It was long since observed that every collapse in civilization has been preceded by a collapse in leadership. The forces disintegrating the structure of society becoming too formidable for easy opposition, gradually cease to encounter it. Statesmen, following the line of least resistance, have become prone to accept instead of opposing them. Initiative is subordinated to instruction. Policies, both political and economic, develop from below. They are imposed upon administrations instead of being formulated by them. The voice of that part of the people which is most persistent and most strident becomes practically more potent than the voice of God. The successful modern leader has been cynically but correctly defined as one who follows quickly. His ability is tested by his success in anticipating popular movements, in swiftly adopting and utilizing them to secure practical, political and material results. His success is measured by the standard of loaves and fishes for the multitude, and especially for his immediate section of them. The army moves, and the commander is carried along with it. He executes its purpose as best he can. He commands only so long as he obeys. Such an army may win many victories, but its reverses are just ahead. None know it so well as they who seemingly direct but actually follow its fortunes.

Leadership in our public affairs has long been inconspicuous. Both parties are in this respect equally unfortunate. The fact is not a casual one. It is the inevitable consequence of the untoward influences I have mentioned. The leadership that now finds a following must give promise of substantial things. The true leader of men, who keeps in view the ultimate goal, who remains steadfast

"Amid the din of all things fell and vile

Hates yell and envy's hiss and folly's bray";

who commands confidence and support through the sheer force of wisdom and clearness of understanding, who speaks from the depths of conviction and of knowledge, who encounters obloquy and confronts defeat with the serene courage of a lofty and sustaining sense of duty well performed, who acts upon the impelling force of duty, who takes little thought of personal fortune or selfish object, has become the sublime but pathetic figure of another and somewhat remote period of our country's develop

ment. Moral courage now has scarcely more than a speaking acquaintance with public life, while independence in thought and action regarding public affairs is becoming an "iridescent dream." The modern congressman gets his orders by mail and by wire every morning. He may not resort to Wouter Von Twiller's method of interpreting their message but much of his intellectual energy is consumed in the effort to determine which of their conflicting commands will most likely carry him through the next election. This is the tide in his affairs which may lead to fortune or to disaster. This is the one big problem of his life, beside which all others have become secondary.

The evils which attend the decline of nations are many. Most of them are reflected in its budgets. Swelling expenditures necessitating increased taxation, comprise their essential features. The purpose of appropriations multiply, and with them the sources of revenue. Property sustains added burdens that government may assume increasing activities, and the care of more widely distributed beneficiaries. Administrations preach frugality as they practice extravagance. Taxation becomes the basis for aiding or supporting innumerable private activities. Public needs and private demands are provided for from a common purse. The tax-eaters wax as the tax-payers wane. The former lean more and more heavily upon the public arm; the latter feel more and more the injustice and the burden of the public levies. Enterprise and initiative lose their incentive as the conditions progress to the point where the nation facing bankruptcy reshapes its course or encounters revolution.

Our fixed charges for administration, exclusive of sinking fund requirements and interest on the national debt, have reached appalling dimensions. They are too vast for comprehension in terms of money. They comprise not less than four billions of dollars, while Congress with each passing week adds something to the burden. The threatened bonus, which, as Benton said of the old national bank, has only retired to the jungle from which it will return with a new litter of whelps, will add hundreds of millions to the sum total. An occasional voice of protest against continued appropriations is drowned in the clamor for their enactment. The recent dispassionate and unanswerable appeals of the President and the Secretary of the Treasury for relief against

the overwhelming tides of expenditure have encountered violent and unmeasured denunciation, their purposes questioned, their motives assailed. They have succeeded in postponing but not in preventing the riot of waste and profligacy which has so long disgraced the country's affairs. Some sources of public revenue are drying up. Others must be found, and found quickly. Those which will draw the most blood with the least outcry are eagerly sought for. Reductions are of purely academic importance. Funds must be obtained by easy processes if possible, but they must be obtained. And this task, gigantic though it be, is the concern of the national legislature.

"Where are these $250,000,000 coming from," asked a Senator of the Chairman of the Committee on Post-Offices and Post Roads, when in January, 1919, he proposed his amendment to the annual post-office appropriation bill for road construction. "That," he replied, " is the concern of the Committee on Finance. It is not my business. Our committee will appropriate it, and theirs must provide it." "Don't make the mistake of advocating economy in this chamber" said an old to a new Senator a few years ago," since the only result will be to make yourself disliked by your associates and unpopular at home. The people want appropriations, and we must give them what they want." Is it too much to assert that such cynical declarations reveal the real attitude of the public representative toward the national exchequer, if indeed they do not also reflect that of the public as well? Twenty years ago an intelligent critic of similar conditions then prevailing declared that public morality was losing its efficiency because it had no market value.

Our deliverance from the body of this death has been recently assumed through the enactment of a budget bill, which is to function through a commission or bureau established for that purpose. It is to be devoutly hoped that this assurance may be realized. The courage and the capacity of the man selected to administer it is most comforting. But the law itself is a budget law in name only. It is a miserable legislative abortion. It makes provision for estimates, for apportionments and for recommendations for appropriations; which are of course essential. But it does not restrict the Congress to the maximum of these apportionments and recommendations, which is also vitally essential.

The British Parliament may diminish but may not exceed the recommendations of the Budget. The American Congress and every member of it may as heretofore accept or repudiate them as desired. Their power to resist the pressure of sections and soldiers, of constituencies and classes will prove as impotent with such a budget as without it. And Congress enacted that imbecile scheme of legislation in response to a public demand for a genuine budget system, leaving the people to discover that what had been promised to the ear was broken to the hope. I apprehend that not even the vigorous and powerful qualities of its present director can impart lasting efficiency to this designedly deceptive statute. The tendencies which I have outlined have obliterated all fundamental distinctions between the two great parties. Both live upon tradition and practice identical methods of administration. Even the tariff has become a basis for common plunder. Many of those heretofore denouncing the beneficiaries of protection now demand that they be made beneficiaries also. The system may be the robber system of the past, but the robber no longer repels. Rather it is becoming a method of securing privilege and protection most attractive and fascinating to selfishness and greed wherever found. Here Republicanism and Democracy are meeting on common ground. Party differences more and more concern themselves with competition in the making of appropriations and the bestowal of privilege. Their rivalry largely consists in seeking to secure the chief credit for granting much, and promising more. Apart from the Treaty, which should have had no place in the arena of party politics, the platform platitudes of Republicans and Democrats differed in 1920 only in arrangement and phraseology. That became successful which seemed to promise most.

Throughout this address I may have sounded a note of pessimism more profound than conditions justify. This is due in some degree to my recent experiences in the field of national legislation but more largely to the fact that conditions seem to warrant it. The local interest long ago became the dominant note in Congressional affairs, since which the general government has had but few representatives who regard its needs and requirements as the paramount object of their official action. A coterie

of Senators in the present Congress belonging to both parties and openly committed to the interests and demands of a single class, constituted the first bloc or combination of that character in our legislative history. Their example has immediately proven contagious, for a second one committed to " full protection for far western interests" has just been announced. Others will follow with results all too apparent.

The conditions which I have imperfectly outlined indicate our progress from a representative republic to a Continental democracy. Their drift toward what Mr. Spencer calls the régime of status is unmistakable. They are not only altering our scheme of government; they threaten to transform it altogether. Their progress can be arrested only by an aroused public opinion. If, as is freely asserted in Washington, the people always determine the sort of government they would have, and if the activities I have outlined reflect the wishes and purposes of the mass, as is contended, that will be an impossible task. But if the great body of our people are still upright, conscientious and lawabiding, wedded to American institutions and committed to the preservation of our constitutional republic they will hereafter, as heretofore, respond to its needs when made to clearly perceive and to fully realize them. And this, I think, is one of the duties, if not the chief duty, of this great Association, whose members are consecrated by their profession and their oaths to the cause of justice and ordered liberty, to the principles embodied in our scheme of government, to the due and impartial enforcement of the laws, to equality of rights and to the constant observance of those limitations which have been wisely placed upon the exercise of legislative power. It is our mission to show the people when and how they have departed from these principles and disregarded these limitations and the inevitable consequences thereof; warn them that the government is theirs to guard and support but not to plunder; that paternalism is in deadly conflict with the integrity of its purpose, that it must perish when converted into a colossal agency for the bestowal of privileges and the distribution of its revenues to those securing its control and wielding its authority.

If to such an appeal there comes no response, if the majority of the American people, content with prevailing condition, make