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. The most troublesome task of
a reform President was that of bringing the Senate back to
decency.

Therefore no one, and Henry Adams less than most, felt hope
that any President chosen from the ranks of politics or
politicians would raise the character of government; and by
instinct if not by reason, all the world united on Grant. The
Senate understood what the world expected, and waited in silence
for a struggle with Grant more serious than that with Andrew
Johnson. Newspaper-men were alive with eagerness to support the
President against the Senate. The newspaper-man is, more than