THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY.
THE Presidential campaign in America has begun, and the split in the Republican party has been officially revealed. At an immense meeting of influential electors held at New York on the 12th April, Senator Trumbull, Senator Schurz, and Mr. Horace Greeley detailed their grievances, formulated their demands, and announced their resolution to resist the
renomination of President Grant. They announce that a fraction of the party calling themselves "Liberal Republicans" consider President Grant as bad as any Democrat, as the head of an Administration tyrannical, extravagant, and pecuniarily cor- rupt; that they will call a Convention of their own at Cincin- nati, and nominate their own man—whom, however, they do not name—and that they rely on the strength of their cause, and the adhesion of the Democrat party, to which they offer three inducements,—universal and free amnesty for the South, less interference with State rights, and to our astonishment, free trade, so far as it is embodied in the doctrine that "duties
should only be imposed for the sake of revenue." These latter proposals are obviously dictated mainly by a desire to attract the Democrats, but the Liberal Republicans have a platform also of their own, which may be summed up in the single sentence,—Civil Service Reform.
Senators Schurz and Trumbull, who had been selected to make the grand speeches of the night, proceeded, amidst the passionate enthusiasm of an audience estimated at 10,000, and including all the principal movers against the Tammany Ring, to denounce the Administration, and certainly performed their appointed task with no faltering tongue: If we believe all their statements, which for the present we do not, Pre- sident Grant almost deserves impeachment as a corrupt official, and certainly deserves it as a lax and incapable ad- ministrator of patronage. The Senators charge him, first, with Napoleonism, with appointing military officers to situations which under the Constitution they cannot hold ; with establishing a system of "Grant candidates," who are supported in their canvas by the whole power of the Government, so that no man who votes freely can hope for any office, and no official can venture to refuse his aid ; and with interfering constantly even in State and municipal elections. They declare that the President maintains around him an army of men trained in the traditions of the war, who know nothing of the Constitution or of legality, "who think that power is its own law," who prefer violent methods to legal action, and who endeavour at all times and in all ways to centralise power at Washington. They affirm that General Grant sends messages to Congress through a Major in the army, that he cares nothing about the Senate, and that he endeavoured, by orders delivered to the Navy, to com- mit the country to the capture of St. Domingo. They allege that the Administration not only does not fulfil its pledges of purifying the Civil Service, but that it brands representatives who attack corruption, shields public defaulters like the rogues exposed in the New York Custom-House Inquiry, and pays large sums of money to contractors without appropriation laws. They assert that the President has appointed dozens of his own relatives to office, that through his 60,000 Civil- Service nominees he controls the whole country in the interests of his friends, and that he has suffered the national expenditure, apart altogether from the interest on Debt, to rise from £12,000,000 a year to £32,000,000, while £18,000,000 would be amply sufficient for all purposes of good government. They charge his friends with governing the South in their own interest, with using the disqualifying laws to raise plunderers to power, and with modifying taxation so as to enrich the interests which sup- port them. They propose as the only remedy for all these ills to abolish patronage, either by Mr. Tenckes' scheme, or by fixed tenure of offices, or by transferring the right of nomination to the electors, and in a passage of some power argue that now is the only time for thorough reform, for the coming generation of electors, the men from twenty to twenty-eight, were bred up in the war, and have imbibed at once a respect for " strong " government, a thirst for arbitrary power, and a liking for corrupt gains,—results of the Civil War which the audience evidently believed to have been truly described. We cannot, without much further information, pass an opinion upon the doctrines of this new schism, but they cer- tainly do not at first sight commend themselves to our judg- ment. That General Grant did promise Civil Service Reform, and did not perform his promise, is true ; but he appears to have tried to perform it, and to have been beaten only by the desire of the Senators, who confirm all appointments, to retain the patronage to which they were accustomed, and without which, as they think, they would be deprived of consideration in their States,—an objection which, whether forcible or not, is undoubtedly well founded. The charge of nepotism may also be true, but does not matter much, as in a country like America, where everybody is considered as fit for any office as anybody else, and fitter too, and all offices are occupied for short terms, a President's relatives may be quite sufficiently qualified; and the remainder of the case is singularly weak. The President is not charged with per- sonally profiting by his lenity to defaulters, and passive lenity of that sort is almost universal among Americans, who consider dismissal sufficient punishment for almost any pecuniary offence. The new Erie Board, for example, are all honourable men, but they are evidently prepared to act upon that bad theory. The increase in the public expendi- ture is mainly due to natural causes, such as the wealth created during the war by anticipating the resources of posterity, and in any case is no fault of the President, who does not con- trol the purse. As to Napoleonism, it is a grave charge, but no proof whatever is adduced of anything beyond what is custo- mary in American political strife, namely, the use of patronage to secure votes ; while the fuss about the military establishment of the President is undeniable buncombe. Is everybody, officer and private alike, to be ostracised because he has done ser- vice in the war, or is a man only to be disqualified because he has won his epaulettes? No such principle could be carried out directly after a great civil war without fright- ful hardships to individuals and injury to the State, and if there is any such technical rule, it had better be repealed. A Presidential election cannot be turned by an assertion that a great General rather likes his aides-de-camp, and that is all to which this flaming accusation really amounts. The Seceders do not define their plan of Civil Service Reform, though they incline, we are told, to make the tenure of all offices synchronous with that of the Presidency, perhaps the very worst of all conceivable arrangements, as it tempts the official to feather his nest before dismissal, yet leaves him time to do it in ; and finally, the bids for democratic sup- port look to our eyes a great deal too unscrupulous. To leave the States absolutely free is equivalent either to civil war, the Blacks defending themselves, or to the sub- jection of the Blacks to a system scarcely distinguishable from slavery except in this,—that under the "constitutional amendment" they could not be bought and sold without the land. The process of which General Schurz complains so much, the substitution of Federal for local Courts, is, so far as it is constitutional, a good one, and in the South absolutely essential, while the juries can be so little trusted to punish men of their own colour. The general amnesty is just enough, and kindly too, but the offer of free-trade needs further explanation. What kind of free trade is that which Mr. Horace Greeley, hitherto the Apostle of Protection, approves, and the South, which is necessarily for free trade, is at the same moment to support ? But there is no question, we believe, that the movement, justified or not, is a very formidable one, and may end in the failure of General Grant to obtain his second elec- tion. It has long been known that his recent course has alienated many of the chiefs of his party, his error about the Indirect Claims has injured his reputation without conciliating the anti-English Radicals, and he is surrounded by men some of whom have a talent for involving themselves in pecuniary scrapes. The Purity Republicans, as they call themselves, will probably declare against him, in order to change his entourage; the farmers in two or three States are accustomed to look to Mr. Greeley as their guide and friend, and the Germans are prepared, it is said, to vote together under the leadership of Senator Schurz. Should the Demo- crats, therefore, respond to the bid, the " Liberals " may make up a party so formidable that the regular Repub- licans, alarmed by the contest, may be willing to throw over their nominee. We should not, on the whole, say they would, for the Liberals have no nominee and no chance of securing an unobjectionable one ; the name of General Grant is still a household word among millions who care very little about politics, the Administration has immense direct power, and the notion that it would be ungrateful to deprive the man who saved the Union of the reward he wishes for, the double term of office, will weigh heavily with all waverers. It takes a long time for party hostility of the kind felt against General Grant to filter down to the body of the people, more especially when the accused politician has made no innovations, has offended rather by letting abuses alone than by rashness in devising new schemes. Still, unless the Indirect Claims, which annoy and dishearten the Presi- dent's best friends, can be removed out of the road, the Con- vention may fix on a new man, and there is scarcely an instance in the whole history of the Union of a party " bolting " away from its leaders' nomination.
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