“Upon what meat doth this our Cæsar feed,” that he should assume so
much? No honor for victory in war can justify disobedience to the
Constitution and to Law; nor can it afford the least apology for any
personal immunity, privilege, or license in the Presidential office. A
President must turn into a King before it can be said of him that he
can do no wrong. He is responsible always. As President he is foremost
servant of the Law, bound to obey its slightest mandate. As the elect
of the people he owes not only the example of willing obedience, but
also of fidelity and industry in the discharge of his exalted office,
with an absolute abnegation of all self-seeking. Nothing for self, but
all for country. And now, as we regard the career of this candidate,
we find to our amazement how little it accords with this simple
requirement. Bring it to the touchstone and it fails.
Not only are Constitution and Law disregarded, but the Presidential
office itself is treated as little more than a plaything and a
perquisite,--when not the former, then the latter. Here the details are
ample, showing how from the beginning this august trust has dropped to
be a personal indulgence, where palace-cars, fast horses, and seaside
loiterings figure more than duties; how personal aims and objects have
been more prominent than the public interest; how the Presidential
office has been used to advance his own family on a scale of nepotism
dwarfing everything of the kind in our history, and hardly equalled
in the corrupt governments where this abuse has most prevailed; how
in the same spirit office has been conferred upon those from whom he
had received gifts or benefits, thus making the country repay his
personal obligations; how personal devotion to himself, rather than
public or party service, has been made the standard of favor; how the
vast appointing power conferred by the Constitution for the general
welfare has been employed at his will to promote his schemes, to reward
his friends, to punish his opponents, and to advance his election to
a second term; how all these assumptions have matured in a _personal
government_, semi-military in character and breathing the military
spirit,--being a species of Cæsarism or _personalism_, abhorrent to
republican institutions, where subservience to the President is the
supreme law; how in maintaining this subservience he has operated by
a system of combinations, military, political, and even senatorial,
having their orbits about him, so that, like the planet Saturn, he is
surrounded by rings,--nor does the similitude end here, for his rings,
like those of the planet, are held in position by satellites; how
this utterly unrepublican Cæsarism has mastered the Republican Party
and dictated the Presidential will, stalking into the Senate Chamber
itself, while a vindictive spirit visits good Republicans who cannot
submit; how the President himself, unconscious that a President has
no right to quarrel with anybody, insists upon quarrelling until he
has become the great Presidential quarreller, with more quarrels than
all other Presidents together, all begun and continued by himself; how
his personal followers back him in quarrels, insult those he insults,
and then, not departing from his spirit, cry out, with Shakespeare,
“We will have _rings_ and things and fine array”; and, finally, how
the chosen head of the Republic is known chiefly for Presidential
pretensions, utterly indefensible in character, derogatory to the
country, and of evil influence, making personal objects a primary
pursuit, so that, instead of a beneficent presence, he is a bad
example, through whom republican institutions suffer and the people
learn to do wrong.
Would that these things could be forgotten! but since through
officious friends the President insists upon a second term, they must
be considered and publicly discussed. When understood, nobody will
vindicate them. It is easy to see that Cæsarism even in Europe is at a
discount, that “personal government” has been beaten on that ancient
field, and that “Cæsar with a Senate at his heels” is not the fit
model for our Republic. King George the Third of England, so peculiar
for narrowness and obstinacy, had retainers in Parliament who went
under the name of “The King’s Friends.” Nothing can be allowed here to
justify the inquiry, “Have we a King George among us?”--or that other
question, “Have we a party in the Senate of ‘The King’s Friends’?”