338 WHAT WASHINGTON THOUGHT OF A THIRD TERM. abridged the supremacy of the people. If this patronage, now grown so great as to be beyond the capacity of a single head, is ever eliminated completely from amongst the Presidential functions,a plurality of terms in the Presidency will cease to be a menace to the country. We shall resume the right, now abrogated for many years, of choosing our highest officer freely from the whole people, without black-balling any man because he has once had the opportunity to demonstrate his fitness. It is a glaring solecism in our system, to maintain a moment longer than the public safety may seem to require it, a restriction on the choice of President which wise heads in the Convention, like Sherman of Connecticut and the shrewd Pennsylvania Scotchman, Wilson, and even the great Washington himself denounced, then and always, because it must debar, once and again, the tittest citizen of the country from filling its greatest office.
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