A
retiring functionary may work and plan and provide an immense amount of
disabling, annoying, and damaging experience to be encountered by his
successor. That successor may at a distance, or close at hand, be an
observer of all this influence; but whether it be simply of a partisan
or of a malignant character, he is powerless to resist it, and good
taste and the proprieties of his position seem to suggest that he make
no public recognition of it. Every Chief Magistrate of this Republic,
before its present head, acceded to office with its powers and dignities
and facilities and trusts unimpaired by his predecessor. We have thought
that among the thorns of the pillow on which a certain "old public
functionary" lays his head, as he watches the dismal working of elements
which he had more power than any other to have dispelled, not the
least sharp one must be that which pierces him with the thought of the
difference between the position which his predecessors prepared for him
and that which he prepared for his successor. Not among the least of
the claims which that successor has upon the profound and respectful
sympathy of all good men everywhere is the fact that there has been no
public utterance of complaining or reproachful words from his lips,
reflecting upon his predecessor, or even asking indulgence on the score
of the shattered and almost wrecked fabric of which we have put him in
charge.
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