would be selected, in spite of sectional jealousy and opposition. But the rule in the United States is to require, not a relative, but an absolute majority of the whole number of votes. This enables the promoters of several insignificant candidates to render it impossible for any other to obtain the majority required. The injurious effect of this rule is manifest, and often deplored in America. In this country such an evil would be eradicated at once, immediately on its effects being discovered; but in the United States there is a written Constitution, the spirit of which, as we have just seen in the case of the electoral college, is widely departed from, whilst the letter and form remain, to work out, in this and many other instances, the most serious injury to the community. In the present case the electoral college has become a useless form, but not a harmless one. The moment the electors are appointed the future President is known; all the influences of his election come at once into action. But the form, the letter of the Constitution remains in force he is not yet elected legally. The power to control those influences will not come into being for more than three months; and probably the secession movement would not have succeeded, and the disruption of the Union might not now have occurred, but for this departure from the spirit of an instrument, whilst the letter of it continues to be the law of the land.

And whence arises such a political system as

this one so opposed to reason, as that which renders eminence an insuperable barrier to office -which denies the faculty of choice to the elector, and reduces the nominal power of the people to the real privilege of putting into a box a ticket, having upon it the name of a person of whom the great majority never heard before? It arises in chief from the excessive magnitude, and conflicting interests, of the Union,- from the dispersion of the people over a space so vast that necessity enforces a system of this kind. Were an attempt made to exercise any really popular choice, it would end in inextricable confusion. It has been observed that we also act through party organization; but there is a wide difference. We use party at elections as a means of returning the candidate selected; but here the candidate is selected as a means of success to the party. Not only is his fitness for the office discarded from consideration, but, practically, none pretend to consider the welfare of the country as a whole; the attention and efforts of all are concentrated on a single object, the success of the party ticket.

Under such a system, we can no longer wonder at the contrast which the recent Presidents offer to those of former days. And the qualifications required for the office are not light. Justice Story thus describes them: "The nature of the duties to be performed by the President are so various and complicated as not only to require great talents

"

and great wisdom to perform them, but also long experience in office. They embrace all the arrangements of peace and war, of diplomacy and negotiation, of finance, of naval and military operations, and of the execution of the laws, through almost infinite ramifications of details, and in places at vast distances from each other." If this be true, and it clearly is so, how is it possible that the government can be properly conducted, under a system which so utterly excludes these qualifications? It has been re

marked, that the best form of government is that which places the best men in office. Without going quite so far as this, there can be little doubt that the system is a vicious one, under which the best men are excluded from office. Olmsted observes:

"Unquestionably there are great evils arising from the lack of talent applied to our government, from the lack of real dignity of character, and respectability of attainments, in many of the government offices. We cannot afford to employ a heavy proportion of talent or honesty, about the little share of our business which is done at the capital." If this explanation of the cause of such admitted evils were correct, nothing could be more unsatisfactory; but in reality, there is abundance both of talent and honesty to spare for the purposes of government. They are not absent from their deficiency, but because the existing institutions exclude them.

We have seen what are the qualifications re

D

quired in the President: his powers are not less extensive. In many important particulars, they exceed those exercised by the Crown in this country. He not only has the right to veto the acts of the Legislature, but not unfrequently uses it. He can maintain his government in office for four years, and this has been done for long periods, in opposition to a majority in either or both Houses. In regard to patronage, he exercises a power which no European monarch has ever aspired to. On the accession of the President of another party, he at once claims the whole of the government offices as spoils of victory, and proceeds to dismiss and replace, not only the former Ministry, but all the subordinates, the ministers to foreign courts, the consuls, the custom-house officers, the village postmasters. All these are regarded, not as servants of the commonwealth, but as the minions of a vanquished foe. The same principle holds as in his own election-it is not the country that is to be thought of, but the party. They have calculated on these offices, their exertions have been stimulated by the prospect of them, and they cannot now be disappointed. This practice of necessity creates two entire sets of officials—a set in place, and another set displaced. Numbers of those ejected, and thus deprived of a livelihood, become professional politicians and, inflamed by the zeal their position creates, impart that passionate heat to America politics, so requently commented on Fitness for the office, being disre

by travellers.

garded in the highest station, can hardly give much concern in lower ones; and hence we see persons appointed to offices for which they are manifestly unsuited. In any other country the whole machinery of government would be clogged, and become unmanageable. In America, the natural quickness, and peculiar adaptability to circumstances, which the people possess, enable them to sustain, and apparently without much concern, even such evils as these.

And

It would, however, be a great error to suppose that their influence, although endurable, will not be widely felt. Where the possession of minor offices of subsistence indeed-becomes, with large classes, the moving impulse, politics cease to be a question of opinion, and degenerate into a trade. With them, the question will be, not their country's good, but what they want for their own. this large class of office-holders out of place, with no other occupation than to struggle for return to it, will naturally devote an amount of time to political pursuits, which the well-employed, respectable classes cannot afford, and they will bring into play a special amount of individual eagerness; they will fill the seats of these committees, which exercise the power, nominally in the hands of the people. Men of wealth, of commercial standing, of literary tastes, are outrun by such eager rivals; and we find them, as a rule, not only indifferent to politics, but avoiding them altogether in despair.