An eminent degree of these three qualities constitutes genius for statesmanship, genius, too, of a very high order. A man who really and efficiently leads in politics must possess some or all of these qualities; without them, or any of them, he can only seem to lead. He and the people both may think he is the leader, and call him so; but he that shall lead others aright, must himself be on the right road and in advance of them. To perform the functions of a leader of men, the man must be eminently just also, true to the Everlasting Right, the Law of God; otherwise he can never possess in the highest degree, or in a competent degree, the power of ideas, of organization, of administration. A man eminently just, and possessing these three qualities is a leader by nature; if he is also put into the conventional position of leader, then he bears the same relation to the people, which the captain of a ship, skilful and competent, would bear to the ship's company who were joint owners with him, and had elected him to his office, expecting that he would serve them as captain while he held the office of captain.
The complete and perfect leader must be able to originate just political ideas, to organize them justly, to administer the organization with justice. But these three powers are seldom united in the same man; so, practically, the business of leading, and therefore of ruling, is commonly distributed amongst many persons; not concentrated in one man's hands. I think we have as yet had no statesman in America who has enjoyed each and all of these three talents in an eminent degree. No man is so rich as mankind. Any one of them is a great gift, entitling the man to distinction; but the talent for administration is not very rare. It is not difficult to find a man of good administrative ability with no power to invent, none to organize the inventions of other men. How many men can work all day with oxen yoked to a plough; how few could invent a plough or tame wild cattle. It is not hard to find men capable of managing political machinery, of holding the national plough and conducting the national team, when both are in the field, and there is the old furrow to serve as guide. That is all we commonly look for in an American politician. He is to follow the old constitutional furrow, and hold the old plough, and scatter a little democratic or whig seed, furnished by his party, not forgetting to give them the handsel of the crop. That is all we commonly look for in an American politician, leaving it for some bright but obscure man in the mass of the people to discover a new idea, and to devise the mode of its organization. Then the politician, perched aloft on his high place and conspicuous, holds the string of the kite which some unknown men have thought out, made up, and hoisted with great labor; he appears to be the great man because he sits and holds the string, administering the kite, and men look up and say, "See there, what a great man he is! Is not this the foremost man of the age?"
In this way the business of ruling the nation is made a matter of mere routine, not of invention or construction. The ruler is to tend the public mill; not to make it, or to mend it; not to devise new and better mills, not even to improve the old one. We may be thankful if he does not abuse and leave it worse than he found it. He is not to gather the dam, only to shut the gate at the right time, and at the right time open it; to take sufficient toll of all comers, and now and then make a report of the grinding, or of what he sees fit to communicate to the owners of the mill. As it is a part of the written Constitution of the land that all money bills shall originate with the House of Representatives, so it is a part of the unwritten custom that political ideas in advance of the people shall not originate with the nominal rulers of the nation, but elsewhere. One good thing results from this: we are not much governed, but much let alone. The American form of government has some great merits; this I esteem the greatest; that it lets the people alone so much. In forming ourselves into a State, we agreed with one another not to meddle and make politically with individuals so much as other nations had done.
It is a long time since we have had a man of large genius for politics at the head of affairs in America. I think we could not mention more than one who had any genius for just political ideas in advance of the people. Skilful administrators we have had in great abundance in politics as in other matters. Nature herself seems democratic in her action here, and all our great movements appear to be brought about by natural power diffused amongst many men of talent, not by natural power condensed into a single man of genius. So long as this is the case, the present method of letting alone is the best one. The American nation has marched on without much pioneering on the part of its official rulers, no one of them for a long time being much in advance of the million; and while it is so it is certainly best that the million are very much left to themselves. But if we could have a man as much in advance of the people in all these three qualities, and especially in the chief quality—as the skilful projector of a cotton mill is in advance of the girls who tend the looms, in all that relates to the projection of a cotton mill,—then we should know what it was to have a real leader, a ruler who could be the schoolmaster of the nation, not ruling over our bodies by fear, but in the spirit of love, setting us lessons which we could not have devised, nor even understand without his help; one who preserves all the good of the old, and adds thereto much new good not seen before, and so instructs and helps forward the people. But as the good God has not sent such a man, and he is not to be made by men, only found, nor in the least helped in any of those three qualities by all the praise we can pour on him; so it comes to pass that an ordinary ruler is a person of no very great consequence. His importance is official and not personal, and as only the person dies, not the office, the death of such an one is not commonly an affair of much significance. Suppose after Mr. Tyler or Mr. Polk had taken the oath of office, he had appointed a common clerk, a man of routine and experience, as his factotum, with power to affix the presidential name to necessary documents, and then had quietly and in silence departed from this life, how much would the nation have lost? A new and just political idea; an organization thereof? No such thing. If the public press had kept the secret, we should not have found out their death till this time. The obscure clerk could tend the mill as well as his famous master who would not be missed.
Louis XIV. said, "The State! That is I." He was the State. So when the ruler dies, the State is in peril. If the King of Prussia, the Emperor of Russia or Austria, or the Pope of Rome were to die, there would be a revolution, and nobody knows what would come of it; for there the ruler is master of the people, who are subjects, not citizens, and the old master dying, it is not easy to yoke the people to the chariot of a new one. Here the people are the State; and though the power of General Taylor was practically greater than that of any monarch in Europe, save Nicholas, William, and Ferdinand, yet at his death all the power passes into the hands of his successor, with no noise, no tumult, not even the appearance of a street constable. I think that was a sublime sight—the rule over twenty millions of people, jealous of their rights, silently, by due course of law, passes into the hands of another man at dead of night, and the next morning the nation is just as safe, just as quiet and secure as before, no fear of change perplexing them. That was a sublime sight—one of the fair things which comes of a democracy. Here the ruler is servant, and the people master; so the death of a President, like Mr. Van Buren, or any of his successors, Harrison or Tyler or Polk, would really have been a very unimportant event; not so momentous as the death of one of the ablest doctors in Boston, for should the physician die, your chance of life is diminished by that fact. If Dr. Channing had died at the age of forty, before he wrote his best works, his death would have been a greater calamity than that of any or all of the four Presidents just named, as soon as their inaugural address was delivered; for Dr. Channing had some truths to tell, which there was nobody else to deliver at that time. No President since Jefferson, I think, has done the nation so much good as the opening of the Erie Canal in New York, or the chief railroads in Massachusetts, or the building up of any one of the half dozen large manufacturing towns in New England. Mr. Cunard, in establishing his line of Atlantic steamers, did more for America than any President for five-and-twenty years. The discovery of the properties of sulphuric ether, the devising of the magnetic telegraph, was of more advantage to this nation, than the service of any President for a long time. I think I could mention a few men in Boston, any one of whom has been of more service than four or five Presidents; and, accordingly, the death of any one of those would be a greater calamity than the demise of all those Presidents the day after election. With us the President is only one spoke in the wheel, and if that is broken we always have a spare spoke on hand, and the wheel is so made that without stopping the mill, the new spoke drops into the place of the old one and no one knows the change till told thereof. If Mr. Polk had really been the ablest man in the land, a creator and an organizer, his death would have been a public calamity, and the whole nation would have felt it, as Boston or New York would feel the loss of one of its ablest manufacturers or merchants, lawyers or doctors. That would deprive us of the services of a man which could not be supplied. We have always spare men of routine, but not spare men of genius. Dr. Channing has been missed ever since his death, and the churches of Boston, poor enough before, are the poorer for his absence. So has John Quincy Adams, old as he was, been missed in the House of Representatives. The enemy of freedom may well rejoice that his voice is still. But who misses General Harrison or Mr. Polk? What interest languishes in consequence of their departure? What idea, what right, lost thereby a defender? If Sir Robert Peel were to die, the British nation would feel the loss.
We attach a false importance to the death of a President. Great calamities were apprehended at the death of General Harrison. But what came? Whigs went out of office and democrats went into office. Had Jefferson died before the Declaration of Independence, or Washington any time after it, or before the termination of his official service, or John Adams before the end of the war, that would have been a great calamity; for I know not where we should have found another Jefferson, to see so distinctly, and write down so plain the great American idea, or another Washington to command an army without money, without provisions, without hats and shoes, as that man did. The death of Samuel Adams, in 1760, would have been a terrible misfortune to America. But the death of General Harrison only made a change in the Cabinet, not in the country; it affected the politicians more than the people.
We are surrounded in the world with nations ruled by kings, who are the masters of the people; hard masters too! When they die the people mourn, not always very wisely, not always sincerely, but always with ceremony. The mourning for George IV. and William IV. in England, I doubt not, was more splendid and imposing than that for Edward the Confessor and Oliver Cromwell; and that for Louis XV. outdid that for Henry IV. In a monarchy, men always officially mourn their king, whether it be King Log, or King Snake, or King Christian; we follow the example of those States. If some of the men, whose death would be the greatest calamity, should die, the newspapers would not go into mourning; we should not have a day of fasting set apart; no minister would think it "An inscrutable providence;" only a few plain country people would come together and take up the dust, disenchanted of the genius which gave it power over other and animated clay, to lay it down in the ground. There would be no Catafalques in the street; but the upper mountain-tops would miss that early sun which kissed their foreheads, while all below the world was wrapped in drowsy mist, and the whole race of man would be losers by the fading out of so much poetry, or truth, or justice, love and faith.
The office of President of the United States is undeniably one of great importance. If you put in it a great man, one with ability to invent, to organize and to administer, he has a better opportunity to serve mankind than most kings of Europe. I know of no position in the world more desirable for a really great man, a man with a genius for statesmanship, a million-minded man, than to take this young, daring, hopeful nation, so full of promise, so ready for work, and lead them forward in the way of political righteousness, giving us ideas, persuading us to build institutions thereof, and make the high thought of a man of genius the common life of a mighty nation, young as yet and capable of taking any lesson of national nobility which the most gifted man can devise; to be the ruler, not over Russian serfs, but American freemen, citizens, not subjects; to be the schoolmaster for twenty millions, and they such promising pupils, loving hard lessons; and the men that set them, the most enterprising race of persons in the world, who have already learned something of Christianity and the idea of personal freedom,—why that is a noble ambition. I do not wonder that a man of great powers should covet this great position, and feel a noble dissatisfaction and unrest until he found himself there, gravitating towards it as naturally as the Mississippi to the ocean. Put in it such men as I point to, one with the intellect of a Webster, the conscience of a Channing, the philanthropy of much humbler men; let him aim at the welfare of the nation and mankind; let him have just political ideas in advance of the nation, and, in virtue thereof, ability to solve the terrible social and political questions of this age; careless of his popularity and reputation, but careful of his conscience and his character, let him devote himself to the work of leading this people, and what an office is that of President of the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century! He would make this nation a society for mutual improvement twenty millions strong; not King Log, not King Stork, but King Good-man, King Christian if you will, he would do us a service, dignifying an office which was itself a dignity.
But if it be so noble for such a man, working with such an aim, for such an end; when a little man is in that office, with no ideas in advance of the people, and incapable of understanding such as have them; with no ability to organize the political ideas not yet organized, and applied to life; a man of routine; not ruling for the nation, but the ruler of a party and for a party, his ambition only to serve the party; an ordinary man, surrounding himself with other ordinary men; with ordinary habits, ordinary aims, ordinary means, and aiming at the ordinary ends of an adventurer; careless of his conscience and character, but careful of his party-popularity and temporary reputation,—why the office becomes painful to think of; and the officer, his state is not kingly, it is vulgar and mean, and low! So the lighthouse on the rocks of Boston harbor, is a pleasant thing to see and to imagine, with its great lamp looking far out to sea, and shining all night long, a star of special providence; seen afar off, when stormy skies shut other stars from sight, it assures the mariner of his whereabouts, guides the whaler and the Indiaman safe into port and peace, bringing wealth to the merchant, and a husband to the lingering wife, almost a widow in the cheating sea's delay and her own heart-sickness from hope so long deferred. But take away the great lamp, leaving all else; put in its place a little tallow candle of twenty to the pound, whose thin glitter could not be seen a mile off, spite of the burnished reflectors at its side, and which requires constant picking and trimming to keep the flame alive, and at its best estate flickers with every flutter of the summer wind,—what would the lighthouse be to look upon or to imagine? What a candlestick for what a candle! Praise it as much as you will; flatter it in the newspapers; vote it "adequate" and the "tallest beacon in the world;" call it the "Pharos of America;" it is all in vain; at the best, it can only attract moths and mosquitoes on a serene night; and when the storm thunders on that sepulchral rock, it is no light at all; and the whaler may be split asunder, and the Indiaman go to the grave, and the wealth of the merchant be scattered as playthings for the sea, and the bones of the mariner may blanch the bottom of the deep, for all the aid which that thin dazzle can furnish, spite of its lofty tower and loftier praise!