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:

66

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 institutions exclude them.

because the existing

We have seen what are the qualifications re

D

In

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. 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 American politics, so frequently commented on by travellers. Fitness for the office, being disre

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.

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. And 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.

And this tendency to convert the pursuit of politics into a profession, is largely strengthened by another cause-the payment of members of the Legislature. This calls into existence a class of persons who openly make legislation their business, and live upon the income it provides. It may indeed be said, theoretically, that we are as much bound to pay men for making laws, as for making shoes. But experience tells us that the two employments require different classes of minds. A wide acquaintance with history, with jurisprudence, with social economy, an insight into the whole range of industrial pursuits,—these attainments need much more time to acquire, than those can allot to them whose time is their bread. As a rule, they can only be acquired, when the possession of property gives the command of sufficient leisure for the purpose. When it is necessary to turn time into money, we cannot expect that much of it will have been turned into legislative knowledge. It is true, indeed, that if in America all men are created equal, they may be equally fitted for all pursuits. Once granted that all men are alike, there can be no fear of putting a wrong one into any place. But when Mr. Jefferson announced that doctrine-which he exemplified by holding a number of them in bondage from their birth-he did not assert that they grew up of equal powers, or alike in knowledge; and very ample experience has proved that laws will be made best by those whom pre

vious study and habits of thought have trained in kindred pursuits.

And whilst, in the United States, the payment of members has created a class who make lawgiving a livelihood, the rate of payment is below the present standard of expenditure. There will therefore be those who have to make up this deficiency. Hence arises the well-known institution of "lobbying." Dr. Mackay, by no means a hostile witness, observes: "No one who knows anything of the internal working of American politics, will deny the fact that such members (alluding to those who live on their pay) are notoriously and avowedly open to the influences of what is called 'lobbying.' And how is it to be expected that a needy and ambitious lawyer, without practice, having nothing but his three or four dollars a day, and upon whose single vote the fortunes of a project, costing millions to carry into effect, may absolutely depend, shall not be open to the influences of those who lobby him? No disquisition on the morality or propriety of such a state of things is necessary.'

The lobbies of the legislative halls are filled with a class of men called agents, whose business it is, to work private bills through Congress, or public bills, in which, like the Morrill tariff, private interests are deeply concerned, by means of influence upon members,-or, in plain terms, by some form of corruption. This is no secret matter, for indeed secrecy is little known in