courtier, the greediness of an heir, the caprice of a favorite, trifled with the liberty and life of the subject, and helped to make firm a despotism from which there was no appeal, and which made light of the rights of humanity and the authority of law.

Under this reign, the royal prerogative was so extended and exercised that all other authority was practically annulled; and the exactions, the oppressions, the licentiousness, the wild excesses, the abuses tolerated and the rights outraged, under this and the following infamous reign, caused a reaction against the restraints of any government, which fell upon the head of the succeeding Bourbon-kindly and humane king that he wasand rested not until the Bourbon dynasty, once loved, was swept from the land—never to return, except for a new dismissal.

The rays of Liberty that had beamed in America, penetrating to France, and awakening her people to a knowledge of their political degradation, shone, in that country, lurid and terrible, through an atmosphere of crime and blood. They brought no bloom nor beneficent growth, but blasted and scorched. The wrathful people, eager for self-assertion, arose in the savagery of natures schooled amid the traditions of tyranny, fashioned amid vice, and irritated by the brutal oppression of irresponsible power.

The decrees of Jacobin clubs usurped the prerogatives of the Crown, the pike took the place of the scepter, law was administered by assassins, and the axe of the guillotine fell not only on Feudalism, but on Liberty!

The license and fury of the many far transcended the excesses of the despotism of the one, but were its legitimate and terrible results.

GENERAL GRANT

PROMINENT TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER

The Honorable Hamilton Fish, who was Premier of the nation during the eight years of General Grant's Presidency, writes for the New York Independent:

My acquaintance with General Grant began in 1865, in Philadelphia, on his first visit to the North after the close of the war. Thereafter I saw him frequently. His son, Colonel Fred. D. Grant, was a cadet at West Point, and the General and his family often went there to see him. My country residence is on the Hudson River, immediately opposite West Point, and on the occasion of one of his visits I invited him to make my house his home on such occasions, and thereafter he and his family were frequently my guests. Thus acquaintance grew into intimacy, and ripened into friendship.

You ask, "What were his most prominent traits of character?" Well, with a man so full of strong distinctive traits, it is hard to say which may be most prominent; but I have been much impressed by his steady firmness and his generous magnanimity. His whole military career manifested his firmness both of purpose and of action. His answer to the War Department, "I will fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," was but the spontaneous utterance of his general fixedness of

purpose.

He was generous and forgiving in the extreme; not that he could not hate well when he had cause for hating, but he never did hate without having, or thinking that he had, sufficient cause, and was ever ready for an explanation and reconciliation. With few exceptions his dislikes were not long cherished. He was too busy and to generous to nurse them.

His unselfish generosity at the fall of Richmond and the surrender of Appomattox stand out among the most noted instances of magnanimity on the part of a conqueror. He sought no triumphal entry into the Confederate capital, which had been the objective point of years of maneuvering and of fighting; he fed the army which he had defeated, and gave to Lee and his army terms of capitulation and surrender that commanded the admiration of the civilized world, and to this day receive the grateful acknowledgment of those who were their recipients.

After Sherman had accepted terms of surrender from Johnston, which the Government had so far disapproved as to send Grant to supersede him, instead of taking to himself the credit of Johnston's surrender on terms satisfactory to the Government and to the people, he telegraphed, "Johnston has surrendered to Sherman," leaving the full credit to Sherman of what he himself had accomplished. On his tour through the South after the war, to investigate, for the Govern

ment, the condition of the people, he showed a broad, generous spirit. His report was denounced by some politicians in Washington as a "whitewashing report; but, had it been acted upon, there would have been no "solid South," and the restoration of good feeling would have taken place soon after the war had closed. His feeling toward the South was, throughout his civil administration, in accord with that which he had exhibited in dictating the terms of surrender to Lee— full of generosity and of confidence. That confidence arose from the respect which a brave soldier has for the bravery and sincerity of those whom he has fought, and was undoubtedly increased by his visit through the South shortly after the war had closed.

He was anxious to give appointments to Southern men; but in several instances gentlemen from the South, who had been engaged in the Rebellion, and to whom he was willing to offer appointments, refused to accept them.

The President, in the disposal of offices over the wide extent of the United States, must depend upon the representations of others for his information as to the character and capacity of the larger number of those who are to fill the public offices on his appointment. These representations are not always candid, and, even when honestly given, are not always correct. Unfortunately-perhaps owing to the quarrel between Andrew Johnson and the Congress, or from whatever cause, and notwithstanding the very friendly and favorable report of the feeling and the behavior of the Southern people made by Grant to Congress, after his tour through their States-the Southern men of note and of prominence held themselves aloof, and not only would not volunteer advice, but often withheld information when asked.

The result was inevitable. At the close of the war, the condition of the South, now opened to a new class of labor, seemed to afford a wide field for industry and enterprise, and tempted a large class of men from the North, whose business had been broken up by the war, to seek their fortunes, and to cast their lot with the South.

The South had had little experience of an "immigrant" population. It was jealous and suspicious of the new-comer; perhaps, under the circumstances, not unnaturally so, but very unfortunately so. Of those who went among them, very many were men of character, enterprise, and simple purpose, migrating with none other than a sincere desire of becoming part and parcel of the community among whom they went. Others there were-adventurers of the "Dugald Dalgetty" stripe-ready to take whatever chance might throw in their way. Their "chances" were advanced by the quarrel, then at its height, between President Johnson and the Congress, and they lost no opportunity of playing upon the passions already unduly excited. The North was flooded with accounts of indignities and outrages heaped upon Northern men, and of the continued disloyalty of the South; and the South, smarting under its defeat and loss of property, isolated itself, and became united in a political combination bitter in its antagonism to the ruling power

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in the nation. Such was the condition when General Grant came to the Presi dency and found nearly all of the Federal offices at the South filled by men of Northern birth. He felt the wrong of such condition, and desired to change it; but the reticence of Southern men, and their unwillingness to co-operate with him, or to give advice or information to aid him in the matter of appointments to office, left him unable to carry his wishes in this regard into effect.

His knowledge of men was generally accurate; but he was apt in this respect, as in others, to reach his conclusions rapidly, and was thus not infrequently led to give his confidence where it was not deserved; and it was from the abuse of his confidence, thus reposed, that rose most of the censure which, after the close of the war, was visited upon him.

Where he gave his friendship he gave it unreservedly-whether friendship or confidence, he gave it unreservedly-and was slow to believe anything to the discredit of those of whom he was fond.

When he entered upon the Presidency he did so without much, if any, previous experience in civil administration. He soon, however, very soon, made himself thoroughly familiar with all the questions that were brought to his consideration, and he may truly be said to have applied himself to the great problems of government. In his Cabinet meetings his habit was to bring before his counselors such questions as might have been suggested to him, either by friends or as the result of his own thought. He would generally ask of the members of his Cabinet, in order or successively, their views, and would then reach his own conclusion, and direct the course to be pursued which he thought best. So far as my own department was concerned, he kept thoroughly up with all the questions that arose; and, so far as I could judge, he was equally familiar with the questions in each of the other departments.

He was very free to accept the opinions and views of his Cabinet, often antagonistic to his own preconceived notions. As an instance of this, when the inflation bill had passed Congress, and was strenuously urged upon him for approval by many of his most influential friends in each house of Congress, and by a majority of his Cabinet, he at first reluctantly yielded to a determination to approve the bill, and prepared a paper to be submitted to Congress, explaining his reasons for approval of the bill, which paper was laid before the Cabinet, but not read. I had most strenuously advocated his vetoing the bill, and an evening or two previous to this Cabinet meeting he sent for me and read me the paper. Having done it, he remarked: "The more I have written upon this, the more I don't like it; and I have determined to veto the bill, and am preparing a message accordingly." At the Cabinet meeting he stated that he had prepared a paper assigning the reasons for approving the bill, but had determined not to present it, and had written another message vetoing the bill, which he then read to the Cabinet and subsequently sent to Congress. He had consulted his own good sense, and had given careful study by himself to this important question affecting the currency.

Another illustration of his readiness to yield a preconceived opinion is afforded by his action concerning the Treaty of Washington. After the beginning of negotiations about the treaty, it became necessary to determine upon commissioners on the part of the United States. I felt it important that the commission should not be partisan, and that there should be at least one Democrat on it. The suggestion at first did not strike the President as important, and it was opposed by many of his confidential friends; but on presenting the question fully and strongly to him. he abandoned his position, and decided the question in favor of appointing Judge Nelson as one of the commissioners. Subsequently, when an arbitrator was to be appointed to the tribunal at Geneva, strong objections were urged from various quarters against the selection of Charles Francis Adams, which made an impression. adverse to him in the mind of General Grant-strongly adverse. But upon my urging upon him that Mr. Adams was more familiar than any other man with the incidents attending the escape of the rebel cruisers, that he had conducted the legation in London during the Rebellion with admirable discretion and under a great deal of personal trial, and was entitled to recognition, General Grant cordially yielded his opposition, and over-ruled the objections of many close and confidential political advisers.

So, too, was it in the appointment of Mr. Evarts as counsel. Some things had occurred at the close of Johnson's administration, while Mr. Evarts was AttorneyGeneral, which left a strong feeling of irritation in General Grant; but on the representation of Mr. Evarts' ability, and his fitness for the position, he yielded all personal feeling, and cordially agreed to his appointment. As a general rule, he asserted his own views tenaciously and firmly.

Until his election to the Presidency, I don't think he had taken much interest in party politics. He had been brought up-following the political views of his father-in sympathy with the old Whig Party. But while in the army he never voted until the election between Fremont and Buchanan, when, from want of confidence in General Fremont's civil capacity, and being then out of the army, he voted for Buchanan. And he often, jokingly, said to me, that his "first attempt in politics had been a great failure."

He was not indifferent to public criticism, but not unduly excited by it. I never knew him but once to be led into an action of the policy or expediency of which he had doubt by the criticism of the press or the public. It was not a very important matter, relating only to the employment of a certain individual, in the conveyance of a message, whom a hostile journal had boastfully said should never again be thus employed.

I never met any one who formed, in advance, better estimates of elections that were about to take place than General Grant. On the evening preceding the Presidential election of 1872 I was sitting with him, and he gave the probable result in each of the States. I noted it down, and found that it varied in each State almost inappreciably.