This text is part of:
[72]
general, take the thing in serious mood, and to their credit the ablest Republican journals are the sternest critics of De Trobriand's acts.
Are we in France?
they ask. Is Grant a Bonaparte?
Are Emory and De Trobriand the hireling soldiers of a bastard empire?
Are we already governed by a Caesar, and is the White House an American Tuileries?
Each word pronounced of late by President Grant is scanned, and in their present temper people are disposed to find Caesarism lurking under phrases which at any other time would seem no worse than awkward forms of speech.
Grant is seldom happy in his words.
Knowing his weakness, he is silent in strange company; but the ruler of a great country cannot choose but speak and write; and with all his great qualities he is often unfortunate in his use of tongue and pen. His recent Message to Congress on the Centennial Exposition is a case in point.
In this State paper he gives a new reading to that famous passage in the Declaration of Independence which describes the primary rights of man as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
By way of better reading, President Grant describes
1875.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.