Page:'Tis Sixty Years Since.djvu/63

Rh average of successful working; and I confidently submit that, weighing thus the proved advantage of the system we have against the possibilities of danger which hereafter may occur, but which never yet have occurred, the scale on which are the considerations in favor of change kicks the beam.

In view, however, of the growth of the country, the vastly increased complexity of interests involved, the intricacy and the cost of the election processes to which recourse is necessarily had, I would substitute for the present brief tenure of the presidential office—a tenure well enough perhaps in the comparatively simple days which preceded our Civil War—a tenure sufficiently long to enable the occupant of the presidential chair to have a policy and to accomplish at least something towards its adoption. As the case stands to-day, a President for the first time elected has during his term of four years, one year, and one year only, in which really to apply himself to the accomplishment of results. The first year of his term is necessarily devoted to the work of acquiring a familiarity with the machinery of the government, and the shaping of a policy. The second year may be devoted to a more or less strenuous effort at the adoption of the policy thus formulated. As experience shows, the action of the third and fourth years is gravely affected—if not altogether perverted from the work in hand—by what are known as the political exigencies incident to a succession. Manifestly, this calls for correction. The remedy, however, to my mind, is obvious and suggests itself. As the