ding with the name of Byron. And just when we had
made it perfectly clear to the French that we despised all their
flamboyant tricks, that we were a plain prosaic people and there was no
fantastic glory or chivalry about us, the very shaft we sent against
them shone with the name of Nelson, a shooting and a falling star.

_Presidents and Problems_

All good Americans wish to fight the representatives they have chosen.
All good Englishmen wish to forget the representatives they have chosen.
This difference, deep and perhaps ineradicable in the temperaments of
the two peoples, explains a thousand things in their literature and
their laws. The American national poet praised his people for their
readiness 'to _rise_ against the never-ending audacity of elected
persons.' The English national anthem is content to say heartily, but
almost hastily, 'Confound their politics,' and then more cheerfully, as
if changing the subject, 'God Save the King.' For this is especially the
secret of the monarch or chief magistrate in the two countries. They arm
the President with the powers of a King, that he may be a nuisance in
politics. We deprive the King even of the powers of a President, lest he
should remind us of a politician. We desire to forget the never-ending
audacity of elected persons; and with us therefore it really never does
end. That is the practical objection to our own habit of changing the
subject, instead of changing the ministry. The King, as the Irish wit
observed, is not a subject; but in that sense the English crowned head
is not a King. He is a popular figure intended to remind us of the
England that politicians do not remember; the England of horses and
ships and gardens and good fellowship. The Americans have no such
purely social symbol; and it is rather the root than the result of this
that their social luxury, and especially their sport, are a little
lacking in humanity and humour. It is the American, much more than the
Englishman, who takes his pleasures sadly, not to say savagely.

The genuine popularity of constitutional monarchs, in parliamentary
countries, can be explained by any practical example. Let us suppose
that great social reform, The Compulsory Haircutting Act, has just begun
to be enforced. The Compulsory Haircutting Act, as every good citizen
knows, is a statute which permits any person to grow his hair to any
length, in any wild or wonderful shape, so long as he is registered with
a h