it to my country, feeling that it is a legacy which I have no right to withhold. Beyond the intrinsic interest from its author, it is not without value as testimony in considering how the President could have been led into that Quixotism of personal pretension which it is my duty to expose.[58] DUTY TO MAKE EXPOSURE. Pardon me, if I repeat that it is my duty to make this exposure, spreading before you the proofs of that personal government, which will only pass without censure when it passes without observation. Insisting upon reëlection, the President challenges inquiry and puts himself upon the country. But even if his pressure for reëlection did not menace the tranquillity of the country, it is important that the personal pretensions he has set up should be exposed, that no President hereafter may venture upon such ways, and no Senator presume to defend them. The case is clear as noon. TWO TYPICAL INSTANCES. In opening this catalogue I select two typical instances,--Nepotism, and Gift-Taking with repayment by office, each absolutely indefensible in the head of a Republic, most pernicious in example, and showing beyond question that surpassing egotism which changed the Presidential office into a personal instrumentality, not unlike the trunk of an elephant, apt for all things, small as well as great, from provision for a relation to forcing a treaty on a reluctant Senate, or forcing a reëlection on a reluctant people. NEPOTISM OF THE PRESIDENT. Between these two typical instances I hesitate which to place foremost: but since the nepotism of the President is a ruling passion, revealing the primary instincts of his nature,--since it is maintained by him in utter unconsciousness of its offensive character,--since, instead of blushing for it as an unhappy mistake, he continues to uphold it,--since it has been openly defended by Senators on this floor,--and since no true patriot anxious for republican institutions can doubt that it ought to be driven with hissing and scorn from all possibility of repetition,--I begin with this undoubted abuse.