CHAPTER LXXIV

TYPES OF AMERICAN STATESMEN

As trees are known by their fruits, and as different systems of government evidently tend to produce different types of statesmanship, it is pertinent to our examination of the American party system to inquire what are the kinds of statesmen which it engenders and ripens to maturity. A democracy, not less than any other form of government, needs great men to lead and inspire the people. The excellence therefore of the methods democracy employs may fairly enough be tested by the excellence of the statesmen whom these methods call forth. Europeans are wont to go farther, and reason from the character of the statesmen to the character of the people, a convenient process, because it seems easier to know the careers and judge the merits. of persons than of nations, yet one not universally applicable. In the free countries of Europe, the men who take the lead in public affairs may be deemed fair specimens of its best talent and character, and fair types, possibly of the virtues of the nation, though the temptations of politics are great, and certainly of its practical gifts. But in two sorts of countries one cannot so reason from the statesmen to the masses. despotic monarchies the minister is often merely the

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king's favourite, who has risen by unworthy arts, or, at any rate, not by merit; and in a democracy where birth and education give a man little advantage in the race, a political career may have become unattractive as compared with other pursuits that the finest or most ambitious spirits do not strive for its prizes, but generally leave them to men of the second order.

This second case is, as we have seen, to some extent the case of America. We must not therefore take her statesmen as types of the highest or strongest American manhood. The national qualities come out fully in them, but not always in their best form. I speak of the generations that have grown up since the great men of the Revolution epoch died off. Some of those men were the peers of the best European statesmen of the time one of them rises in moral dignity above all his European contemporaries. The generation to which J. Q. Adams, Jackson, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and Benton belonged is less impressive, perhaps because they failed to solve a question which may have been too hard for any one to solve. Yet the men I have mentioned were striking personalities who would have made a figure in any country. Few of the statesmen of the third or Civil War period enjoyed more than a local reputation when it began, but in its course several of them developed remarkable powers, and one became a national hero. The fourth generation is now upon the stage. The Americans confess that not many who belong to it have as yet won fame. The times, they remark, are comparatively quiet. What is wanted is not so much an impassioned popular leader nor a great philosophic legislator as men who will administer the affairs of the nation with skill and rectitude, and who, fortified by

careful study and observation, will grapple with the economic problems which the growth of the country makes urgent. I admit this, but think that much must also be ascribed to the character of the party system which, as we have seen, is unfavourable to the development of the finest gifts. Let us note what are the types which that system displays to us.

In such countries as England, France, Germany, and Italy there is room and need for five sorts of statesmen. Men are wanted for the management of foreign and colonial policy, men combining the talents of a diplomatist with a wide outlook over the world's horizon. The needs of social and economic reform, grave in old countries with the mistakes of the past to undo, require a second kind of statesman with an aptitude for constructive legislation. Thirdly there is the administrator who can manage a department with diligence and skill and economy. Fourthly comes the parliamentary tactician, whose function it is to understand men, who frames cabinets and is dexterous in humouring or spurring a representative assembly.' Lastly we have the leader of the masses, who, whether or no he be a skilful parliamentarian, thinks rather of the country than of the chamber, knows how to watch and rouse the feelings of the multitude, and rally a great party to the standard which he bears aloft. The first of these has no need for eloquence; the second and third can get on without it; to the fourth it is almost, yet not absolutely, essential; it is the life breath of the fifth.2

1 Englishmen will think of the men who framed the new Poor Law as specimens of the second class, of Sir G. C. Lewis as a specimen of the third, of Lord Palmerston as a specimen of the fourth. The aptitudes of the third and fourth were united in Sir Robert Peel.

2 It need hardly be said that the characteristic attributes of these several types are often found united in the same person; indeed no one can rise high who does not combine at least two of the four latter.

paid a property-tax therein, and a majority of those voting on the question, by ballot deposited in a separate ballot box, shall vote in favour of creating such debt; but the aggregate amount of debt so created, together with the debt existing at the time of such election, shall not at any time exceed three per cent of the valuation last aforesaid. Debts contracted for supplying water to such city or town are excepted from the operation of this section.

ILLINOIS: CONSTITUTION OF 1870

Article IX. Section 8. County authorities shall never assess taxes, the aggregates of which shall exceed seventy-five cents per one hundred dollars valuation, except for the payment of indebtedness existing at the adoption of this Constitution, unless authorized by a vote of the people of the county.

Section 12. No county, city, township, school district, or other municipal corporation shall be allowed to become indebted in any manner or for any purpose to an amount, including existing indebtedness, in the aggregate exceeding five per centum on the value of the taxable property therein, to be ascertained by the last assessment for the State and county taxes previous to the incurring of such indebtedness.

Any county, city, school district, or other municipal corporation. incurring any indebtedness as aforesaid, shall, before or at the time of doing so, provide for the collection of a direct annual tax sufficient to pay the interest on such debt as it falls due, and also to pay and discharge the principal thereof within twenty years from the time of contracting the same.

PENNSYLVANIA: CONSTITUTION OF 1873

Article IX. Section 8. The debt of any county, city, borough, township, school district, or other municipality or other incorporated district, except as herein provided, shall never exceed seven per centum upon the assessed value of the taxable property therein, nor shall any such municipality or district incur any new debt or increase its indebtedness to an amount exceeding two per centum upon such assessed valuation of property without the assent of the electors thereof at a public election.

contrast oddly with the superficial roughness of his manner. He is a ready and effective rather than a polished speaker, and is least agreeable when, forsaking the solid ground of his legal or administrative knowledge, he attempts the higher flights of eloquence.

Such a man does not necessarily make his first reputation in an assembly. He may begin as governor of a State or mayor of a large city, and if he earns a reputation there, can make pretty sure of going on to Congress if he desires it. In any case, it is in administration and the legislative work which deals with administration that he wins his spurs. The sphere of local government is especially fitted to develop such talents, and to give that peculiar quality I have been trying to describe. It makes able men of affairs; men fit for the kind of work which needs the combination of a sound business head and the power of working along with others. One may go farther and say, that this sort of talent is the talent which during the last half century has been most characteristic of the American people. Their greatest achievements have lain in the internal development of their country by administrative shrewdness, ingenuity, promptitude, and an unequalled dexterity in applying the principle of association, whether by means of private corporations or of local public or quasi-public organisms. These national characteristics reappear in Federal politics, not always accompanied by the largeness of vision and mastery of the political and economic sciences which that wider sphere demands.

The type I am trying to describe is less brilliant than those modern Europe has learned to admire in mer like Bismarck or Cavour, Thiers or Gambetta, perhaps one may add, Tisza or Minghetti. But then the conditions