business can be successfully so conducted? Is not the remedy to be found rather in greater care in the selection of agents and the more rigid enforcement of their responsibilities? Political and social reformers alike are prone to advocate the overthrow of a system rather than the more difficult task of selecting fit agents to carry on government.

How can any man who gives the subject a moment's reflection view with indifference any interference with the dignity and independence of the judiciary? What are judges but impartial arbitrators, to whom any one may be compelled at any moment to turn for protection of life, limb, or property? What will become of that protection if our system of government should subject him to the despoiling rage of the mob, when he asserts the supremacy of law in the face of unjust clamor? Who will be secure in life or property, if judges only can retain their places by consulting the passing fever of the crowd, instead of the laws of the land? A glib, cheap answer is made by the advocates of the destruction of representative government when objection is made to their schemes: "You do not trust the people," they say. On the contrary, it is they who do not trust the people. Their whole program is based on the assumption that the people are unfit or unable to choose honest and faithful representatives, and therefore that those whom they do select must be fettered with minute instructions, deprived of any freedom of action, subject to recall, and to be cast out a

once if they do not photograph into instant action every passing wave of popular feeling which may be worked up as a result of misinformation or inflamed prejudice. Under such a system, the people abandon all self-restraint and the necessity of sober second thought, based on accurate information and thorough discussion, before condemning their servants. It would seem an affront to intelligent readers to suggest even the possibility of such a change in the nature of our governments, State or national, were it not that in some of the Western States and Territories such theories have already found expression in constitutions and laws; and even in our Eastern States, there are not lacking those who have seized upon those notions as a gospel which is to bring salvation as to a people sitting in darkness.

Indeed, these ideas seem to have gained such currencyin some parts of the country, that oneis tempted to exclaim, in the language of James Russell Lowell:

Is this the country that we dreamed in youth,
When wisdom and not numbers should have weight,
Seed field of simpler manners, braver truth,
Where shams should cease to dominate

In household, church, and state?

But if we reflect on the history of our country, we must realize that its people are "the heirs of wise tradition's widening cautious rings," and that in the long run they never yet, as a nation, have proved unworthy of their birthright.

III

COLLEGE MEN AND PUBLIC QUESTIONS1

I

ASSUME that when you invited me to be your

guest this evening you expected me to talk to you about the relations of college men to public questions. As one busied in the tremendously important and equally absorbing business of government, I am greatly interested in meeting you who are coming out into the workaday world to assume your share of the duty and the privilege of making efficient the conduct of our public affairs, municipal, State, and national.

To be truly efficient, a government must be administered honestly and wisely. How these results shall be accomplished, you and men like you should in large measure determine. If you do not play an important part in the solution of this problem, then, whatever proficiency you may have attained here in your studies, whatever prowess you may have displayed in athletic sports, you will have failed to realize the highest aim of university education.

1 Address at the annual banquet of The Daily Princetonian, Princeton, N. J., May 1, 1911.

I congratulate you on coming out into the world at this particular time in its history. Within your grasp is life, and life abundantly. In the words of the Psalmist, your feet are planted in a large room. The world is all before you, where to choose. When your fathers were graduated at the university thirty-odd years ago, the thoughts of the people were centered principally upon industrial and business activity. The railroads were opening up the great western country for development; mining and manufacture were being stimulated by new inventions and increased facilities of transportation, leading to cheapened production and improved product; and the rapid progress in facilities of intercommunication of thought were bringing the ends of the earth into closer touch with each other. The surplus population of Europe poured into our country, and brawny arms from many lands developed our mines and carried on the work of our factories. Plenty was scattered over a smiling land. The way was open for every one. If the older communities were too crowded, there was room for all in the great West. Industry and enterprise and intelligence found ample scope; wealth was garnered in many fields. The power of coöperation and organization in the conduct of business has been applied during the past thirty years to an extent never before dreamed of. Men learned then how far-reaching a control over industry and commerce could be effected through organization. Commercial empires were

formed. Great fortunes were amassed in the hands of a few, but prosperity came also to many. What wonder that materialism became rampant and that the golden calf was erected for worship in the market-places!

But the vision of truth and justice has never wholly failed before the eyes of the American people, and in the full flush of their highest prosperity they heard the voice of the national conscience reminding them that righteousness alone exalteth a nation. In the period of their greatest material progress, they paused to consider whether their institutions were securing justice between man and man.

The laws of State and nation alike during this period of great industrial progress were molded to facilitate the conduct of business on a colossal scale. There was nothing more natural. They met the needs of the hour. True, they went beyond those needs, and, in so doing, they aroused the people to a recognition of the fact that they had gone too far. In the triumphal progress of expanding industry and accumulating wealth, the rights of individuals and of classes of individuals who had but an humble share in it were not always considered. Here and there occasional peaks of garnered riches rose high above the plain, and like the robber barons of the Rhineland, great masters of capital sat enthroned upon them. But their very height lifted them up where all men could see and begin to question how they came there, and