This is a pretty broad statement to make, but it is abundantly warranted. What has been the cause of the wreckage of republics so thickly strewn over the records of the past? Simply this, that the people would much rather indulge the passions and appetites of one ruler than of many rulers. Time was, when the very name of republic became odious to the people, and prejudice against it colored popular literature. You will see this sticking out in Oliver Goldsmith's novel, the "Vicar of Wakefield," in which one of the characters mentions the republics of Holland, Genoa, and Venice as places in which "the laws govern the poor and the rich govern the laws." Something of the same kind is at times said of our own republic, and if the people continue to think that way and have reason for it, and if no other means of escape were possible, they would eventually do as all other peoples so circumstanced have done in the past, resort to monarchical absolution. Whether the office be called King, or Protector, or President, is a minor consideration. The essence of the situation is that the mass of the people will not submit to be preyed upon under constitutional forms, and what they cannot mend they will end.

In these times when Darwinism is in the air, I shall not have to argue that the tendency heretofore of the monarchical type of government to survive and of the republican type to perish, implies on the whole superior fitness of the monarchical type in past periods. The science of politics is sufficiently well advanced to enable us to say in what that fitness consisted. If any one wants to check off my aver

ments by reference to the authorities, I recommend Sidgwick's "Development of European Polity," and particularly Chapters 21 and 22 of that treatise. He brings out very plainly that monarchy waxed strong because it represented the principle of national unity, and it was able to do so because it substituted for the rule of many "the rule of that which is intrinsically and per se one." Thus Crown authority by its very nature subordinates the parts to the whole, by taking away from the parts any legal power of action. That is to say, it sacrifices liberty to order, on the principle stated by Madison "that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed." The problem that must be solved to avert such sacrifice, and to assure the stability of republican government, is to subordinate the parts to the whole while allowing them powers of legal action. If that can be accomplished, the republic is incontestably the superior type, for it is energized in all its parts and is thus capable of the highest efficiency.

1

Just such an agency of national sovereignty has long been in process of formation, with the presidential office as its basis. We may even fix the exact time when the movement in this direction obtained constitutional definition. It was promulgated by President Polk in his message of December 5, 1848, in which he pointed out that "the President represents in the executive department the whole people of the United States, as each member of the legislative department represents portions of them." President Polk made

1 The Federalist, No. 64.

this statement in defense of presidential activity in directing legislative action. But the function of general representation that has settled upon the presidential office as the only available basis for it, lacks appropriate institutions for its discharge. The people look to the President to do what he is denied means of doing. The dilemma that ensues was well stated by President Taft in his speech at Rochester on March 18, 1910. After giving a list of the measures he was urging upon the attention of Congress, he remarked :

"One great difficulty about being President, and I assure you there are a great many of them, is that he is the titular head of the party, and is made responsible for the laws adopted by the party, although he has had nothing more to do with them than a recommendation at the beginning and the power of veto at the end. He is held responsible for all of the promises made by the party. And if, in his enthusiasm and desire to fulfil the party pledges and to help the country, as he thinks, he goes about and consults all the interests so as to recommend a fair law and makes suggestions to Congress, and some Congressmen differ with him, he is held up as a tyrant trying to force his views down the throats of unwilling Congressmen and unwilling Senators.

"And so he is in a bad fix. On the one hand it is said of him that he is not doing what he ought to do, and on the other hand he is trying to frighten an unwilling Congress to do what it doesn't want to do."

A good deal is being said about President Taft's loss of popularity. Well, that may be a transient phenomenon, and before he gets through things may be different. It would not be worth while mentioning, and would, indeed, be out of place here, were it not for the fact that popular resentment attaches to this very point of defect in his representative function.

For instance, I find in the Newark Evening News, an independent newspaper, the following:

"Mr. Taft says himself that the President is the one representative of the entire people under our form of government. But he will not take a step for their interests without definite mandate by law. Is there some move Mr. Taft can make for the people? He does not ask, 'Is there any law that prohibits me from making this move?' He does ask, 'Is there any law that definitely orders me to make this move?' If there is not, he does not do it. And yet he is the one representative of the whole people, their trustee."

Or consider such an utterance as this from the Kansas City Star of April 11, 1910:

"The country wants the administration to 'make good.' The people would far rather think well than ill of the President. But they can have no confidence in his program until the results are shown, and then they will not accept it if it is punched with loopholes and punctuated with jokers at the hands of the interest-serving leaders on whom the President is relying."

How, with such relations between the President and Congress as now exist, can he prevent such punching and punctuation? Hamilton mentioned as political "axioms as simple as they are universal," that "the means ought to be proportioned to the end; the persons, from whose agency the attainment of any end is expected, ought to possess the means by which it is to be attained."1 Is it not plain that the only means that can accomplish the end expected of the President is that he shall have charge of his measures while they are under discussion, so that proposed amendments shall be subjected to his expositions of their significance ? That is exactly the way in which the public business is transacted in Switzerland. Bills are in charge of the 1 The Federalist, No. 23.

I

administration and all changes which may be ordered by Congress after discussion are drafted by the administration. No opportunity is allowed for punching loopholes or slipping in jokers through parliamentary cunning.

Such utterance as I have quoted is very significant, since in the long run it is the stress of political necessity that makes and unmakes constitutional deposits of authority. By an ordinary law of political development the function thus impressed upon the presidential office must eventually acquire institutional forms of activity. The obvious solution is by a connection of the powers. The administration should have the right to present its measures in the form it thinks advisable, explain and defend them before the Houses of Congress, and the powers heretofore exercised by the House Committee of Rules should be vested in it for that purpose. Then Congress, relieved from the administrative details over which it now mulls, would become a deliberative body, and would rise in real power and true dignity. All these things are involved in the present tendencies of American politics, but it may require much bitter experience—perhaps great national disasters before the opposition of class privilege and particular interests to such changes as these can be overcome. Great constitutional improvements do not come about through acquiescence but through compulsion.

I am getting pretty far afield, but I cannot too strongly emphasize my belief that the laws which control the fate of institutions and the destinies of nations will not be suspended in favor of the United States.