Any presentment of the President would be imperfect which did not show how this ungovernable personality breaks forth in quarrel, making him the great Presidential quarreller of our history. As in nepotism, gift-taking with repayment by office, and Presidential pretensions generally, here again he is foremost, having quarrelled not only more than any other President, but more than all others together, from George Washington to himself. His own Cabinet, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the diplomatic service, and the civil service generally, all have their victims, nearly every one of whom, besides serving the Republican Party, had helped to make him President. Nor have Army officers, his companions in the field, or even his generous patrons, been exempt. To him a quarrel is not only a constant necessity, but a perquisite of office. To nurse a quarrel, like tending a horse, is in his list of Presidential duties. How idle must he be, should the words of Shakespeare be fulfilled, “This day all quarrels die”![156] To him may be applied those other words of Shakespeare, “As quarrellous as the weasel.”[157] Evidently our President has never read the Eleventh Commandment: “A President of the United States shall never quarrel.” At least he lives in perpetual violation of it, listening to stories from horse-cars, gobbling the gossip of his military ring, discoursing on imaginary griefs, and nursing an unjust anger. The elect of forty millions of people has no right to quarrel with anybody. His position is too exalted. He cannot do it without offence to the requirements of patriotism, without a shock to the decencies of life, without a jar to the harmony of the universe. If lesson were needed for his conduct, he might find it in that king of France who on ascending the throne made haste to declare that he did not remember injuries received as Dauphin.[158] Perhaps a better model still would be Tancred, the acknowledged type of the perfect Christian knight, who “disdained to speak ill of whoever it might be, even when ill had been spoken of himself.”[159] Our soldier President could not err in following this knightly example. If this were too much, then at least might we hope that he would consent to limit the sphere of his quarrelsome operations so that the public service might not be disturbed. Of this be assured,--in every quarrel he is the offender, according to the fact, as according to every reasonable presumption; especially is he responsible for its continuance. The President can always choose his relations with any citizen. But he chooses discord. With the arrogance of arms he resents any impediment in his path,--as when, in the spring of 1870, without allusion to himself, I felt it my duty to oppose his San Domingo contrivance. The verse of Juvenal, as translated by Dryden, describes his conduct:--