THE PRESIDENT..

I.

I LATELY met in London Charles Sumner, the veteran of the United States Senate, and truest statesman in America-a man in whose eloquence and fidelity are reflected, for the living generation, the patriotism and the courage which achieved the independence, and furnished the equal laws of their country.

When I had last seen Senator Sumner it was as he lay on his bed, struck down by an assassin's blow, because he had raised his voice against the despot of his country-Slavery. When I saw him. just now in London, it was with the old trouble that resulted from that assault returning upon him, compelling him to seek again the medical skill of France; a trouble that had been revived by the long and bitter persecution he had endured from another despotic power-the President of the United States.

General Ulysses Grant, the lucky commander into whose hand the leader of the exhausted Southern Confederacy surrendered his sword, was

made President as the symbol of victory. From claiming the credit of having saved the country, it was with him an easy step to imagine that the country belonged to him. Certainly, never did any President-which is saying much-devote his official position so freely to private ends. Against all the traditions of the nation, he accepted personal gifts from wealthy men, accepted a fine summer residence, coach and horses, and even a large sum of money, and in return, offered office to those who gave these gifts. He appointed nearly forty of his relatives and connections to lucrative offices, the individuals so appointed being ignorant persons entirely without claim to the positions awarded them. The nation was disgusted at this disregard of its traditions, and recurrence to the nepotism by which so many Governments have been corrupted, but, nevertheless, the President was able to obtain from the Senate confirmations of his appointments, and received no public reprobation for his offences.

An adventurer who had usurped power in St. Domingo, being unable to sustain himself, resolved on the desperate expedient of making over that island to the United States, as considera

tion for its furnishing protection to his failing dynasty. The proposition did credit to the astuteness of the negro race. The pretender, Baez, and his dependents saw in the presidential chair at Washington, a man whose singleness of devotion to his own interest had stimulated an otherwise commonplace mind to a certain ingenuity. They saw this President already laying his plans to add another term of four years to an official existence whose good fame was strictly limited to those enjoying its patronage. They knew also that the only form in which any Mephistopheles could successfully assail the average American, was by taking him into a high mountain and offering him an extension of territory; and that if, when the verdict upon his conduct was to be given, the President could point to an enlargement of the national domain during his administration, a multitude of sins would be forgotten in the glory of the new star added to the flag.

Never did one intriguer more accurately divine the mind of another than when Baez of Domingo offered that island to Grant of Washington. The President at once urged the annexation upon Congress, when, lo! to his astonishment, the Senate

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hesitated. Emboldened by a remembrance of the previous servilities of that body in the confirmation of his many wretched appointments, the President proceeded to use secret bribes and open threats to carry his end.

He might have succeeded, had he not lost his head. For a generation it had been observed that no regularly elected President had ever set his heart upon a measure but he managed to carry it through Congress. President Grant, enraged that the first serious resistance to the executive control over legislation should have occurred in his case, resolved to fight his opponents desperately. But in his fury he delivered a blind stroke which fell upon himself. He despatched ironclads to give military protection to Baez against that pretender's opponents, without any permission from Congress; whereas of all the powers assigned to the National Legislature by the Constitution, none is more jealously reserved thereto than every movement having the slightest relation to The sword of the nation can in no conceivable case stir from its scabbard save at the solemn demand of Congress. The President of the United States by this plain violation of the Constitution,

war.

gave just enough reinforcement to his opponents to enable them to defeat his designs on Domingo, and to raise the extraordinary landmark which declares to the astonished Republic, Here the mandate of a President to Congress was successfully resisted.' The burthen of this conflict-the most significant in the history of the United States within this century-fell upon Charles Sumner, Senator of Freedom's pioneer State, Massachusetts. Upon him the President wreaked his utmost vengeance. He secured, through his tools in the Senate, the degradation of that Senator from the important Committee of which he had been for many years the able chairman. Mr. Motley, the eminent historian, was removed from his position as Minister to England, without warning, and before he had fairly entered upon his office, simply because he was believed to be a friend of Mr. Sumner, at whose request he was supposed to have been appointed. The Senator of Massachusetts triumphed only at the cost of dividing the Republican party which he had previously led, and to the detriment of his physical health.

It was under these circumstances that he had been compelled to abandon all hope of participa