OUR EX-PRESIDENTS

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 30, 1880

OUR EX-PRESIDENTS.

WE have noticed with considerable interest the animated discussion which has been going on of late as to what disposal should be made of our ex-presidents. They seem heretofore to have been regarded very much as the little girl did her wax doll when she was obliged to sit and hold it all day because she could find no place nice enough in which to lay it. A more practical, and to our mind correct, view of the matter we have nowhere seen than the following from a leading New York paper:—

"The newspapers must have something to talk about, and plans for pensioning ex-presidents or making life senators of them are as harmless topics as any they are likely to hit upon, but neither plan is likely to serve any other purpose than that of a day or week's discussion in the political press. As to pensioning, there is no reason why an ex-president should not earn his daily bread like the rest of us, and there are many reasons why he should. Labor is honorable, idleness is ignoble. The spectacle of an ex-president at work in productive industry would itself be an incentive and an inspiration to industry, while the spectacle of a nation retiring its ex-presidents from toil would be a kind of public endorsement of the aristocracy of idleness as demoralizing as it would be un-republican. The proposition to make them life senators is more specious, but not more sound."

"The Senate is a representative body of the separate States, and, being such, no one can rightly become a member who does not represent a State. What State does an ex-president represent? Obviously none as such. If the State at any one time give a majority for the party opposed to that of which he is a member, it is clear that he does not represent his State. But who does the ex-president represent? Obviously not the people, for the people have already elected some one else to fill the place which he once occupied. The ex-president, therefore, represents neither his State nor the people. He only represents himself and those who may think with him; and so far he is on a plane with any other citizen. As a representative, therefore, an ex-president is not entitled to a seat in the Senate."