The whole history of the American Civil War⁠—a history which has thrown an intense light on the working of a Presidential government at the time when government is most important⁠—is but a vast continuous commentary on these reflections. It would, indeed, be absurd to press against Presidential government as such the singular defect by which Vice-President Johnson has become President⁠—by which a man elected to a sinecure is fixed in what is for the moment the most important administrative part in the political world. This defect, though most characteristic of the expectations 5 of the framers of the Constitution and of its working, is but an accident of this particular case of Presidential government, and no necessary ingredient in that government itself. But the first election of Mr. Lincoln is liable to no such objection. It was a characteristic instance of the natural working of such a government upon a great occasion. And what was that working? It may be summed up⁠—it was government by an unknown quantity . Hardly anyone in America had any living idea what