THE AMERICAN REVIEW. No. LXXVI. FOR APRIL, 1851. IMAGINARY PRESIDENTS: THE IDEAL OF A NATIONAL ADMINISTRATION. We have yielded our opinions too easily to the arguments of faction, and the dishonest insinuations of interest; we allow men to lead and represent us, and to exercise public authority, whom in private we would scorn to trust or meet with respect. We put Notoriety in office and not Reputation; for the real man we substitute imaginary creatures, mere men of straw, incapable either to guide or govern. In the great ship of State we lodge a feeble or a worn-out engine, which makes a merit of a backward motion, lest the great seas may break its rotten gear or crush in pieces its rusty shafts. We set up Imaginary Presidents, ticketed with the dogmas of party, in lieu of char acter. Dishonesty thrives under such a system. As the leaders are, so are the volunteers they beckon after them, the picked men of Asmodeus, the cunning thieves who are searching the store-room with an arithmetical dark lantern; while we fools, quite ignorant of state navigation, fondly imagine they are working the good ship in some mysterious manner from below. The devil of mischief and theft has occupation for his saints; their very inactivity is masterly; sitting, they hatch to life old frauds, or deposit new ones. Quiet, and seemingly harmless, they consume VOL. VII. NO. IV. NEW SERIES. the more while they produce the less. We are passed into an almost aristocratical corruption, and are some of us content with logs, scotchers and stumbling-blocks, instead of Senators. A session of three months, and nothing done by either side for either side; the appropriation bills adroitly delayed and then rushed through, to shun examination; the time of all others most sacred to honor and duty, wasted in contemptible talk, or parliamentary stratagem. The air of the metropolis during this wicked three months is sick with scandal. Every whisper is of an intrigue or of a bribe; social and public corruption hatefully mingled, taking away the last hope of manhood and of patriotism. Here we are told in one ear that good English gold is ready for so many, who have sold their constituencies, to kill a tariff; here in the other ear comes another rumor, that so many are bought on the other side, t counteract the bribes of Free Trade. Here a vast job is divided under the rose, (a stinking rose,) among six accessories in legislative mischief. Here another and another, a dozen-a hundred-all seeking ripe and eager to be devoured. Here a caucus plotting civil war; here another, 19 Imaginary Presidents. and another, and another, a score, esti- Were there a powerful onward movement Legislators will drink,, fight, gamble away fortunes, sell jobs, and waste the time of their public agency, it is perhaps their natural proclivity to do so,-but those of them who do nothing else, appear in a light wholly intolerable; the thought of it ends in a contempt for all government and a scorn of all authority; somewhere it must lead at last, and the end is perhaps not far off; when the Central Government puts on the face of a Humbug, the Union will assume the same respectable features. April, greatest heart and the strongest will of your nation. Find him out, in God's name, and if you can, elect him in God's name as it is not unlikely he may, beg of him, and the nation's, and if he refuses the office, pray him to accept it, that you may be saved from shame and poverty, and perhaps from death by the cannon and yours shot or bayonet-the tools I use to puncharlatans and fools to offices of supreme ish those and the children of those who elect authority. omen, when a fool ascends the throne. LeFor a monarchy it is not always an evil gitimacy provides against the catastrophe ernment to a minister. Republics have no that would follow, by intrusting the govsuch remedy. ple's choice, and that choice loads him with The President is the peothe office; he cannot shift responsibility to his ministers, unless, as power has fallen to him by succession. Legitimacy and irresponsibility are one; the at present, the being born to a supreme power does not involve the obligation of being equal to its exercise. Legitimacy of itself exonerates the sovereign; his supremacy is not of his own, How can there be a Union without a of a system, and is required only to wear or of the people's making; he is the slave head? From the moment a true man the garment and assume the exterior of and a hero takes his place at the head of sovereignty. the nation, from that moment the nation is temporary sovereign of the Republic: inFar different is it with the one and indivisible. Assemble at a rendez-vested with all the authority that a legitivous an army for defense: until its head ap-mate king could ever justly wield, he adds to pears it is a tumultuary and dangerous mob; it the responsibility of a Prime Minister; more the army of popular representatives is but a than that, a minister of the people's choice, more organized and reputable mischief, until a powerful leader holds supreme office, Millions of men have registered their names a premier of the Nation, not of the Court. on the groundwork of the popular will. in his favor, declaring by a solemn act that President, Prime Minister, call him by they have chosen him to represent and exwhat name you will, the head must be seen, ercise the supreme will, the sovereign auand the strong hand felt, the party led, thority; not as a puppet, or an idol, but as a the measures sustained. Let genius and elo- man bearing in his heart and mind the true quence manage the debate, let wisdom and image of justice and goodness, and the true caution temper the arguments, there must idea of national honor. He is set in his be, says Nature, a head somewhere, a recog-high place as the real representative of all nized, or if you please, a "divinely" appointed that is manly, all that is great, generous, power, lodged in a human will, or my laws and admirable, in the character of the Redictate confusion and corruption; I cannot public. endure and will not suffer a temporizer in a seat of supreme power. The union of your Republic is not in stocks and stones, nor in economy or laws of the greatest good to the greatest number;-it is in the spirit of man that I find it; not here and there in books, or mystical influences, but in the fool, it is ominous of ruin; they have chosen many-sided confidant of hell, made Presi- credit of the choice, and with it the deep contempt of all knowing and thinking humanity. When the people set up knaves and charlatans, let Aristocracy toss up its chin, and crow a loud and lusty laugh over the folly of the unwashed multitude, who mistake the vulgar cunning of a barbarian for talent, and the ashes of vice burnt out, for the snows of virtue. The Republic looks for its political saviour. What manner of man he must be, all men know. There is an ideal prophetic faculty in men; humanity knows what it needs, and prays fervently therefor, but the blessing is not always recognized and hailed as Heaven-sent, even when it stands before us in human shape. We know well that the political saviour of the Republic will not be an intriguer, a deceiver, or a "crisis" politician; but on the contrary, a man of great views, of simple purposes, and of an enthusiasm that can sustain a youthful empire, rising into vigorous manhood. We are the Greeks of the modern world, worshippers of genius and of glory. We have in us the blood of many choice races poured along in one burning tide. We appropriate the good of the past, and esteem ourselves the masters of the future. The best of Norman, Celtic, Saxon and Teutonic blood, of that kind which time out of mind has stained the British scaffold, and extintinguished the brands of Smithfield; which tinged the Seine on the memorable day of St. Bartholomew, and has since then flowed freely in many revolutions-the virtue, the industry, and the freedom of Northern Europe, collected together on a new soil, and organized in a power at once young, hopeful, and irresistible: the avenger of the past, the patron of liberty, the enemy of oppression, the executor of justice. The men whom we permit to lead us, must feel the passion of the age and of the nation,-must be sensible of, and sensitive for, the glory and the honor of the Republic; not as a selfish isolated power, but standing foremost among the nations. The leaders of the American People, and of the National Party, will be they who have the courage, prescience, and power to represent the whole doctrine and practice of Republican and American nationality. When such public men appear, we shall no longer hear it said that the party is extinct: a party of nationality and of glory, of independence and of progress, will be found to exist, and will draw after it three fourths of the people. A long and glorious career awaits it, and from the beginning of its rule a new epoch begins, the second epoch of the Republic. The national candidate may be a man who has endured the worst that calumny and factious hatred can inflict: the road to power and greatness is oftenest through victories over opinion; great reputations are often founded on great calumnies. He will possess invincible moral courage, Republican but dignified manners, a great, but not a haughty nature. He will not despise popularity, but he will not seek it. He will be a philosopher in intellect; a sage in conduct; neither penurious nor profuse; neither vicious nor a precisian. The spirit of the age is reformatory and economical; the leader of the National Party must be a guide of reforms, he must temper their enthusiasm, and measure them by their utility. It is not necessary that he should be a military chief; it is enough for him that he be able to appreciate and use the military genius of others. Very petty and penurious persons, of small intelligence and enormous vanity, have sometimes, even in our day, attained to great reputation as tacticians and soldiers. The military character is not, therefore, always a manly one. Great men make great soldiers, as they also make great lawyers, scholars, or merchants; and it cannot be denied that the Leader of the People ought to combine in himself all the talents that may be necessary to make the great soldier, merchant, lawyer, politician; that he should possess in full their several attributes of courage, shrewdness, keen intelligence, and knowledge of the people. The discipline of the camp is a grand school for manly qualities, command, resolution, simplicity of will; and the Republic has never been more happily administered than by its great soldiers; nor can the favorite of our warlike people be a president of peace societies,-a kind of associations for which the majority of sensible men, we believe, entertain a profound contempt. The fame, honor, prowess, aggrandizement, unity, and progress of the great Republic will be the passion of his life, by which his most secret thoughts will be directed. He Imaginary Presidents. April, will live in it, live by it; his own soul will | spectable advisers, who will have the knowlbe the grand Republican soul of America; edge and the courage to unite, harmonize, and he will be inspired with a jealousy of the organize them; who will exercise at once the Republican honor, and a reliance upon the offices of peacemaker and defender. Above power which he represents, the irresistible all, the representative head of the American power of the People. Not an insult to our people will not suffer these dependent and flag will go unpunished; not a letter of the feeble States to fall into foreign and unconlaw of nations will be broken, upon that genial hands, whose desire is only to use side of the earth which it is given us to and spoil them. In a word, the true repreprotect, without a full reparation or a sum-sentative of this Republic will dare to be mary vengeance. think and act as such. the chief Republican of all the world, and to That grand "anomaly," the union of many sovereignties in one nation, will be no anomaly to him. With good counsel and a constitutional spirit, he will execute to the letter the laws of the nation, without breaching the defenses of State liberties. Insurrection may spring up under him, but it will be assuaged, or crushed with a wise violence. The honor of the great Republic in foreign lands will be his especial care. represent living and organic Republicanism To in the old world, he will select men who can dignify and defend it, men jealous of their country, who can hold themselves aloof from foreign flatteries and foreign intrigues; who can by that means cause the Republic to react upon Europe, and reproduce there ideas of humanity, of liberty, and of toleration; and who by manly and wise conduct will constitute a lawful, open, and unimpeachable propaganda of Republicanism; who can make America revered by the friends, and dreaded by the oppressors of the people. Jealous of the dignity of his nation, the true representative of the people will receive the Ambassadors of monarchy, who come to promote the interests of kings, with a formal and distant respect; he will identify the man and his business. The agents of hostile governments will find no convenient traitors, or lying news writers, able to operate upon and mislead a government of which the true representative of Republicanism is the head. For Republics, but especially for those who look to us to be their patrons and protectors, the representative of the people will not disguise his affection, nor will he stand between them and those who desire to aid and protect them. He will be their warmest and most generous advocate; he will hearken to their complaints, encourage them in their efforts to organize and establish their governents, and send out to them able and re tested whom the nation will elect to be their By no ordinary services can he have been head. His election must be, not by the me|chanism of a connection and the drill of office seekers; he must go into power the people at his back, electing him upon the strength of recent service and a fresh rewith nown; recognized as the man of all others, deepen than to cancel the glorious obligabound to the nation, and seeking rather to tion. seat of power cannot be compensated by The want of such a head in the highest the combined or isolated skill of great orators or sagacious party leaders. Nationality in the government can be given only by master hand, concentrating and directing the scattered forces of party, and giving an object and a motive to the popular sentiment. a furious and narrow, and degenerate into In the absence of a head, parties become sure of utility or honor, in which the entire factions. The discussion of any great meanation is interested, and which is necessarily argued upon constitutional grounds, ranks men by their principles;-principles require a representative who can dignify them in action; great parties are distinguished from factions by the dignity and nationality of their leaders. of Internal Improvements for the benefit The contest in the Senate on the measures parties into their ancient and almost forof Western agriculture, threw out the old gotten opposition. That contest indicated with sufficient distinctness the true political movement of the future. The attempted coalition had failed, it had no solid ground to rest upon;-men have too much confidence in Union and Nationality to form an active party for their conservation. Had that movement succeeded and an opposition to it as a party taken shape, we should have |