Politics

THE Presidential election is over at last, and the nation breathes freer in the security of its delivery from Mr. Greeley and his galvanized democracy. For this it may reasonably be grateful to General Grant, who has a second time saved the Union —not now from rebellion and dissolution, as before, but from an uprising of office-seekers under the lead of an erratic, unstable, and ill-advised philanthropist — from confusion and corruption and absurdity and babble and ink-shed, no end.

For all this we are right to be grateful, but in our gratitude let us not forget that as to governmental reform we have no surer prospect than we had one year ago ; let us remember that the faults of General Grant’s character invoked the dangers from which he has saved us ; let us consider that if Grant the President had been different, Greeley the candidate would not have been at all; let us look at the facts of the late campaign and the present situation in the face, and now that we are saved, let us see from what General Grant is to be saved.

Every party found presented by the Presidential election only a choice of evils. It was so confessed by the tariff and civil-service reformers who originated the Cincinnati Convention, and unwittingly prepared the instrumentalities for the nomination of Horace Greeley. It was freely declared by the Democratic party when it ratified this nomination. It was so regarded by the thinking portion of the Republican party, who demanded an elevation of the character of the government in all its branches, which they could not expect under a renewal of the term of Grant’s Presidency. But they had the measure of the evils and inabilities of the present administration, and they have decided to hold to it rather than take the immeasurable risks of the administration of Horace Greeley and of a restoration of the Democratic party to power.

The election of Grant is therefore the choice of the lesser evil. It is not an unqualified indorsement of his conduct, nor a declaration of popular contentment with the present status for another four years. On the contrary, his re-election liberates a reform sentiment which was repressed by the necessities of the election contest.

The sense of having been placed at a disadvantage before the enemy by the shortcomings of the administration will give the reform demand an energy it did not have before. The wounds of the battle will give an unwonted sharpness to criticism in the administration party. Whatever load the supporters of the President have had to carry in the fight will now be freely cast upon him, and his conduct will be subjected to a severity of judgment which will be something new to our party experiences.

The paradox that the renomination of the President without any apparent opposition, and so vigorous a contest by his party for his re-election, was not a full indorsement of him by his supporters, seems to require explanation, although it is plain enough to political observers. A government which in all its branches and details is subject to elections at short periods draws a great number of its citizens into the pursuit of office, and creates a great fabric of political machinery which is a controlling power in nominations. The vast patronage of the President, dispensed through Congressmen and by these through local committees and managing politicians, furnishes the means for wielding this political machine. The dispensers and recipients of his patronage are all bound by their own interest to promote his renomination. Whether he orders it or not, all the power of his patronage is exerted for his renomination. Practically this power is irresistible. It is sufficient to make the support of any candidate against the President seem unfaithfulness to the party. Under ordinary circumstances no member of the party could expect to succeed in a contest with the head of the administration for the party nomination. Such a conflict inside the party, in the face of a powerful enemy, would expose it to defeat. Therefore the party shuns such a contest, and is led into a spirit of intolerance toward competing aspirants and their supporters. In the nature of things, while the President desires a renomination, it is practically impossible for any to compete with him, at least until he has had the second term, which in our traditions is due to a good President.

And besides all this, a multitude in the Republican party had that blind confidence in Grant which the mass always have in their leader in successful war, and that steadfast allegiance which grows out of such a relation, extended from military to political triumph. Thus the fact of the renomination is accounted for, although there is in the Republican party, not excepting even those public men who seem to be personal adherents of Grant, a wide-spread feeling of discontent with him, and among all the thinking classes a feeling that we need an elevation of the character of the administration. The removal of the outer pressure of the election battle will liberate this feeling and give it a rebounding energy of expression which it will be necessary for the President to heed, and which it would be wise in him to anticipate by giving signs that he is alive to the public sensibilities. It is necessary that free public journals which desire the success of the administration should speak plainly on these matters; for the Japanese Mikado is not more completely cut off from all hearing of unfavorable opinions of his conduct on the part of his personal supporters than is President Grant. The power which a President possesses, and the fact that through his patronage he holds the political fate of every administration congressman in his hand, would to a great extent prevent any President from hearing the truth from those about him ; but it is well known that this evil is increased by the disposition of President Grant, which inclines him to regard with aversion any who speak to him of faults of conduct.

It may be that the character of the executive branch will rank with that of the legislative ; but it ought to be much above it. The President’s broader constituency, longer term of office, and vast power to control the party, enable him to take a higher stand and to direct public opinion. The member of Congress travels, as Napoleon said of an army, on his stomach. He is continually looking to his base, and his chief concern is to stop the mouths of his supporters with offices, and to work the machinery for his re-election. But the President is lifted above these conditions. He can have a tone which will make the influence of the administration elevating in all branches of government. If his tone is low, his influence is powerful to degrade the legislature and the entire public service. He is responsible, not only for his administrative acts, but for his example.

It is not enough that he lets things take their course. If he be not qualified to have an affirmative policy in affairs, he may at least make the executive department an example of strict integrity, of a high sense of duty, of a rigid sentiment of honor, and of good manners, which are akin to good morals.

It was unfortunate that Grant came into office with the conspicuous gifts of citizens to the successful general who in the line of precedents was the coming President. When he showed an inclination to call the givers to high places in the government, it gave the opposition a weapon against him. When he took a share in the gift that citizens were contributing to General Sherman, and in his eagerness involved himself in the scandal with Mayor Bowen, he compromised his personal dignity, and exhibited qualities unbecoming to his station.

It is not a great draft upon the public purse, nor a creation of dangerous family influence, when the President appoints a dozen or more of his relations to office; but it is a bad example and shows a low view of the Presidential office. But far worse than this was the scandal of a President’s brother-inlaw at the capital, following the profession of agent for claims against the government, carrying his family influence into the subordinate executive departments where such claims are judged, and actually — as he testified before a congressional committee — appealing cases from the departments to the President, and appearing before him to argue them. In effect this was the sale of the President’s influence against the ends of justice by his brother-in-law.

The summer absences of the President from the capital are matters of no great moment in the affairs of government, and his frequent junketing excursions could be excused, but for his proclivity for a peculiar kind of entertainers who bring him and the Presidential office into disrepute, and expose him to be made the instrument of designs upon the government. When the gold conspiracy to make a private speculation at the cost of wide-spread ruin of the innocent burst upon the public on the memorable Black Friday, the public mind was shocked by the intelligence that the President had been caught in the toils of the conspirators, and had been made to do their bidding by writing a letter to Secretary Boutwell advising him against increasing his sales of gold. The effect was not mitigated by the fact that the conspirators had entangled the President’s family in the plot. The public partly excused him with the charitable plea that he was deceived by the sharpers Gould and Fisk ; but there was a general feeling that the President of the United States should not have made companions of men so notorious as public robbers, nor received hospitalities and other favors from them.

The American people do not fear that the President’s surrounding himself with military attendants means a design to subvert the government; but jealousy of military surroundings and manners belongs to free institutions and to the spirit of free peoples, and the disregard of this shows a lack of perception of popular sentiment, or a contempt for it.

It is true that Congress is laggard and reluctant in the work of civil-service reform ; but the President has not the trammels that bind congressmen. He can wield a prevailing influence in promoting the needed legislation. He can put the methods of reform into practice, by retaining and promoting capacity, fidelity, and experience, and by refusing to remove any capable and faithful officer to make place for a partisan retainer, without waiting for legislation. But while he asks of Congress legislation to coerce him to reform the mode of appointments to the civil service, he presents to the country such a scandal as the New York Custom House, with its disreputable official service and its unofficial levies upon the merchants, regulated by his own hand.

It is true that when the President caused our case to be presented to the Geneva Tribunal with our consequential injuries extended to the cost of the war, he went no further than the speech of Mr. Sumner and the almost unanimous vote of the Senate and the general acceptance of the country, and that his late competitor went beyond this with a wild proposition that our claims should be made the ground for demanding the cession of Canada ; but it cannot be forgotten that between these events the President’s ostensible reason for the peremptory dismissal of Mr. Motley was that he stated to the British Minister the case of our injuries too strongly, although it came far short of the case presented at Geneva.

The Republican party did not seek a statesman for President when it chose General Grant ; for it could not have expected a statesman in him. It chose him because the glory reflected on him in the popular view by the military triumph gave him a political availability which would be useful, and which if not secured by it might be turned against it. It would therefore be unreasonable to demand of him a positive and leading policy of statesmanship. But it had the right to expect from him an example of duty, dignity, regard for law, and a high self-respect which would have a beneficent influence on the other branches of government and on the whole executive service. Yet there is a common impression that General Grant takes a low view of the Presidential office ; that he looks upon it as a personal affair ; that he makes a calculation of what is due him from the value of the office he gave up to take this; and that he regards it as a reward of merit.

All these things and others have made the labor of the recent contest much greater to the administration party than it would have been with any Republican of fair standing, without an administration record, for a candidate. The election having given to General Grant another term of office, this feeling in his party should have free expression. His friends cannot do him a greater service than to subject his conduct at every step to severe judgment. At the best he will have a difficult part to play. Whether he shall show an amenability to intelligent public sentiment and shall rise above the personal view of the Presidency, will govern the event whether he shall continue to have the support of a successful party, and shall leave it in the control of the country when he retires to private life, or whether his re-election shall precipitate a disintegration of the Republican party which will make his administration helpless, and will leave him to terminate his official career followed by the reproaches of the party that elected him, and with none to do him honor.