If Mr. Polk had really been the ablest man in the land, a
creator and an organizer, his death would have been a
public calamity, and the whole nation would have felt it,
as Boston or New York would feel the loss of one of its
ablest manufacturers or merchants, lawyers or doctors.
That would deprive us of the services of a man which
could not be supplied. We have always spare men of
routine, but not spare men of genius. Dr. Channing has been missed ever since his death, and the churches of Boston, poor enough before, are the poorer for his absence. So has John Quincy Adams, old as he was, been missed in the House of Representatives. The enemy of freedom may well rejoice that his voice is still. But who misses General Harrison or Mr. Polk ? What interest languishes in consequence of their departure ? What idea, what right, lost thereby a defender ? If Sir Robert Peel were to die, the British nation would feel the loss.
We attach a false importance to the death of a President. Great calamities were apprehended at the death of General Harrison. But what came? Whigs went out of office and democrats went into office. Had Jefferson died before the Declaration of Independence, or Washington any time after it, or before the termination of his official service, or John Adams before the end of the war, that would have been a great calamity; for I know not where we should have found another Jefferson, to see so distinctly, and write down so plain the great American idea, or another Washington to command an army without money, without provisions, without hats and shoes, as that man did. The death of Samuel Adams, in 1760, would have been a terrible misfortune to America. But the death of General Harrison only made a change in the Cabinet, not in the country; it affected the politicians more than the people.
We are surrounded in the world with nations ruled by kings, who are the masters of the people ; hard masters too! When they die the people mourn, not always very wisely, not always sincerely, but always with ceremony. The mourning for George IV. and WiUiam IV. in England, I doubt not, was more splendid and imposing than that for Edward the Confessor and Oliver Cromwell; and that for Louis XV. outdid that for Henry IV. In a monarchy, men always officially mourn their king, whether it
