he concentration of power in the
hands of the President as the real unifying centre of authority. His
attitude towards his Cabinet has been imitated by all strong Presidents
since. America does not take kindly to a President who shirks personal
responsibility or hides behind his Ministers. Nothing helped Lincoln's
popularity more than the story--apocryphal or no--of his taking the vote
of his Cabinet on a proposition of his own and then remarking: "Ayes
one; Noes six. The Ayes have it." Even the "Spoils System," whatever its
evils, tended to strengthen the Elect of the People. It made the power
of an American President more directly personal than that of the most
despotic rulers of Continental Europe; for they are always constrained
by a bureaucracy, while his bureaucracy even down to its humblest
members is of his own appointment and dependent on him.

The party, or rather coalition, which opposed these changes, selected
for itself, as has been seen, the name of "Whig." The name was, perhaps,
better chosen than the American Whigs realized. They meant--and it was
true as far as it went--that, like the old English Whigs, they stood for
free government by deliberative assemblies against arbitrary personal
power. They were not deep enough in history to understand that they also
stood, like the old English Whigs, for oligarchy against the instinct
and tradition of the people. There is a strange irony about the fate of
the parties in the two countries. In the Monarchy an aristocratic
Parliamentarism won, and the Crown became a phantom. In the Republic a
popular sovereignty won, and the President became more than a king.

CHAPTER VII

THE SPOILS OF MEXICO

The extent of Jackson's more than monarchical power is well exemplified
by the fact that Van Buren succeeded him almost as a king is succeeded
by his heir. Van Buren was an apt master of electioneering and had a
strong hold upon the democracy of New York. He occupied in the new
Democratic Party something of the position which Burr had occupied in
the old. But while Burr had sought his own ends and betrayed, Van Buren
was strictly loyal to his chief. He was a sincere democrat and a clever
man; but no one could credit him with the great qualities which the
wielding of the immense new power created by Jackson seemed to demand.
None the less he easily obtained the Presidency as Jackson's nominee.
Since the popula