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time. But the Union has outgrown all this. It stretches now from the Atlantic to the Pacificfrom Maine to Mexico. Spread over so vast a surface, it has become physically impossible for its citizens, dwelling thousands of miles apart, to attempt the selection of the President on the ground of merit. It may, indeed, be said that the renown of the orator will extend far and wide, without much heeding the obstacle of space. But this may not apply to that of the statesman, of whom the very ablest may be without any gift of words. Jefferson observes, in his Memoirs: "I served with Washington in the legislature of Virginia, before the revolution, and during it, with Franklin in Congress. I never heard either of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point, which was to decide the question." And Jefferson's pretensions to oratory were no greater. Upon this point we find at once a remarkable change in the national character, for in modern times a senator has been known to speak for three whole days. The most valuable of all the gifts of the statesman is assuredly judgment, or that which, when combined with knowledge, may be termed wisdom: it was the characteristic of the men of Washington's age. It is clearly one that may exist with very little noise.

That ability should no longer form the ground of selection for the presidential office appears injurious enough; but the evil extends much beyond

this. Under the system that now prevails ability is a certain ban of exclusion. It proved so in the case of Webster, of Clay, of Calhoun, and, in the last election, of Seward. The fact is so difficult to realize, that it becomes necessary to consider how these elections are really conducted in America. The theory of the Constitution is, that the President shall be elected by the people and in order to avoid the difficulties arising from wide dispersion, it provides that they shall first appoint a college of electors, to whom ample time is afforded for deliberate choice. This is the theory: in practice, the whole power has passed from the people into the hands of a knot of professional politicians, and the electoral college has become a useless form. The electors are now denied the power of choice, and are reduced to the reality of mere instruments for recording the votes they were, from the first, appointed to give. The election originates with a committee of the party, thus described by Clarigny in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes :' "These committees are filled with briefless lawyers, with doctors without patients, with schemers, place-hunters, who devote themselves to the triumph of the party in order to be elected to some little salaried place. All the chances are for the intriguers, if success be obtained. And it is these committees which name the delegates for the Convention, which has to choose the party candidate; the immense majority of the citizens have no other alternative than to

accept these nominations as they stand, or renounce the exercise of their vote." The members of the Convention thus elected meet at some central point to decide upon a candidate. They come from sections of the country, hundreds of miles apart, widely different in their interests, part of them from Free, and part from Slave States. The only connecting link is a common desire for the success of the party; on all other points there is strong diversity of sentiment. This inevitably leads to great difficulty in agreeing upon the candidate. The most eminent man of the party is first proposed-a Clay, or a Webster; but it immediately appears that in the course of a vigorous career he has done something, made some declaration, or adopted some principle, which has given unpardonable offence to one or more sections of the party. Unless these be conciliated there must be a division, and success will be hopeless. Ballot succeeds to ballot, in long succession. The same capital defect of eminence, which excluded the leader of the party, eliminates others of less celebrity. At length a compromise is assented to; some one is proposed for party's sake-a nonentity, a Polk, or a Pierce, of whom no one happens to know any harm. He is chosen, not as a person fit for the office, but as the best for the purposes of the party. And here another rule comes into force with disastrous effect. If, as with us, the nominee who commanded the largest number of votes carried the day, then the most eminent

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

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