I have now completed the survey of the two typical instances--Nepotism, and Gift-Taking with repayment by office--in which we are compelled to see the President. In these things he shows himself. Here is no portrait drawn by critic or enemy; it is the original who stands forth, saying: “Behold the generosity I practise to my relations at the expense of the public service! also the gifts I take, and then my way of rewarding the patrons, always at the expense of the public service!” In this open exhibition we see how the Presidency, instead of a trust, has become a perquisite. Bad as are these two capital instances, and important as is their condemnation, so that they may not become a precedent, I dwell on them now as illustrating character. A President who can do such things, and not recognize at once the error he has committed, shows that supereminence of egotism under which Constitution, International Law, and Municipal Law, to say nothing of Republican Government in its primary principles, are all subordinated to the Presidential will; and this is Personal Government. Add an insensibility to the honest convictions of others, and you have a natural feature of this pretension. Lawyers cite what are called “Leading Cases.” A few of these show the Presidential will in constant operation with little regard to precedent or reason, so as to be a caprice, if it were not a pretension. Imitating the Popes in Nepotism, the President has imitated them in ostentatious assumption of Infallibility. THE PRESIDENT’S INAUGURAL ADDRESS. Other Presidents have entered upon their high office with a certain modesty and distrust. Washington in his Inaugural Address declared his “anxieties,” also his sense of “the magnitude and difficulty of the trust,” “awakening a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications.”[114] Jefferson, in his famous Inaugural, so replete with political wisdom, after declaring his “sincere consciousness that the task is above his talents,” says: “I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments which the greatness of the charge and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire, … and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking.”[115] Our soldier, absolutely untried in civil life, entirely a new man, entering upon the sublimest duties, before which Washington and Jefferson had shrunk, said in his Inaugural: “The responsibilities of the position I feel, but _accept them without fear_.”[116] Great predecessors, with ample preparation for the responsibilities, had shrunk back with fear. He had none. Either he did not see the responsibilities, or the Cæsar began to stir in his bosom. SELECTION OF HIS CABINET.