The Van Buren press. [volume] (Van Buren, Ark.) 1859-1914, 1897-07-17
SPEAKER AND WHITE HOUSE.
Facts That Upset One so-Cafied IN.
written Law of American Politics.

written Law of American Politics.
Various unwritten laws of American
politics seem to have lost their force of
late. There is that one to the effect
that no president after leaving the
white house could expect ever TO be
reelected to return to tia rule broken
/ in the case of Cleveland. Another IS
law that no United States senator could
become PRESIDENT law broken in the
case of James \. Garfield. Still another
of these laws has recently been brought
again into notice by the critics and adj
mirers of Speaker Thomas B. Reed.
and there is travelling about in some
| newspapers an item TO the effect that
every man who has sought the speak
ership of the house since the founda-
tion of the government has done SO
with a view TO the presidential nominal
tion of his party. 1t has always been
enough TO defeat his election except in
one lone. solitary instance-that of
James X. Polk"
| Such a statement is, of course. absurd.
The last democratic speaker of the
house of representatives. for instance,
Charles F. Crisp, who presided over the
house in the Fifty-seeond and Fifty
| third congresses, was not native of the
| United States. having been born at Shelf
| field, England, and he was therefore not
eligible TO the presidency. and could not
| have sought the speakership for two
terms with a view to the presidential
nomination of his party" Nor was
| he the only foreign-born speaker Of the
| house of representatives. Again. 1t is
not true that the previous service as
| speaker of the house of representatives.
| has ever been a bar to other honors in
the field of American politics. Schuyler
| ColfaX was the speaker of three houses,
in the Thirty-eighth, Thirty-nihth and
the Fortieth congresses. He aspired %
| be vice president of the United States.
an office to which he was nominated and
elected in 1865. He was never n can
| didate for the presidency and never
aspired, so far as public records show,
to the presidential nomination. Ma
| thaniel F. Banks, who was speaker of
the house in the Thirty-fourth congress,
aspred afterward to be governor of his
native state of Massachusetts, and his
, service as speaker did not prove an OBJ
staele to this, for he became governor
| of Massachusetts in 1868, being the Sue
cessor of John A. Andrews. John G.
| Carlisle, who was the speaker in three
congresses, was never seriously regard
ed as candidate for the presidency, and
he obstacle to his ambition was not past
service as speaker of the house of rep
resentatises, but the fact that he came
from Kentucky, a state south of the
Ohio river line. and was, therefore, re-
gardcd as unavailable on geographical
grounds. Galnsha A. Grow, who was
speaker in the Thirty-seventh congress-
was never, as far as anyone knows or
j has heard, candidate for the presden-
tial nomination. He is member of the
present congress and a prominent fig
ure in it. John Bell was speaker in the
Twenty-third congress, elected in 1894,
and his defeat for the presidency 90
years later could have had little eonnec-
| tion with his service in the house Of
, representatives, and his successor.
James X. Polk, as speaker, who presided
over the house in the Twenty-fourth
and Twenty-ffth congresses, was elect
ed president in 1S44.-N. Y. Sun.