Birmingham state herald., 1896-01-05
 EDITOR HENRI PATTERSON Writes on the Third Term
 Devil
 AND PAYS HIS RESPECTS a3.. To the President and His Civil Service Re- form-ShouId Beware of the Fate of
 Aaron Burr.
Louisville Courier-Journal.

neTe are BOuS dnQ Qe1nOIlS. - IOctHe.
 The infidel, who has said in his heart "There is no God" calls religion a super stition. The materialist, who yields noth- ing to the laws of chance and feeling, thinks fancy freak. Yet we know that the heart action of men and women is stronger than their brain action. Human nature has to be reckoned with before the most perfect design by calculation can be carried into practical effect; and. for all its skeptics, the world has insisted and still insists upon it's religion. Science may formulate and professors may demon strate; but love and hate and fear and greed are actualities of life, and religion. the solar system of the moral state, and at the same time the Christians hope of the future state, is here to stay.
 When old Fletcher of Saltoun delivered his adjuration about the setting of the laws and the songs of a nation, he had this principle in mind: Let me make the songs'' he said, "and I care not who makes the laws Why? Because i'm pressions are more potent than facts. and laws which have not the sanction of the people are either bad laws or dead laws. The force of tradition acquires the force of habit. Destroy an Illusion and you destroy a happiness, but Kill be- lief and you strike down vital part in nations and in men.
 The opposition to a third term for any man in the presidency, which amounts = to an organized understanding among the people of the United States, has come down to us like an oracle from the bel ter days of the republic. Elevated into principle by the precept of Wasnlngton and crystaliZed into policy by the ex- ample of Jackson, it stands as distinctly apart of our democratic system as II fl were embodied by the written law. All good government, and especially all
 
 wisdom and virtue of the people. des- pot may be a good governor, but des' potism Is never good government.
 Washington anticipated nearly all the dangers we have had to grappie with. In surrendering power at the expiration of his second term he foreshadowed a danger which has thus far menaced us jn a single instance only. and not then very seriously; but, nevertheless, gen uine and forbidding danger. The radi- cal difference which mas marNeo the eA- perience of the South American republics and the republic of Mexico and the ex- perience of the great republic or North America lies largely here. They nave had, and have seemed to pre1er. uicta tors, bearing the title of president, In the office of chief magistrate. Washington clearly saw this particular peril to free institutions and sought to ward 1t or the future of the country of which ne hao constituted himself, and was presently to be acknowledged. the father. Jack son. who was nothing if not patriot, did not dream, despite the temptation Of oyershadowing popularity. of changing a rule, of action arising out of sagacious love of liberty and sanctifled by mo- ble sacrifice of ambition, and gave early notice of his purpose to foiiow tne Ieau of Washington. The popular acquies- cence was universal and lasting. So much so that the third term conspired after for General Grant ended in com plete discontinue at time when party nassion. stimulated by sectional passion. gave the brilliant and daring man wno led that movement added strength.
 The untold history of the future can not fail to repeat the recorded history % of the past.
 MT Clevelands Venezuelan message reviyes the third term chatter, which, in a desultory way, has been dallying with his name. It would have perhaps died out entirely except for the deciara- tion attributed to a member or tne capi- net that a third term in the presidency of the United States was not more lllogl- cal than a third or fourth term for the president of a bank which. according 10 the theory of life office attempted by Mir Cleveland to be engrafted upon our representative system of democratlc gov ernment based on party responsibility may be true enough. It was tolerably certain that when this whimsical. self confident man got his civil service ma chine working exactly to suit himself and extended to the point of absolutism reached by him when he suspended two high law officers for making political speeches-a thing he had no more right to do than to commit murder-men be- fore his time having been brought to the block for 1ess-and better men than he at that-it was next to certain that 1T this usurpation of power had proved sue cessful, his heart emboldened and his ax going smoothly, he would advance the theory that he alone was equal to the perfect work of civil service reform.
 But happily he failed. He failed not only happily but~ingloriously; for, hav- ing undertaken an object lesson Tn the political kindergarten he had set up at the White House, at once as warning retrace his steps, to turn out the sus- pended official. who had made the re- publican speech, and to put back the suspended official, who had made the democratic speech. After that we nard less about civil service reform than we had heard before. Somehow Mir. Cleve- land seems latterly to have lost faith m the ingenious contrivance of MT. Schurz of New York and MT. Bonaparte of Bal timore as a working engine of personal aggrandizement, and to have laid It aside for the helmet. the coat of mail and the battle ax of the warrior.
 Rut we digress Observing that, In discarding the insignia of the civil to don the habiliments or the military ser vice. MT. Cleveland makes great mis- teke-since in case of war he would be inc last man whom the people would be willing to intrust with its direction lei us proceed at once to say that the sole offering this self-claimed man of destiny can lay upon the altars alike of country and party-an act of restitution to the one and loyalty to the other-is to promulgate an early federation on the lines laid down by Washington and Jackson. If he were not the most ob- stinately selfish and consistently snort sirhfrd of men. he would realize the wis dom of this, if not It's virtue. He owes It to himself. He owes 1t to- his party. But, far more, he owes 1t to the nation wnicn has so highly honored him
 The very chatter is hurtful to public morals It is in effect an assault upon the essential theory of republican gov ernment. It implies that but one man is adequate to the presidency, and he the man In possession of the office, with