GENERAL GRANT'S NEXT BATTLE.
[FROM OCR SPECIAL CORRF:SPONDENT.]
New York, February 19, 1869. ABOUT the time when this letter will have a chance of being laid before the readers of the Spectator they will have heard of General Grant's inauguration, and it is probable that already they have learned that yesterday the Committee of the Senate on Foreign Relations decided unanimously against recommending the confirmation of the Alabama Claims' Treaty. On the report of this decision there will be a debate, in which it is expected that the treaty will be advocated by some of the ablest men in the Senate. But its rejection may be looked forward to as certain. On this point General Grant is understood to be in accord with the Senate's Committee, and whatever influence he has will be thrown against the treaty, and against net this one only, but any other based upon a similar apprehension of its subject, and drawn up in a like spirit.
It is with no pleasure that I record this agreement of the two treaty-making branches of the Government in a judgment which, while I deplore, I cannot censure. But it is with no displeasure that I add that this unanimity of the next President and the Senate upon one of the most momentous points of public policy as to which their co-operation is necessary, cannot be taken as an index to their relations upon other subjects of more immediate importance to the country. There are already indications of an early struggle between General Grant and that branch of the National Legislature with which the President has the most intimate relations. The bone of contention will be office. The conflict may not take place, because it has been foreseen ; but it can hardly be avoided, unless one party or the other abandons pretensions which are regarded by either as essential to the maintenance of prerogative dignity and privilege, which, on the one side, the Senate's, are regarded as of the utmost value in party management, and on the other, the future President's, are looked to as the means of purifying the sadly corrupt administration of the Government. In this conflict, should it take place, General Grant will probably be supported by a large majority of the House of Representatives and of the people, almost irrespective of party. But the support of the House can be one of influence only, and not of action, because of the constitutional powers of the State.
The power of appointment to office, like that of making treaties, is vested by the Constitution expressly and exclusively in the President. And very properly ; for to him is committed the execution of the laws of the United States ; and all the officers of the United States are merely his subordinates, for whose official action he is responsible. But he appoints to office, as he makes treaties, only " by and with the advice and consent of the Senate." The reason for giving this check upon the President's treaty-making and appointing power to the Senate rather than to the House of Representatives is not a presumed superiority of the former body in dignity, ability, or sobriety of judgment, but is to be found in the federal structure of our Government. The House represents the people at large ; the Senate, the States, the political corporations which are the units of our governmental structure. Were it not for the Constitution, each State would have the power of making treaties, in doing which it would have a single eye to its own interests ; and of appointing every officer, civil and military, within its boundaries. These rights, with many others, having been given up by each one of the States on its adoption of the Constitution, the control of the foreign relations of the Union and of appointment to office was placed, not in the body which represents the people at large, and in which the popular States have an overwhelming majority, but to that body in which the States are represented as political individuals, and in which the smallest state has an equal voice with the largest. The intention of the framers of the Constitution to preserve the political individuality of the States, and their equality in the control of certain of the most important measures and relations of the Government, is shown by the provision that the Constitution shall never be amended so as to deprive any state, without its consent, of its equal suffrage in the Senate. To accomplish the latter object rightfully, if it were deemed desirable, it would be necessary, in effect at least, to resolve the Union into its original elements, and to adopt, by consent of every State, what would be a new, a radically new Constitution. Any other method would be as great an outrage, as absolute a conquest as ever a weak power suffered at the hands of a stronger. The power of the Senate, however, in the matter of appointment to office has been greatly and injuriously perverted since the early days of the Government. What was meant to be, and what then was, a general supervisory power over the appointment of the principal officers, cabinet ministers, judges of the Supreme Court, foreign ministers, consuls, officers of the Army and Navy, and the like, hail degenerated into aft appanage, a perquisite of the senators as individuals. This has gone on until it has come to pass that the pettiest offices of all the departments, of the Customs even, and the Post Office, are filled, not by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, but by the will and in the interest of individual senators. This is one result of the operation of the system adopted by General Jackson, and which is expressed in the maxim promulgated and adopted as a rule of action, if not first uttered, by him, "To the victors belong the spoils." Senators have claimed and exercised the right of saying not only who should not, but who should, be made clerks in the Treasury, postmasters, inspectors of the customs, collectors of internal revenue. They have presented lists, and said, " Find places for these men, or you will have trouble when you want my vote upon the great measures and the great appointments of the Administration. If my supporters and party friends are not taken care of, I am not to be counted upon to support party measures." They have traded with each other in these petty offices on the conditions expressed or implied, and generally expressed, " If you will grind my axe, I will grind yours." And it must be confessed that in this respect their honour has been almost unimpeachable. The consequence has been that every Senator has had a crovid of followers, a horde of political hangers-on ; and inevitably these men have been in the mass the least valuable and the least trustworthy of the community. They have formed a clientage like that which pertained to the Senators of Rome, and their interests were looked after with no less solicitude by their patron in the one case than in the other. If a man sought an appointment, however trivial, the first question asked was, has he the support of " his Senator " ? If another were threatened with removal he set immediately about getting the protest of " his Senator." I have known more than one important officer of the Government driven to his wits' end, worried beyond endurance to find minor places for the men sent to him with peremptory demands by the Senators to whom he owed his appointment. This system often produces serious embarrassment in the honest and efficient transaction of the public business. Men are found
miserably incapable or dishonest ; they are not removed, or if removed they are soon restored. The reason given is often, 'You can't get him out, he is one of Senator —'s men.' Senators claim other privileges, as to which I will not go into details ; but they ask for and get, get for the asking, given with baste and solicitude, that to which they have no more right than they have to free board and lodging for themselves and their families at the White House. They have used their power, those who have thus used it,—for to these strictures there are a very few honourable exceptions, chiefly among the Senators of the New England States and the old Slave States,—to build up their political strength and to reward their political supporters. The Senators are elected not by a popular vote, but by the Legislatures of the several States, and the position of Senator of the United States for six years being the most eagerly sought after of all political prizes, except that of President, it is obtained by intrigue, by corruption, and, not to mince matters, by direct bribery. But the successful man usually " pays his debts," as the phrase goes, largely out of the public Treasury by securing the appointment of his friends and of his friends' friends to office.
The Tenure of Office Act, which restricts, constitutionally or unconstitutionally, the President's power of removal from office, increased largely the power of the Senate in this regard. This law was passed not for the purpose of restricting the power of the Presideut of the United States, but as a check upon, and an affront to, the man Andrew Johnson. That man is no longer to be feared ; and the House has voted to repeal the law. But the Senate, having got an accession of appointing power (in effect) into its hands, is unwilling to give it up. And here comes in General Grant, who has avowed his intention of purging the commonweal—an intention which the Senators are obliged openly to approve, but which, if carried into effect, will send adrift the men who constitute no small proportion of the bulk of their clientage. This, indeed, will not deprive them of any consideration that is justly their due, not to say of any power which properly belongs to them in the Government. But it will diminish their following, make it of less consequence to conciliate them, visibly reduce their personal importance. And the importance which some of them assume is amusing enough to any one who knows the way in which they often obtain their positions. I remember once walking the length of a long avenue in a well-known city with one who overwhelmed me with the honour of taking my arm. The evening before, his senatorial airs, and those of his wife, had filled a whole room with a sense of the ridiculous ; she, dressed in a style to set one's teeth on edge, and murdering some unhappy member of the Queen's English at every other word—no fault of hers, poor thing Well, if this man had been Bourbon and Hapsburg and the Doge of Venice rolled into one, he could not have shown a loftier condescension ; and he walked on two mortal miles dispensing his clumsy graciousness, the effect of which was so different from that which plainly was intended, that I believe, if he had known what was passing in my mind, he would gladly have slain me on the spot. A Senatorial etiquette has been adopted in Washington. Senators' wives do not call on Representatives' wives, but graciously receive them when they call. Senators call on no one first ; don't return calls, except by rare and special favour. And Mr. Sumner (who is among the men whom I have not here had in mind) is reported to have said—indiscreetly, at least, I think—that the Senate is the Government.
This pretension, and others, of the Senate, it seems that General Grant will at first set quietly aside, and if necessary he will wage war against it. Alone he could not do much. But the House, irritated by the assumption of the Senate, will sustain him. General Butler's recent protest—able and persistent, although not very decorous—against the pretensions of the Senate to override the House in the matter of counting the electoral vote, had evidently the sympathy, although not the open approval, of the majority of his fellow-members, and the disposition on the part of the House is to clip the feathers of the Senate just as close as the law allows. General Grant, supported thus by the House and the popular feeling, will hardly fail to march straight to his point. If the Senate should see fit to repeal the Tenure of Office Act, and to second him in his endeavours to introduce honesty and economy into the administration of the Government, and to make fitness and not political clientage the
qualification for office,—well ; if not, there will a battle, in which the President and the House, sustained as they will be, morally at least, by the Supreme Court, must be victorious. As to the Tenure of Office Act, if the Senate wishes to see its constitutionality tested, I have no doubt that General Grant will furnish the occa
sion ; and should he undertake to do so, he will put the business in hands more competent to force the issue than the imbecile creature's who brought Mr. Johnson into such ridicule. The result of all which will be, if it so fall out, that the old balance will be restored between the three departments of our Government, and that the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial elements of our system will find themselves set back in stab( quo ante bellum.
A YANKEE.
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