What more desirable or more essential
than this quality in the governors of nations? Where more desirable or
more essential than in the first magistrate of a nation? Can it be wise
to put this desirable and essential quality under the ban of the
Constitution, and to declare that the moment it is acquired, its
possessor shall be compelled to abandon the station in which it was
acquired, and to which it is adapted? This, nevertheless, is the precise
import of all those regulations which exclude men from serving their
country, by the choice of their fellowcitizens, after they have by a
course of service fitted themselves for doing it with a greater degree
of utility.
A fourth ill effect of the exclusion would be the banishing men from
stations in which, in certain emergencies of the state, their presence
might be of the greatest moment to the public interest or safety. There
is no nation which has not, at one period or another, experienced an
absolute necessity of the services of particular men in particular
situations; perhaps it would not be too strong to say, to the
preservation of its political existence. How unwise, therefore, must be
every such self-denying ordinance as serves to prohibit a nation from
making use of its own citizens in the manner best suited to its
exigencies and circumstances! Without supposing the personal
essentiality of the man, it is evident that a change of the chief
magistrate, at the breaking out of a war, or at any similar crisis, for
another, even of equal merit, would at all times be detrimental to the
community, inasmuch as it would substitute inexperience to experience,
and would tend to unhinge and set afloat the already settled train of
the administration.
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