We elect from the body of the people a President whose term of office is four years. In some respects he has more executive power than most hereditary monarchs, but if at the end of his official term he fails to suit a majority of the delegates of his party to the National Convention, some other member of it is nominated in his stead. The opposition party also nominates a candidate, and very often succeeds in defeating the standard-bearer of the party in power. Sometimes there are three or more Presidential candidates in the field, as was the case in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected. Succession to the Presidency, therefore, is not confined to any one family, or its branches, in a republic, and the office of President of the United States may be competed for by any eligible male citizen who can control his party nomination. The example of Washington, who refused a third term, has become an unwritten law in America, and it defeated General Grant’s aspiration to succeed Mr. Hayes in the Republican National Convention of 1880. In France, under Napoleon, every French soldier was supposed to carry a marshal’s baton in his knapsack. In the United States, every native-born schoolboy carries the Presidential portfolio in his satchel. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VII Period of Danish Invasion THE Irish people, having settled down to the Christian form of worship, were enjoying “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” building churches and colleges, and sending out a stream of saints and scholars to the rest of Europe, when, about the end of the eighth century, the restless Norsemen, universally called “Danes” in Ireland, swept down in their galleys by thousands on the Irish coasts, and, after many fierce conflicts, succeeded in establishing colonies at the mouths of many of the great rivers of the island. There they built fortified towns, from which they were able to sally forth by sea or land to change their base of operations and establish new conquests. Dublin at the mouth of the Liffey, Drogheda at the mouth of the Boyne, Wexford at the mouth of the Slaney, Waterford at the mouth of the Suir, and Limerick at the estuary of the Shannon, are all cities founded by the Danes, who were natural traders and fierce warriors. They did not confine their attentions exclusively to Ireland, but, about the same period, conquered Saxon England, ruling completely over it; and they established a strong colony on the north coast of France, which is called Normandy to this day, and from which sprang, by a combination of Scandian with Gallic blood, the greatest race of warriors—the Romans, perhaps, excepted—the world has known.