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54 is the one office under our Constitution national in character, and in no way locally representative, I would extend the term to seven years, and render the occupant of the office thereafter ineligible for reëlection. Seven years is, I am aware, under our political system, an unusual term; and here my ears will, I know, be assailed by the great "mandate" cackle. The count of noses being complete, the mind of the composite Democrat is held to be made up. It only remains to formulate the consequent decree; and, with least possible delay, put it in way of practical enforcement. Again, I, as a publicist, demur. It is the old issue, that between instant action and action on second thought, presented once more. Briefly, the experience of sixty years strongly inclines me to a preference of matured and considerate action over that immediate action which notoriously is in nine cases out of ten as ill-advised as it is precipitate. Only in the field of politics is the expediency of the latter assumed as of course; yet, as in science and literature and art so in politics, final, because satisfactory, results are at best but slowly thrashed out. As respects wisdom, the modern statute book does not loom, monumental. Its contemplation would indeed perhaps even lead to a surmise that reasonable delay in formulating his "mandate" might, in the case of the composite Democrat as in that of the individual Autocrat, prove a not altogether unmixed, and so in the end an intolerable, evil.