Year: 1872

have given him third term had he mot posi-


lively declined it There were, also. certain
great measures at stake in the cases Of Jeffer-
SON, Madison and Monroe, which made a
second term to each of them needful in the
public judgment. In the case Of jackson, he
made the prosecution of his war against the
Old United States Bank, s.Biddle's monster, :"
his appeal for a second term, and the people
accepted it and reelected him. In the case Of
Lincoln, some Of the leading politicians of his
party endeavored to supplant him for second
term ; but the people held him to be impera-
lively necessary as President for the prosecu-
ton OF the War for the Union to successful
issue, and SO he, too, was triumphantly re-
elected The same supreme law, the will of
the people, touching the safety of our national
debt banks, bonds and currency under
General Grant, and the hazards Of change
in the White House at this time, has given
him second term, and with q popular en-
phasis which cannot be misunderstood.


Experience, therefore, has established not
only the safety, but, in several cases, the wis
dom and paramount necessity Of two terms to
q President whose good work commenced re-
mains unfinished at the end of his first term.
Accordingly, whatever amendments in the
constitution may be made within the next four
years in reference to the election Of the Presi-
dent. we presume that the absurd one-term
principle will be repudiated, unless the Presi-
Dental term is enlarged to six, eight or ten
years. The constitution Of the late Southern
Confedency provided for Presidential term
of six years; for those Southern politicians
had had enough Of the never-ending and still
beginning agitations and confusion incident
to q term of four years. This period is SO
short that one term is required to give the
President o knowledge of the routine duties
Of his Office, and hence the force Of Mr.. Gree
ley's remark in 1871, that General Grant
would be better qualified for his great Office in
1872 than he was in 1868.


But while the spirit of reconstruction, re-
form and progress during the next four years
may be expected to reach from the appoint
ment to the post Office at the Confederate
Cross Roads, in Kentucky, to the elections
for the White House, we trust that the
question of some special training for our
diplomatic service will not be overlooked.
Without special training we have had some
excellent ministers abroad such as Franklin,
Clay and Irving; but we have had many others
of very inferior quality. We have now in
Jay, Marsh and Bancroft ministers of learn
ing, study and experience equal to all the
subtleties of European diplomacy, and in
Washburne, self-taught diplomat, whose
genius, tact and patriotism have carried him
through difficulties which would have per-
picked q Metternich or a Gortschakoff. But
born diplomat is rare bird, and your Bis
marck is precious stone which has been
polished on the diplomatic grindstone. But
behold what he has done! He has taken up
the incoherent and wrangling German States
and welded them into the potential German
Empire. We may want diplomats Of this
stamp hereafter, and we ought to provide the
training required to produce them.


The whole budget Of reforms and measures
of progress we have touched upon comes fairly
within the horoscope of General Grants
second term. He comes in again with the
fclat of President Monroe, but his opportunity
and his means for a grand historical record
from his second election are hardly inferior to
those of Lincoln.