GENERAL GRANT AND MR. JOHNSON.
rw-E very remarkable correspondence published this week X between General Giant and President Johnson, on the subject of the President's order removing General Sheridan from the command of the Fifth District (Louisiana and Texas), brings before us with singular force the nature of the movement which is now going on for remoulding the Consti- tution of the United States, and the grave obstructions which that movement necessarily encounters. The nature of the movement is easily described. The framers of the original American Constitution appear to have believed either that they should always have Presidents chiefly anxious to consult the popular will,—or that it would be a not undesirable thing for the popular will only to have what geologists would call a catastrophic power to remould the political condition,—that is, only every four years. Probably what they really expected was that there would be nothing properly catastrophic about the quadrennial elections, because the President would be far more likely during the whole four years to be currying favour with the electors of the next period than to be opposing their wishes ; and thus they scarcely con- sidered the possibility of an interregnum of years elapsing between any two decisive exertions of the popular volition. What they failed to consider was the chance, first, of having the Presidency filled up by an officer never elected, and never, perhaps, likely to have been elected, for that office, —like. Mr. Johnson ;—and next, that in case of any great rupture between different sections of the nation, it might well be that some President would care more to use his tem- porary authority in the interests of his own party,—though that party were not the popular party,—than to court popu- larity by deferring to the will of the majority. Both these untoward influences have been brought to bear on Mr. John- son. He never was elected as the popular favourite, and never had that mollifying sense of gratitude to the people which at least disposes a really popular President to in- terpret their will. His original election as Vice-President was a mere empty compliment to one of the few remaining loyal Southerners. On the other hand, Mr. Johnson is a man of fierce party feeling and intense obstinacy, and to him it matters infinitely more to have his own way while he can, than to win any power or any good opinion for the future by giving up his will to the will of the majority. He has never once modified his own course more than was absolutely neces- sary to prevent a revolution and an immediate downfall, in the direction of the changing and rapidly maturing view of the people, on the great crisis in which he finds himself. He stands as immovable as a rock in the midst of a roaring torrent, and when talked to about the will of the people, says in effect, I re- present the written Constitution, and the written Constitution represents the will of the people, so far as they themselves chose to keep things in their own power. You may chafe at me now, but it was the will of your forefathers, accepted and ratified by yourselves, which put me here to chafe you. And there- fore, even in the very act of chafing you, I represent a deeper popular will than the popular will which is chafed.' In other words, President Johnson is doing his best so to avail himself of the power given him by the paper Constitution, that the expressions of popular will in America shall become catastrophic, and instead of permanently shaping the action of the Adminis- tration, and insensiblyexerting a living pressure on the course of affairs, shall act only by fits and starts, so far as the President has not power to override or resist it. When Congress is in session, then it has power by a two-thirds' majority,—which now it can almost always command,—to override Mr. Johnson. But directly Congress separates, Mr. Johnson's power becomes active again, and he employs himself in doing as much as possible what Congress will wish to undo, and leaving undone as much as possible what Congress will wish to do. Not till his Presidency ceases will Congress be able to overturn " my policy " altogether. In the meantime, " my policy " is a mere attempt to stem the policy of Congress, resulting in a series of little political eddies and whirlpools very perplexing to the military rulers of the five disaffected Southern districts, who are carried now this way by Congress, now that by the Presidential backwater, like Virgil's rani mantes in gurgite vasto.
General Grant, of all men in the North who have no very enthusiastic political convictions of their own,—which every- thing seems to show General Grant has not,—seems the one who has the clearest insight into the uselessly dangerous results of this vain struggle with the popular will. He sees that in a genuine democracy, the more easily and rapidly the Government follows the lead of the people as well in adminis- tration as in legislation, the more sober and sensible, on the whole, the will of the people is likely to be. He wishes the President to act as though he were the index of the electric telegraph moved by the currents of popular feeling. The will of the people, he says, has clearly shown that it is in favour of General Sheridan's policy in Louisiana, and that it trusts General Sheridan himself. 'No,' virtually replies Mr. John- son, the will of the people did not elect General Sheridan, and you have no means of knowing whom it would elect. You do know that the will of the people made the Constitu- tion under which I am at the head and am bound to exer- cise my own judgment for the good of the nation in the best way I can.' Thus the two men represent in fact the two opposite elements in the United States' Constitution,—Mr. Johnson the resisting, dragging element, introduced because the framers of the Constitution so greatly distrusted the tem- porary and, as it was then feared, capricious exercises and expressions of popular will, that they invested one man, at his own discretion, with the power to overrule them, often even for four years ; General Grant, an the other hand, represent- ing the pliant, flexible element, originally intended to be represented rather by Congress than by the President,—that element of deference to the people which is the life and soul of a,Democracy, and which, in a pure Democracy like that of America rarely indeed finds any one with the wish, even if he has the power, to thwart it.
We cannot doubt for a moment which of these equal in- tentions of the original Constitution will conquer in the end, nor which ought to conquer, nor that in the very process of conquest, the Constitution will probably be so modified that a prolonged contest between the people and one man, nominally its servant, can never occur again. We shall have, in one way or another, Congress providing for its own power to change its Executive,—such a power as our own Parlia- ment possesses,—whenever it sees good. And we believe the result of this change will be not to make the popular will more violent and capricious, but more stable and cau- tious. With an educated and long-headed people it is only resistance, fret, silly opposition, like Mr. Johnson's which is dangerous, in exciting anything like rashness or impa- tience. Even under this constant fret, no people ever showed themselves less angry or fitful. And, indeed, the practical working of a constitutional modification which should give the Congress power to suspend or change the President at will, would in all probability be, not that it would be often exercised, but that it would effect what the people wish without being put in action at all. A President once aware that he was liable to removal for any obstinate resistance to the popular will as expressed by Congress, would, like an English constitutional monarch, assent as a matter of course to all schemes of policy which had clearly received the national sanction. And in the very rare cases where a President had either too strong a will or too scrupulous a conscience to acquiesce in what he thought really bad, he would yield of course to the necessity of the case, and resign his place. That some such mode of extinguishing the Presidential power of resistance to a united Congress will certainly result from Mr. Johnson's obstinacy, almost all careful observers of the American conflict admit.
It is important, however, to observe that even with this modification, the American machinery for registering the popular wishes and convictions will not be so good or so effective as the Parliamentary machinery in England, where the personnel of the Government depends not directly, but indirectly, on a vote of Parliament. For in America the effect of giving this additional power to Congress, would be, as we have already pointed out, not to change one decisive policy which the people disapprove, for another decisive policy which they approve, but to prevent the actual Executive ruler from making up his mind at all while he is still in doubt as to what the decision of the people will be. In other words, you will have a ruler of deliberately hesitating policy, of no policy,— till that very slow process is completed which we may call the crystallization of political opinion among the people. The great object of a President who knows that he shall either have to change his policy or be removed if he does not succeed in agreeing with the people, will be to temporize until he can see clearly what the people prefer. Now, we hold that this is an evil, if only that it does not give the people the means of knowing half so clearly their own minds, as a decisive policy of some kind, which they could see in operation, even if they ended by utterly disapproving it, would do. Mr. Johnson has done badly enough, but he has at least educated public opinion in America. Mr. Lincoln would have, educated it in a different way, by anticipating and going before it. But a President who was merely waiting on events, tem- porizing for a distinct idea of what the people wished, without any idea of his own,—a President, in short, like Mr. Buchanan towards the close of his term of office, when he had become alarmed at the policy of his own party, and was too timid to cast in his lot with the opposite party,—a President of that kind actually delays, instead of aiding, the crystallization of public opinion. It is far better that it should be as it is in England, quite as sure a cause of ejection from office that the Prime Minister should hesitate, temporize, and not know what to do in any great emergency, as that he should do what the nation dis- approves, than that it should be,—as it will become, we fear,— almost the duty of the Chief Officer of the American Executive to hesitate and temporize till he sees how public opinion is setting. The conflict of definitely opposite policies between the com- petitive leaders of our parliamentary parties does more by far to educate public opinion, than public opinion can ever do to educate itself. And the defect of a modification of the American Constitution which should merely make the President removable at pleasure, would be that this would not have the effect of identifying the actual ruler in possession with any one distinct party in Congress, but rather of tending to make him reserve his views as long as possible, and hold himself aloof from all parties. Not being a member of Con- gress, not being bound to lead debate and express opinion, it would be open to a removable President to hang back till he sees which way the wind blows. And the worst result of this is, that no two conflicting policies for which rival leaders are responsible, and the success of either of which in Congress would lead to power, are likely to be plainly put before the people in Congressional debates. It is a great pity that the President should not be the chief leader of his party in Con- gress, liable to removal, like our Prime Minister, only when he falls into a minority. Still, that he should be removable at the pleasure of Congress at all will be something gained. And to that result all the political phenomena in the United States seem to tend.
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