cution of the government, and a feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution. The direct source of the influence possessed by the President was the patronage in his gift, but in the first years of the government the full importance of this was not realised, because the patronage was administered with an honest regard to the public service. But that the President was strong, stronger than a constitutional ruler in other parts of the world, was a theory which has generally been accredited as a fact. Few public men in America have hesitated to express the opinion that the Executive office was so carefully and surely guarded that it would be easier for a President to exceed his proper functions than for the Legislative to trespass upon his prerogatives. Mr. Seward, a man of unrivalled information upon the machinery of his own government, once said to me, "We elect a king for four years, and give him absolute power within certain limits, which after all he can interpret for himself." This is a proposition which would no longer be maintained by any American statesman. Among the unlooked-for consequences of the great struggle between the North and the South is the determination of the principle that the Executive is weak as soon as it is arrayed against the Legislative and the strong bias of public opinion. It is never more than relatively strong. Its arm is paralysed for independent action when it can no longer summon two-thirds of each Legislative Chamber to its side. Whatever strength it possesses is derived exclusively

CHAP. III. WASHINGTON'S ANXIETY FOR THE EXECUTIVE.

37

from the true fountain of political power, the people. The fear that the head of the administration might suffer at the hands of the other departments of the government was not not absent from the minds of the founders of the Constitution. Washington always impressed upon his contemporaries the importance of preserving the independence of the office beyond the reach of attack. He told Jefferson in 1790, during the progress of a controversy with reference to the assumption of State debts," that the President was the centre, in which all administrative questions ultimately rested, and that all of us (meaning the Cabinet) should rally round him, and support, with joint efforts, measures approved by him." In the Convention of 1787 it was urged by many members that in order to preserve the Executive from undue interference it should have the right to exercise an absolute negative, for, it was said, "without such a self-defence the Legislature can at any moment sink it into non-existence." But there was a still more numerous party which shrank back alarmed from the thought that the President might indeed become a King. They conceived that the President was already made too powerful. It might be the fate of the country to be absolutely ruled for four years by one man. He might be a bad, unscrupulous, ambitious man; and if he could overmaster the Legislature the whole business of the country would be

'Madison's 'Reports,' p. 151, and speech of Mr. Gouverneur Morris, p. 334.

stopped, and a yoke immeasurably more intolerable than that from which they had escaped would be placed upon their necks. The short term of office and the qualified veto were regarded as indispensable securities, and the actual strength of the office was left, like many other details of the scheme, to be tested by subsequent experiment.

The memorable events which set this question at rest for ever, and made it past dispute that the Legislative can absorb the chief functions of the Executive whenever it is able to secure the co-operation of the majority in the country, have only occurred since the war. There was always a doubt respecting what the President could or could not do. A determined man, skilfully disguising his encroachments, might go far beyond the limits which his predecessors reached, and which the Constitution seemed to mark out. The history of the administration of President Jackson presents an illustration of the liberties which may be taken by a resolute man, not deficient in tact, and watching narrowly the shifting current of public opinion. He carried out his projects partly by his dogged determination and strength of character, but more by the unscrupulous use which he made of the self-interests of others. He let corruption loose upon the land. Every public office was a bribe-every post in his gift was put up for sale in the marketplace. By this device he defied Congress, and yet was never an unpopular man. People rather admired and laughed at his "smartness." He succeeded in

CHAP. III. INHERENT WEAKNESS OF THE OFFICE.

39

his aims, but his success was not the means of permanently enlarging the power and authority of his office. He merely showed how the Presidency might be made all-powerful by the exercise of craft, cunning, and a quick appreciation of the popular will. And even Jackson himself, after carrying out his own measures in opposition to the Legislature, thought it judicious to make professions of his subserviency to that body. In his message of 1836 he said, "No one can be more deeply impressed than I am with the soundness of the doctrine which restrains and limits excutive discretion.”

It was the lack of the perception of the inherent weakness of the Executive, and its liability to be paralysed by the Legislative, which was the original source of President Johnson's troubles. That error cost him his reputation, and prevented him from being of that service to a disordered country which his general capacities warranted his friends in expecting. He could not understand that he might be practically deposed. When he succeeded Mr. Lincoln he was wedded to a scheme which he had devised for the restoration of the Southern States, and he never once doubted his ability to carry it through. The language of his vetoes in 1866, though more guarded than his speeches, betrayed this belief in his supremacy, and it was one of the first circumstances which provoked the suspicions and hostility of the Republican party. They were incensed at his pretensions, and disappointed with the total change which he

avowed in his opinions. On the 21st of April, 1865, he told a delegation from Indiana that "treason against the government of the United States is the highest crime that can be committed, and those engaged in it should suffer all its penalties." And again he said, "traitors must be made odious, treason must be made odious, and traitors must be punished and impoverished." Their "social power must be destroyed," and "every Union man and the government should be remunerated out of the pockets of those who have inflicted this great suffering upon the country."

But

It was no wonder that the Republican party should at first have placed almost unlimited faith and confidence in the man who took every occasion to utter sentiments such as these. They thought they saw the "hand of God" in the "removal" of Mr. Lincoln and the substitution of a man of sterner mould. Mr. Johnson had not been long in office before the facts which were brought to his knowledge, as chief of the nation, convinced him that the South needed no additional stripes to reduce it to submission. Its load was already greater than it could bear. The President's compassion was moved by the great and ceaseless cry of misery and despair which every breeze carried to him from across the Potomac. As he looked from his windows in the White House towards the South, he saw a country which was entirely given over to its enemies, and which could look only to him for aid. He thought it was his duty