Are there not many citizens who in the secret of their hearts feel something similar respecting their pursuit of politics? (1)

In order to see more clearly to what points this examination ought to be directed, it will be serviceable to inquire into the most necessary qualities of a public man, especially of a leader, as experience suggests them, or as we may derive them from the best leaders in history. Afterwards we may make the necessary and individual deductions from this image, respecting the more reduced spheres of the respective public men. I do not mean to say that no one can hope for success, who does not combine all the qualities, which will be exhibited. Genius, peculiar circumstances, may become powerful substitutes. Zisca commanded his army when blind. Nor do I say that the junction of these qualities will insure success; but certain it is that without the conjunction of many or most of them, a citizen cannot calculate upon, or even hope for success. Nor is it sufficient to say that the freer a people the easier they will be the judges of the respective capacities. No one who knows the least of the operation of politics in free countries will assert this. A man must have shown himself ready in some sort before they can choose him. Town meetings must lead to parliament or congress.

(1) Yannez, 166.

XXIV. A public man ought to be of a strong constitution, enjoy a free flow of health, and have naturally sound

digestive organs; for the excitement and labor of public\

life, especially parliamentary excitement and long speaking, will affect even the best; but a deranged digestion is

apt to deprive memory of its full retentiveness, the brain of its easy action, and to render a man nervous, and nervously sensitive. But a nervous man will ruin himself if he meddles with politics, at least otherwise than by writing. He ought to have a fair and clear memory, or he will be continually defeated by surprise; exactness of mind, a natural tact of observation, of dissolving whatever appears around him into its elements, and seizing upon what constitutes its vital principle; and that power of imagination which combines what is separated by time or space, and grasps and seizes upon masses. He ought to have a ready eye for facts, for reality, and a keen mind to understand them thoroughly, and to see beyond them to divine. One of the greatest minds of the age has said, He who cannot read between the lines of a book cannot understand a great work. Well may it be said, He who cannot see between facts, cannot understand a great nation or great period, present or past, be he statesman or historian. A leader ought to have that native inventiveness of mind, and elevation of soul, which together produce that fecundity, of which Cicero speaks when he says, Periclem censet Socrates uberem et fecundum fuisse. He ought to have that noble quality of communicating to others the moral sparks of his inmost activity, and the higher he rises the more he must trust in his own principles and purposes, and freely leave to others their own respective departments in carrying them out. Defeat must not deject him; he must esteem his friends, and not reject their advice with obstinacy, yet be constant and firm. He must be cautious, yet have the courage finally and decisively to make up his mind, and boldly to act accordingly, even where many reasons are for and against the one or the other. Let him be liberal in opinion and expense; a man of action, and of contemplative mind; love his kind, and be free from selfishness. He ought to be of a naturally confiding disposition, and not of a suspicious temper. We gain confidence by confiding. He will be deceived; yet if he trusts no one, he will lose more, or rather gain nothing. He ought to be a firm friend, and be of that temper which can commune with minds in a sphere above the politics of the day, which may divide them.

A leader ought to be a man of untarnished integrity and tried reputation; he must have sufficient ambition to impel him, and faith in those whom he leads. Men cannot for any length of time be led by mere imposition, nor can imposition sufficiently animate the leader. People soon find out whether he who wants their support despises them or has faith in them or his time. He ought to be a man of strong nerve, of elevation and purity of soul, rather than of delicate susceptibility; of tenacity of purpose, yet esteem for the opinion of others. He must know that his best-meant actions will be misrepresented, and that a thousand annoyances will be tried to disgust him. Let him disregard all attacks upon his motives and his character; his friends will take care of that. Pitt never answered a single one of the thousand slanders leveled against his motives; but when an editor accused him of speculating in the stocks, while minister of the finances, he promptly brought a suit of slander against him. A public man must not shrink from having his most private affairs scanned and misrepresented. (1) As to his capacity, let him prove it by works and actions, not by words; it is the only effectual answer; the only con

vincing reply in any sphere whatever. An ungrateful son represented Sophocles as in his dotage, and unfit to manage his affairs; Sophocles read his Edipus at Colonos, just finished, to the judges, and he was carried home in triumph. Aristophanes held up Socrates to ridicule in the theatre; the sage, after the conclusion of the satiric comedy, is said to have stepped on the stage, and asked the Athenians to compare him and his counterfeit. When the fate of sacred music depended upon the sentence of the papal committee, of which the strict and devoted Charles Borromeo was a member, and much was urged to endanger it, Pelestrina composed a work, on the manuscript of which are found the words: "Oh God, enlighten my eyes," and his work brought victory for his cause.

The public man must be a man of no timidity; he must be able to speak boldly before those who dislike his truth, and he must have courage to take his stand decidedly. (2) He ought to be a man who can resolutely make up his mind, and having made up his mind, promptly act; he must not be, by natural constitution, a man of timid hesitation, or that degree of scrupulosity which prevents us from finally making up our mind. When young he ought to be careful before he compromises himself; at the same time he must know that he has no lever for whatever energy he may possess, until fairly compromised upon some great principle. (3) No pilot can steer a vessel through a winding channel by calling from on shore; he must join his danger and hope with those of the crew. must be frank, and his sympathies must be those of the people; without it they do not understand one another; he must be of enlarged liberality, yet keep out of

He

debt, and command respect by all his domestic affairs; he must be calm, and in all the excitement around him be able to seize upon what is real and substantial, and separate it from what is but spray washing over the deck. He must be active, a man of business. Par negotiis nec supra, is a phrase of great import. Clarendon, no friend of Hampden, yet describes him as peculiarly made for a leader, and dwells repeatedly upon his calmness and activity, and the fact, that he was "not to be tired out." Alexander won his battles because briskly moving about on horseback, while his stately enemy was enthroned on a scaffold, or high wagon, that all soldiers might see him. Neither stately speeches, nor senatorial mantles can lead; Napoleon was never so much himself as in his gray coat. It is action that gains respect and leads. Exactness and activity have given to many a citizen an influence far superior to that acquired by men of much greater capacity, but indolent. A public man must be a man of veracity; no arguments ever so conclusive will convince if the hearers first of all do not believe that the speaker himself believes in them; he must be fairly spoken; honest in money matters to a degree of minute scrupulosity; and ever ready to retire, content with his own merit, without grumbling; he must be prepared to meet with ingratitude, as every one must who serves him, or those that have power. Let him be a man of fervent religious veneration; without it the busy life, practical turmoil, the immundicity through which he must wade, the thousand impurities with which he becomes acquainted, will infect him, and make him sordid. His religion therefore must be that true and essential, which enlivens and purifies, and rejoices in adoring and loving,