Indeed, one day when Adams was pleading with a Cabinet
officer for patience and tact in dealing with Representatives,
the Secretary impatiently broke out: "You can't use tact with a
Congressman! A Congressman is a hog! You must take a stick and
hit him on the snout!" Adams knew far too little, compared with
the Secretary, to contradict him, though he thought the phrase
somewhat harsh even as applied to the average Congressman of 1869
-- he saw little or nothing of later ones -- but he knew a
shorter way of silencing criticism. He had but to ask: "If a
Congressman is a hog, what is a Senator?" This innocent question,
put in a candid spirit, petrified any executive officer that ever
sat a week in his office. Even Adams admitted that Senators
passed belief. The comic side of their egotism partly disguised
its extravagance, but faction had gone so far under Andrew
Johnson that at times the whole Senate seemed to catch hysterics
of nervous bucking without apparent reason. Great leaders, like
Sumner and Conkling, could not be burlesqued; they were more
grotesque than ridicule could make them; even Grant, who rarely
sparkled in epigram, became witty on their account; but their
egotism and factiousness were no laughing matter. They did
permanent and terrible mischief, as Garfield and Blaine, and even
McKinley and John Hay, were to feel.
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