But his example as President is more than his testimony in showing the necessity of this limitation. Andrew Jackson did not hesitate to say that it was required in order to place the President “beyond the reach of any improper influences,” and “uncommitted to any other course than the strict line of constitutional duty.”[164] William Henry Harrison followed in declaring that with the adoption of this principle “the incumbent would devote all his time to the public interest, and there would be no cause to misrule the country.”[165] Henry Clay was satisfied, after much observation and reflection, “that too much of the time, the thoughts, and the exertions of the incumbent are occupied during his first term in securing his reëlection.”[166] Benjamin F. Wade, after denouncing the reëligibility of the President, said: “There are defects in the Constitution, and this is among the most glaring.”[167] And now our President by his example, besides his testimony, vindicates all these authorities. He makes us see how all that has been predicted of Presidents seeking reëlection is fulfilled: how this desire dominates official conduct; how naturally the resources of the Government are employed to serve a personal purpose; how the national interests are subordinate to individual advancement; how all questions, foreign or domestic, whether of treaties or laws, are handled with a view to electoral votes; how the appointing power lends itself to a selfish will, acting now by the temptation of office and then by the menace of removal; and, since every office-holder and every office-seeker has a brevet commission in the predominant political party, how the President, desiring reëlection, becomes the active head of three coöperating armies,--the army of office-holders, eighty thousand strong, the larger army of office-seekers, and the army of the political party, the whole constituting a consolidated power which no candidate can possess without peril to his country. Of these vast coöperating armies the President is commander-in-chief and generalissimo. Through these he holds in submission even Representatives and Senators, and makes the country his vassal with a condition not unlike that of martial law, where the disobedient are shot, while the various rings help secure the prize. That this is not too strong appears from testimony before a Senate Committee, where a Presidential lieutenant boldly denounced an eminent New York citizen, who was a prominent candidate for Governor, as “obnoxious to General Grant,”--and then, with an effrontery like the Presidential pretension, announced that “President Grant was the representative and head of the Republican Party, and all good Republicans should support him in all his measures and appointments, and any one who did not do it should be _crushed out_.”[168] Such things teach how wise were those statesmen who would not subject the President to the temptation or even the