periods."

P. 98. "Every Bill, which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become law, be presented to the President of the United States. If he approve he shall sign it; but if not he shall return it, with his objections, to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to consider it. If after such reconsideration twothirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be considered; and if approved by two-thirds of that House, it shall become a law." "The reasons why the President should possess a qualified negative (for an absolute negative would be highly objectionable) are entirely satisfactory. In the first place, there is a natural tendency in the legislative department to intrude upon the rights and to absorb the powers of the other departments of the Govern

NOTES.

461

ment. If the Executive did not possess this qualified negative, he might gradually be stripped of all his authority, and become, what the Governors of some of the States now are, a mere pageant and a shadow of magistracy. . . . This power therefore of a qualified negative, being founded on the supposition that he truly represents all the interests and opinions of the Union, introduces a useful element to check any preponderating interest of any section. . . . It does not . . suspend legislation, but it merely refers the subject back for a more deliberate review. Thus a thorough revision of the measure is guaranteed, and, at the same time, the deliberate wishes of the States and of the people cannot be disobeyed. . . . The negative of the President was undoubtedly designed by the Constitution to be applied only on extraordinary occasions and exigencies; and if it were to be applied to the common course of legislation it might be fraught with great public mischief."

P. 100. "All the checks which human ingenuity has been able to devise, or at least all which, with reference to our habits, our institutions, and our diversities of local interest, seem practicable to give perfect operation to the machinery" (of the legialative department) "to adjust its movements, to prevent its eccentricities, and to balance its forces; all these have been introduced with singular skill, ingenuity, and wisdom, into the arrangements. Yet, after all, the fabric may fall, for the work of man is perishable. Nay, it must fall, if there be not that vital spirit in the people which can alone nourish, sustain, and direct all its movements. If ever the day shall arrive in which the best talents and the best virtues shall be driven from office by intrigue or corruption, by the denunciations of the press, or by the persecutions of party factions, legislation will cease to be national. It will be wise by accident, and bad by system."

NOTE C.-CORRUPTION AND 66 DEMOCRACY."

IT has been said truly that the dangers that have, since their establishment, threatened the United States have been more from within than without. These have been mainly the Slave Question; the reactionary, selfish, and in its extreme measures, suicidal policy of an almost prohibitive Tariff; and Political Corruption. The first has been, though at a fearful cost, happily settled: the second I leave to the discussion of economical authorities; but on the third I may say a few words; for, in antagonism to it, the most popular American work of fiction since Uncle Tom's Cabin, the bitter novel of Democracy, with similar though slighter protests of other satirists, take for their text the watchword of Political Reform. The theme is, however, an old one: the abuses of patronage, the evil effects of the pecuniary emoluments, noxiously attached to seats in the Legislature of a country where the ambitions of influence and consideration were amply sufficient

spurs, and the almost inevitable degradation of State judges elected by the masses to annually terminable posts, have been made the subjects of invective and warning almost ever since the acceptance of the Constitution. In the address of the second President, John Adams, of March 4, 1797, we have the following: "In the midst of these pleasing ideas we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties, if anything partial or extraneous should ever infect the purity of our elections. If an election is to be determined by a majority of a single vote, and that can be procured by a party, through artifice or corruption the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the general good." After the lapse of nearly thirty years we find Mr. George M'Duffie opposing, February 1826, from his place in Congress, a proposal to refer the election of the President directly to the people, in these weighty and prophetic terms: "From the commercial spirit of modern society, and the facilities presented in our country for the acquisition of wealth, the pursuit of gain predominates over our concern for the affairs of the Republic. Even Liberty is worshipped in the form of property. . . . Corrupt Congress and you assail the former in the very seat of its vitality. . . . You can no more make a freeman than you can a shoemaker, without practical instruction. . . . We are asked-Have you seen corruption? Sir, do you expect to see it? You had as well expect to see the embodied forms of pestilence and famine stalking before us. It steals upon us in a thousand invidious forms when we are least aware. Of all the forms in which it can present itself the bribery of office is the most dangerous, because it assumes the guise of patriotism. . . . To an ambitious man office will appear as beautiful and fascinating as the apple of Paradise. . . . By means of his patronage the President addresses himself to the noblest of our passions. . . . No free government has been overcome by force; but all by corruption. . . . In England the family of Orange gave up the claim of prerogative, and substituted what is speciously denominated 'Influence,' which is but another word for Corruption. . . . Sir Robert Walpole said that every politician had his price. . . . There is a splendour in successful ambition that conceals the depravity by which it accomplishes its purpose. The man who steals a penknife is shunned as an object of abhorrence: the man who steals a sceptre is hailed as an object of adoration. . . Even in the United States there are those who would rather eat the very crumbs from the trenches of executive patronage than the bread of honest independence."

Fifty years later the pestilence is still stalking. The slave-holder belongs to the past: the office-seeker and the swindler have taken his place, without his dignity, as the arch-enemies of their nation's stability at home, and are threatening to make its name a bye-word abroad. I find in a number of the sufficiently patriotic "Scribner" for

1 Our readers will perceive how exactly this anticipates the first successful and second futile defence of his roguery by Senator "Silas P. Radcliffe."

1877 "The head of Christendom is orthodox enough. . . . It is the heart, the character, the life that are heterodox, and until these are reached our epidemic will continue and settle down into a national disease, like the goitre in Switzerland and leprosy in Arabia." It is no answer to this charge, urged, be it observed, with most vehemence by the better class of Americans themselves, against the worst; it is no answer to say that the private memoirs of the courts of France and England in the eighteenth century reveal a seething mass of selfish coalitions and profligate cabals, and that for one purely patriotic combination universal history shows ten where personal motives are manifest; or to say that the revelations of the City of Glasgow Bank were more infamous than those of the Erie Railway. The complaint remains that in America those misdemeanours pass with slight reprobation, save from a few satirists, who raise a laugh, and moralists who are accused of being supersensitive. Consequently the criminals escape: Mr. Potter was imprisoned, Mr. Fiske went at large. In no other country is political turpitude so brazen; in no other are the local judges elected for short dates by popular assemblies; nor elsewhere is the aversion to dignitaries for life-the idea that new men must grapple with new duties-put forward as a pretext for yearly shunting one set of plunderers to make room for another. "Removals," says

Mrs. Baker, in Democracy, "were fast and furious, till all Indiana became easy in circumstances." The author or authoress of this scathing work may be a Copperhead (Carrington, the only creditable male American it contains is a Southerner), and its success may be due as much to the pleasure we are said to derive from the misfortunes of our friends, as to its cleverness. The mystery or disgrace remains that the representation of Silas P. Radcliffe as a likely candidate for the highest office of the State seems, in America itself, to have excited no audible burst of indignation. "The bitterest part of all this horrid story," says Mrs. Lee-in her postscript with the sting "is that nine out of ten of our countrymen would say I had made a mistake," i.e., in declining to unite her fortunes for life with those of an able but boorish mercenary scamp. I have quoted J. P. Nichol's apology for the roughness of the pioneers; but of this other type of Western manners and morals, the worst product of a commercial Plutocracy, he elsewhere writes :-"I know not a more disagreeable person—one with whom, in reference to social problems, I should less like to come into contact-than an American Democrat of the present day, belonging to what the French would call the party of the extreme Left. Without the polish of an aristocrat of our own European schools, he has every atom of his pride, his dogmatism, his determination that, come what may, no man shall prevent him from doing what he wills with his own. Deeming, according to a phrase I have heard, that he could

1 This quotation belongs to a later date, when the writer's views both as to our own and foreign politics leant more to the side of Hamilton, and less to that of Jefferson, than formerly.