The Evening critic., 1881-10-19
Wednesday, October ie, 1881
Fair play, Gentlemen.

proximatc ccrtaintios, il becomes apparent
that President Arthur intends to do ex.
aotiy what every man of common sense cx-
pected him TO do. We have all along
held that IL would be the wnkest folly for
Mr.. Arthur TO attempt nny sentimental ex.
pcriments in Difference TO the maudlin gush
which attended the peculiar circumstances
of his succession. An administration is a
practical fact, not sentimental whim. A
President is responsible agent under the
Constitution, in his own person, not an ex-
ecutor upon the estate of any person de-
erased. Among the duties devolving upon
a President is that of selecting seven emi.
nent gentlemen to administer, under his
authority and in his responsibility, the i'm.
mediate business of the seven great subdi-
visions of the Executive branch of the Gov
ernment. For the character of these selec-
tions the President is alone personally re.
sponsible. So absolute is the Presidents
personal responsibility in these premises
that the Senate, by virtue of custom
amounting to law, abdicatcs its joint pre-
Togative of advising and consenting"
with respect to Cabinet appointments and
confirms them pro otorma without debate or
question.
Under such circumstances it is natural
that President should desire to have
about him Cabinet of his friends, his con.
fidants and his allies. He must make his
selections from the circle of his acquaint.
ance, public or private. He cannot take
the chances of making new acquaintance
at the Cabinet table. The experiment has
been tried occasionally, but always with
disastrous and humiliating consequences.
When Mr. Arthur succeeded to the Presi-
dency he found his predecessors Cabinet an
ill-assorted tumble of discords and dislikes.
The Attorney General hated the Secretary
of State, and had exhausted his malign in
genuity in covert assaults upon him very
nearly from the beginning of the Admins
tration. The antagonism between these two
had bred war of faction in the Cabinet
itself, which could not much longer have
been restrained from open rupture, even
had Garfield lived
There were other issues in the Cabinet OF
less note than this one In fine, as was
pithily remarked by Hon. William Z. Chand-
Ter, when asked whether he thought Arthur
ought to perpctuate Garlield's Cabinet as Inc
found it: If Arthur should do SO, he
would be doing what Garfield himself could
not have done!"
Under these circumstances alone, and
without taking any account of the new
Presidents undisputed prerogative, new
Cabinet was q necessity from the first. 1t
is now pretty well known that Mr.. Arthur's
primary desire was to make Cabinet OF
"All the Talents "a sort of Rockingham
ministry, so to speak-in which the recon
ciled and placated heads of factions all
should sit in harmony and accord at To-
united council table. This was the natural
instinct of an accomplished party manager
like Arthur. But. the scheme for some
reason fell through. The design to hold
Mr.. Blaine at the head of the State Depart
ment, while Mr.. Conkling should be fetched
into the Treasury, with the son of Abe
Lincoln in the War Department, and so on
to correspond, was grand design. But
do not bow to emergencies with the facility
required for such programme, and the re-
suit was that the very grandeur of Arthur's
scheme made it Utopian.
Senator Jones, who undertook to bring
Conkling to Blaine, and the Hon. Bill
Chandler, who undertook to bring Blaine
to Conkling, both reported progress, but
not consummation. Conkling was willing
and so was Blaine but they were not botl
willing at the same moment or in the sam,
way.
The philosophy of all this is that the two
men, as representatives of two great fac
tions, are too large to dwell comfortably
together under the roof-tree of an Admins
tration. They can stay in the party and
work together for its general success, but
that is all. And Arthur soon found this out
Thus, despairing of harmony in the grand
plan first suggested, Mr.. Arthur naturally
fell back upon the resources afforded by hi.
own faction-or rather the faction with
which his past career had been most init
mately identified. 1t is from this faction
that the new Cabinet will substantially be
chosen. But it would not be fair to say
that, because Mr.. Arthur finds himself com
PEELED to choose Cabinet from the ranks oi
the faction which sustained Grant at Chi
cago therefore his Administration has been
Grantized. On the contrary, it should be
viewed rs the alternative adopted by Mr.
Arthur himself, for his own purposes and
ON his own responsibility, as the best h,
could do under the circumstances.
We are not impr6 with the theory
that all this means Grant again in 1884
Our impression is that, so far as it has any
reference to 1884, this programme means
Arthur himself! If so, let him be fairly
judged by his own works and not by the
theories of his adversaries Mr.. Blaine, in
his famous letter accepting the State port.
folio from Garfield, set the fashion of re.
nominating Presidents early in the action
No one can blame Mr.. Arthur If he adopts
the precedent so gracefully set by Mr.
Blaine. The Stalwart faction does not live
or die in the name Of Grant. The fact that
its leaders have supported Grant for n Third
Term does not disqualify them from sun.
porting Arthur for second.
4
HIS MAJESTY ia IA, an African poten-
tate, is a convert to the system of English