Year: 1868

The Committee appointed by the Chicago
Convention, to formally tender to Gen. Grant
the nomination for the Presidency on behalf of
the Republican party, performed that duty on
Friday evening at his residence in Washing
| ton. The General replied with bis usual brevity
and point. He promised to write letter of
acceptance, and meanwhile he said


"If chosen TO fill the high Office for which you have
selected me- will give ts duties the energy, the
same spirit and the same will that have given to tho
performance Of all duties which have deyolved upon
heretofore Whether shall be able to perform these
duties to yoar entire satisfaction time Will determine.
You have truly said the Of your address, that


shall have no policy Of my own TO enforce agaAst e
will of the people"


If the proper function of President, as Of
an Emperor were to control and shape the
legislative policies of the country, and if Con-
gress were only designed, like the Corps Legis
latif of France, to record and assent or mildly
and Intellectually object to such policies as the
President might adopt, then Gen. Grant, in the
above statement of his policy, would be pedg
ing himself in advance to shirk the principal
duties of his Office. We have had many Presi-
dents, from the despotic but able Jackson down
to the equally despotic but feeble johnson, who
have attempted to imperialize the Presidential





publics as well as in Empires, stand always
ready TO shout for a man. but are not so quick
to grasp a principle, and hence are the natural
allies of an imperalzing and usurping
President, and the natural enemies of the
supremacy of the legislative body and of the
laws. After the mschiefs to which the cOun-
try has been subjected by Andrew Johnson's
efforts to cOerce Congress and the people into
the adoption of his individual whims and
notions, it is refreshing to hear, as the first
utterance of our next President and the key
note of his Administration, that he is to have
no political policy of his own to inter-
pose against the popular will as ex-
pressed in Congress. This is the true
theory of the Presidents Office. He is not
elected TO make laws but to enforce them.
The work Of enforcing the laws through thirty
thousand Ofice-holders for forty millions of
people is a sufficiently gigantic task to occupy
the greatest mind, and whatever attention such
an officer gives to the attempt to control the
making or adjudging of laws is so much energy
diverted from the channel in which it would
aid, to one in which it obstructs the due and
harmonious working of free government. 1t
is impossible that President shall be endowed
with greater legislative abilities than the entire
Congress, and equally impossible that, if occu-
pied with what is not his business, he shall do
Justice to his own proper duties. Had an in
telligent President, with Gen. Grants views of
the duties of the Office, been in the chair
during three years past, the Union would
long since have been restored the whisky and
tobacco taxes would have been collected, frauds
on the revenue would have been stopped,
smuggling on our frontiers and through our
Custom Houses would have become more dan
gerOus than profitable, incompetent officials
wonld have been removed and corrupt ones
disgraced and punished, illegitimate business
would have ceased to pay better than honest
industry, and hundreds of millions of taxes
stolen by Government thieves would have been
saved. Congress would have had time to dis
cuss and perfect sound financial policies, in
stead of letting the nation drift without chart
OF helm An earlier restoration of order and
stability throughout the Southern States would
have enormously increased our export of cot
ton and stimulated our home industry, and the