This is part one of a two-part series. Read part two here. I have felt a little uncomfortable when I have read in the catalogue of your university and in the newspapers that I was to give you lectures. I am sure I shall do nothing that deserves that name. You have lectures enough to satisfy your craving. Besides, I have never intentionally delivered a lecture in my life.
I am with you on the other side of the question, for I doubt if any man was ever more belabored than I have been for the last seventeen years with lectures. This mild term does not suffice, for sometimes it has seemed to me that a large section of the American people regard high public office as a sort of pillory of honor where it is worth their while to put a man for the sake of enjoying the abuse of him afterwards.
A larger part of our people, more decently disposed, are benevolently willing to put at the service of a public officer all their knowledge of statecraft and to advise him in any real or imaginary emergency. It is only after their advice is disregarded that they set about the task of demonstrating that the popular choice has been a sad mistake, and that an abundance of excellent material for public place has been overlooked.
It is safe to say that after every presidential election the fact is developed that in our newspaper establishments alone there are thousands who have been thus neglected.
I shall hope to fulfill my engagements with you by a brief comment upon the office of President of the United States, and by recalling some incidents of a public nature made familiar to me by my incumbency of that office. It is thus apparent that in the indictment presented by the thirteen colonies, they charged the King, who in this case may properly be considered as the Chief Executive of Great Britain, with the crimes and offenses which were their justification for the solemn and impressive decree: β.
