Morning journal and courier., 1880-07-21
eSourraI arta Gprlrier.
Wednesday Morning, July 21, 1880.
EooNT1NurD FROM FIRST PAGE. l

form, the cabinet minister will find himself
 baffied at every step.
 I speak from experience when say that
 most of the good things that have been done
 under this administration, whatever merit
 the respective cabinet ministers may deserve
 for them, are no less due to the clear headed and faithful support, frequently called the 'amiable obstinacy,' with which President Hayes stood behind them by warding of the opposition. It is for such reasons of lnestl- mable benefit to an administration that the President himself should have had the expe- rience of active work in legislative bodies, and especially in the Congress of the United States It will require in President a high degree of that intuitive genius with which but very few men in a century are endowed to make his administration successful without that experience.
 Now put, for the sake of argument, in that most trying position, General Hancock or any man trained exclusively in the walks of army life, of which he is conspicuous an ornament-I mean man not endowed with that intuitive genius which I have spoken of, and which even his most ardent friends, as l understand, do not claim for General Han cock What has there been in the school of his past life to fit him for it As Government as a cadet at West Point and that was his college and university, have high respect for that military school Every
 branch of military science is taught there, l have no doubt, with knowledge, skill and sue cess The principle of military honor and the great law of command and obedience are incularted as the guiding stars of the future life of the student The affairs of ordinary human existence outside of the military pro- fession, and the problems it has to deal with, are necessarily treated as matters of only sec ondary moment. Our military school at West Point has given many glorious soldiers who have adorned the history of | the country but it has never been pretend ed that it was meant to be, or was, a school of statesmanship. That school absolved, the young man entered into the regular army ser vice. Of all classes of our society it may be said that regular army is the most exclu- sive, the most widely separated from the or dinary business life of the people in point of sympathy, duty and habit. If we have an apart class among us, class whose contact with the cares and endeavors and business and objects of the life of the masses is only occasional and unsympathetic a class that in it's ideas and aims Is separated from the mul- titude, it is the officers of the regular army. This is not meant to discredit in any sense the character of our service or of the officers in it it is the almost unavoidable peculiarity of their training and situation, for which they are in no way responsible. Their du- ties may be arduous but, except in places of highest command in active warfare, they are extremely simple specific and narrow and 1t is @ common experience that the men tai horizon of men is apt to become limited by the sphere of their duties. I have heard it said hundred times, by men who spent the best part of their lives in the regular army and then were thrown upon their own resources to make living in ordinary pur suits, that their army life had unftted them for the every day tasks of society. They found themselves, in multitude of cases, ut terly bewildered by the competition they had to run with those who had been trained in civil pursuits. How is it possible to assume that men who have spent the best part of their lives, who have grown old in that exclu- sive atmosphere, should show particular fit ness for the most complex and confusing of all other duties, the highest civil office in the land? It may be said, therefore, without exag- geration that in hundred cases to one, by taking an old regular army officer, who has never been anything else, and putting him into the highest and most difficult political position, you may spoil an excellent general in making poor President.
 There he is, with an honest intention to do right and to serve his country. Problems of financial policy suddenly rise up before him questions of revenue, of commercial pol icy, not in the way of general maxims and vague principles, but in the mysterious shape of practical problems to be applied to given state of circumstances questions of party politics, where the interests of the public and of the party are curiously mixed together in bewildering confusion. The man at the head of affairs means to do right; let us assume his cabinet officers mean the same. But now host of Senators, Representatives, promi- nent political leaders from all parts of the country swarm in upon him. Having never had any practical contact with the workings of financial or commercial systems, having sto aloof from the intricacies of political management, the man at the head of the objective point of all their efforts. There are hundred politicians of name and impor- tance, real or pretended, who lay claim to his attention, and having heard them all-as he has to hear them-and finding that their views and objects counter to one anoth- 1 or, he suddenly discovers himself in an unex pected state of uncertainty as to what is right ! and what Is not, what will serve the interest of the country and what will benefit or in I jure the interests of his party. He has to meet multitude of arguments put at him by ! multitude of men from hundred different motives all seeming to him important, be- cause all are to him new; not few among the most prominent of those who urge their 1 opinions most strongly upon his mind, | trained and skilled by long practical school | ing in all the arts of covering up the weak points of their cases and concealing their motives by spacious arguments, and making 1 private interests appear those of the public. | They have all contributed to his election and l success they all entitled to his regard l he has heard of them all as prominent men CO respect; ne mas cOnSluereQ them ! all as men entitled to credit; and now | he discovers that their opinions clash l and that their aims are different and 1 contradictory Scores of them be- l seeching him with their urgency to 1 make him believe that the cabinet minister | he trusts, by the things he attempts to carry | out IS injuring the party upon whose perma- hence the life, or at least the welfare of the | republic depends. He has yet to learn that | the Senator in his State or the Congressman | Ill his district has interests of his own pecu- liar to himself; that those interests are some times not exactly those of the country or even of the party at large that the man who is | recommended to him for high official posi- tion, as a model citizen of the republic, has attained that position, in the opinion of his
 backer, less bY services rendered to the com monwealth than by services rendered to a l person; that the same man will be represent | ed to him by others, not as the model citi- zen, but as a villain who cannot be trusted a moment He will be told that those who judge of political objects and the means by which to attain them from a higher stand | point than mere personal or partisan interest 1 are amiable theorists, who are we'll enough in their way, but are useless in the practical conduct of politics that the practical politi- clan, who cares less for public questions but is skilled in the management of men, is after | all the man who can alone be counted upon to preserve the power of his party
  public. And when he has gone through this for weeks and months, and his head begins to swim in the confusing contests of interests and ambitions entirely new to him. and he feels in himself many things he has done or left undone under pressure giving him no rest of mind, helpless tool of foreign wills instead of being the director of things, he will then ] conclude that the repulse of the fiercest onset at the battle of Gettysburg and the taking of the angle of intrenchments in the Wilderness, glorious feats of arms, were after all very simple things compared with this. And as he goes on and gradually the light of expert ence dawns upon him, and he discovers glimmers of truth and finds himself unable to correct mistakes irretrievably made. and to redress truths irremediably inflicted and to recover failures which have then become part of the history of the country, he will finally see reason to wish that his friends had per mitted him to enjoy his military renown in peace instead of casting over it cloud of civil failure
 The picture have drawn is one which every man of experience in political affairs will recognize as applicable to every novice in politics placed in the Presidential chair sven under ordinary and favorable circum- stances. But what is likely to haDpen to such |