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 IU.
 
 YALE LECTURES ON THE 
 RESPONSIBILITIES OF CITIZENSHIP 
 
 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY
 
 IN THE SAME SERIES 
 
 Four Aspects of Civic Duty. By William How- 
 ard Taft, Secretary of War, First Civil Gov- 
 ernor of the Philippine Islands. 12mo . net, $1.00 
 
 Freedom and Responsibility. By Arthur Twin- 
 ing Hadley, President of Yale University. 
 12mo net, $1.00 
 
 The Citizen in His Relation to the Industrial 
 Situation. By Henry C. Potter, D.D., LL.D., 
 Bishop of New York. 12mo .... net, $1.00 
 
 American Citizenship. By David J. Brewer, Asso- 
 ciate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States. 
 12mo net, $0.75
 
 FOUR ASPECTS OF 
 CIVIC DUTY 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT 
 
 SECRETARY OF WAR 
 FIRST CIVIL GOVERNOR OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1906
 
 \ 
 
 Copyright, 1906 
 By Yale University 
 
 Published, December, 1906 
 |5H' 
 
 ^ 
 
 TROW DIRECTORY 
 
 PRINTING AND BOOKBINOINO COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK
 
 r > 
 
 <5 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. The Duties of Citizenship Viewed from 
 the Standpoint of a Recent Gradu- 
 ate of a University 3 
 
 II. The Duties of Citizenship Viewed from 
 the Standpoint of a Judge on the 
 Bench 35 
 
 III. The Duties of Citizenship Viewed from 
 
 the Standpoint of Colonial Admin- 
 istration 61 
 
 IV. The Duties of Citizenship Viewed from 
 
 the Standpoint of the National 
 Executive 20
 
 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY
 
 THE DUTIES OP CITIZENSHIP VIEWED FROM 
 THE STANDPOINT OF A RECENT GRADUATE 
 OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 Mr. President, and Gentlemen of Yale: 
 
 My occupations within the last month have been 
 so numerous, various, and absorbing that it ha9 
 been very difficult for me to give thought and 
 proper time of preparation for the series of lec- 
 tures which, more than a year ago, I was invited 
 to deliver on the Dodge foundation by your 
 alluring secretary — Mr. Stokes. Knowing as I did 
 that it was foolish for me to accept Mr. Stokes's 
 invitation, and knowing that whenever the time 
 came for me to perform my promise it would cer- 
 tainly be the most inconvenient time in the year, 
 I nevertheless yielded weakly, and agreed to come 
 and say something about the duties of citizenship. 
 Of course I could not anticipate that an earthquake 
 would throw additional responsibilities on the 
 
 3
 
 4 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 War Department; but previous experiences ought 
 to have taught me that something would happen 
 to make it altogether inconvenient and almost 
 impossible for me to comply with a promise so 
 easily given but with such difficulty performed. 
 Still, here I am, and if what I have to say to you 
 proves to be trite or for other reasons lacking in 
 interest, I hope you will bear with me and at- 
 tribute it to the lack of preparation. I have 
 worried over these lectures a good deal, and have 
 cast about to know what plan for the development 
 of the subject I could properly pursue which might 
 be of assistance to the young men who are about 
 to enter upon what I hope will be useful lives in 
 doing what they ought to do to make this country 
 better and to vindicate its form of government 
 and its capacity for progress and development 
 toward higher civilization. I met President Had- 
 ley in St. Louis, and he suggested that I look at 
 the subject from the four standpoints from which, 
 in my personal experience, I have had to look at 
 public matters. He thought that this would give 
 me the advantage of testifying as a witness quali- 
 fied by opportunities for observation, whether the 
 opportunities were improved or not. Acquies-
 
 A GRADUATE OF A UNIVERSITY 5 
 
 cing, as I always do, in the wisdom of his sugges- 
 tions, I have therefore taken for the four lectures 
 which I am to deliver the following subjects: 
 
 I. The duties of citizenship viewed from the 
 standpoint of a recent graduate of a university. 
 
 II. The duties of citizenship viewed from the 
 standpoint of a judge on the bench. 
 
 III. The duties of citizenship viewed from the 
 standpoint of colonial administration. 
 
 IV. The duties of citizenship viewed from the 
 standpoint of the national executive. 
 
 In taking up the first of these heads for dis- 
 cussion I hope I may be pardoned for calling 
 attention to a fact that has not escaped general 
 observation, that there are few conditions of mind 
 more exalted, more comforting, more complacent, 
 than that of the members of the Senior class of 
 a great university like this. The struggle upward 
 from the humility of Freshman year, through the 
 irresponsibility and audacity of Sophomore year, 
 the budding sense of superiority of Junior year, 
 to the beatific appreciation of his own importance 
 in supporting the dignity of the university that 
 every Senior has, are well-known phases in col- 
 lege life. The step downward that has to be taken
 
 6 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 from the altitude of Senior year to the sense of 
 insignificance that comes quickly to the ordinary 
 graduate in the year succeeding his college life, 
 adds much to his usefulness as a member of the 
 community which he is about to enter. It restores 
 his sense of proportion as to the position that he 
 fills in society, which, in the epitome of life that 
 a four years' course at a university is, had some- 
 what distorted his views of the extent of the de- 
 mand which there would be for his presence and 
 services in the community at large. 
 
 Of course this humbling change from the esti- 
 mate of the college world to the estimate of the 
 world at large has a greater effect upon the men 
 who, when they leave college, are thrown upon 
 their own resources and are obliged to earn their 
 own living, than upon those who have money 
 enough and are not dependent upon the assistance 
 of others, or upon the recognition of their ability 
 by employers, by congregations, by clients, or by 
 patients. This is one of the great disadvantages 
 of being born wealthy. The truth is, the wealthy 
 young man, in winning his way to a useful place 
 in the community, has to struggle much more and 
 has to exhibit a moral courage much greater than
 
 A GRADUATE OF A UNIVERSITY 7 
 
 that of the poor man, if he would make a real 
 success in life and justify his existence as a citi- 
 zen. The young man most to be congratulated 
 is he who has been given an education as thorough 
 and as useful as he himself wishes to make it, 
 and then under the spur of necessity enters upon 
 a life of work without the temptation to lack 
 of effort and idleness, or to dilettanteism, or to 
 pure pleasure, which a competence always creates. 
 The great accumulations of wealth that we have 
 witnessed during the present generation are, of 
 course, of much benefit to the community in the 
 promotion of art, of music, of charity, and of 
 great educational institutions, as well as in the 
 good they do in the prosecution of industry, the 
 cheapening of the cost of production, and the 
 carrying on of the great enterprises that are 
 needed to make real material and intellectual 
 progress; but, in my judgment, in no one respect 
 can wealth be made more useful from now on 
 than in the support of young men who are will- 
 ing to devote their attention to politics and public 
 matters, to assume official responsibilities, to fol- 
 low and preserve the public weal, and by reason 
 of their independence of salaries or office to ex-
 
 8 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 ercise the beneficent influence of disinterested 
 patriotism and attention to public affairs. There 
 is such a class in England, which has done won- 
 ders for their politics and the high tone of their 
 public men. When it comes to be understood in 
 this country, and impressed on the persons to 
 whom it applies, that the man who is wealthy 
 enough to relieve him from any anxiety about 
 supporting his family owes it to society to devote 
 his attention to public affairs, and that one who 
 does not do so is violating his duty, a great step 
 will have been taken in elevating our politics. 
 I think this influence has already shown itself 
 in many directions ; but with the increased wealth 
 of this generation the influence of this class ought 
 to become greater and greater. Of course I would 
 not eliminate from our community what I shall 
 hereafter refer to at considerable length, to wit: 
 the motive for gain and accumulation of money, 
 which is the main-spring of nearly all the material 
 improvement which has been so marked in this 
 country ; but in such a hoped-for change of motive 
 among the wealthy young men as I have de- 
 scribed we are not likely so to reduce the motive 
 for accumulation in the community at large as
 
 A GRADUATE OF A UNIVERSITY 9 
 
 to affect injuriously our financial and material 
 progress. 
 
 So much for the wealthy young man. The poor 
 young man has to earn his own living, but his 
 attention to politics is likely to be much greater 
 in the early years of his business or professional 
 life, when he has only one to support, than when 
 he takes unto himself a wife, and brings into 
 the world a family which gradually absorbs all 
 his energy and takes all his time in earning 
 money enough to provide for its wants. There 
 is a period of ten or fifteen years during which 
 all college graduates, poor as well as rich, have 
 time enough and energy enough and ought to 
 have interest enough to attempt to make the poli- 
 tics of the neighborhood in which they live better ; 
 and it is to this period and its obligations that 
 I wish particularly to direct my remarks this 
 evening. 
 
 The training in political economy and sociology, 
 and other scientific studies likely to affect one's 
 political views which are pursued in a university 
 curriculum, tends to certainty and severity of 
 view with respect to the issues of the day. As 
 parties and public men fail to square with the
 
 10 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 views thus formed, there develops in the mind 
 of the young graduate a spirit of criticism and 
 impatience that the Government is so stupidly 
 run, and with so little understanding of the 
 fundamental rules upon which all public affairs 
 ought to be conducted. While I was in college 
 it happened that my father was in the national 
 administration, and I can remember with dis- 
 tinctness my dissatisfaction with his views of 
 public affairs and my impatience that he did not 
 seem to value as fully as I thought he ought the 
 importance of pursuing the up-to-date principles 
 that should govern the policy to be pursued by 
 public men. Now, the step down from Senior 
 year to a struggle for a living, which I have 
 already referred to, has a healthy tendency in 
 moderating this certainty and severity of view 
 formed in the lecture-room and in the abstract 
 study of political science. In such view the 
 graduate is apt to ignore the obstruction by reason 
 of friction in the operation of natural laws. He 
 is apt to ignore, as a negligible quantity, the 
 necessary effect upon the political policies of the 
 existence of popular prejudices and popular emo- 
 tions. He is apt to treat man as a peculiarly
 
 A GRADUATE OF A UNIVERSITY 11 
 
 intelligent animal, buying exactly where he can 
 buy cheapest, and selling exactly where he can 
 sell at the highest price; patronizing classes and 
 nations without respect to personal feelings toward 
 them, and moved by purely business considera- 
 tions, and those which ought to influence him if 
 he properly considers his welfare. Now, I do 
 not mean to say that the professor who instructs, 
 and who is a man of the world, does not know 
 the lights and shadows that should be put into 
 the picture of actual and real political and 
 economic conditions, so as to modify the rigidity 
 of the lines laid down by the strict and theoreti- 
 cal rules which he teaches; but the students 
 ordinarily are much better able to master the 
 main principles than their complicated variation 
 and modification, due to intervening causes. 
 Those they must learn by actual experience. The 
 tendency in my own case, and I think in that 
 of most graduates of my time, was toward the 
 laissez faire doctrine that the least interference 
 by legislation with the operation of natural laws 
 was, in the end, the best for the public; that the 
 only proper object of legislation was to free 
 the pathway of commerce and opportunity from
 
 12 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 the effect of everything but competition and en- 
 lightened selfishness; and that that being done, 
 the Government had discharged all of its proper 
 functions. When I graduated we looked upon 
 the Post-office Department of the Government with 
 great suspicion. X\e felt that it was a depart- 
 ure from proper principles, and that it seemed 
 to offer a pernicious example and suggestion of 
 the extension of governmental interference and 
 initiative into fields which ought to be covered 
 altogether by private enterprise. I do not know 
 what may be taught in this respect now, and 
 I am bound to say that I think these principles, 
 which I may seem to have spoken of in a light 
 way, f are still orthodox and still sound, if only 
 the application of them is not carried to such an 
 extreme as really to interfere with the public 
 welfare. Experience will show that there are 
 fields of business action which the Government 
 can better cover than private enterprise ; and there 
 are also fields over which, because of probability 
 of abuse by private enterprise, the Government 
 should assume control, not by way of initiation 
 and administration but by way of effective regu- 
 lation. This topic, however, involves too many
 
 A GRADUATE OF A UNIVERSITY 13 
 
 considerations to justify its discussion further to- 
 night. 
 
 On the other hand, there are, in addition to 
 those of the laissez faire school, a few graduates of 
 universities whose substratum of common sense 
 and whose sense of proportion, with reference to 
 things as they are, are so lacking, and whose poetic 
 and emotional temperament is so overwrought, 
 that they are led to contemplate only the injus- 
 tice and the abuses that occur under the existing 
 social order, and fail utterly to note the tre- 
 mendous advance, the immense progress which has 
 been made under the present guaranties of life, lib- 
 erty, and property ; who yearn for an entirely dif- 
 ferent system and radical change, in which men 
 are to be governed solely by love and not by any 
 motive of gain. In their eyes selfishness can 
 never be enlightened, and they finally acquire a 
 state of mind so morbid that the only happiness 
 they have is the contemplation of human misery 
 as an argument for the immediate abandonment 
 of the principles lying at the basis of modern 
 society. When such theories proceed from men 
 who have really suffered, men to whom equality 
 of opportunity seems to have been denied, men
 
 14 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 who live under a weight of misfortune and pov- 
 erty and disease and the other ills that flesh is 
 heir to, there ought to be much sympathy with 
 their feeling. It is entirely natural that they 
 should be lacking in the sense of proportion which 
 a man not so oppressed may have in respect to 
 the advantages of our present social and economic 
 system. ! But when one encounters a graduate of 
 a university, of means and opportunity for public 
 usefulness, who allows his emotional side to over- 
 come his judgment so that he develops into a 
 parlor socialist, without really understanding any- 
 thing about the real springs of material and in- 
 tellectual progress in this world, then we have 
 a result with which it is difficult to be patient. 
 I think this class is, for the time, on the in- 
 crease, but I am glad to think that among edu- 
 cated men the class is only that of faddists and 
 will fade away as the Millerites did. The spec- 
 tacle of men who enjoy all the luxuries of life, 
 with trained servants and costly establishments of 
 all kinds, declaiming against the social order and 
 the injustice done to the poor and suffering in 
 the community, is not one to attract the sympathy 
 of sensible men. The truth is that an argument
 
 A GRADUATE OF A UNIVERSITY 15 
 
 in favor of a first cause, or a divine plan of the 
 universe, finds no better or stronger illustration 
 than in the progress of the world under the 
 impulse of men toward personal freedom and the 
 right of property. The right of property has 
 played quite as important a part in the develop- 
 ment of the human race as the right of personal 
 liberty. Indeed, the two rights are so associated 
 in the struggle which man has had to make in 
 taking himself out of the category of the lower 
 animals and lifting himself to his present material 
 and spiritual elevation that it is hard to separate 
 them in a historical discussion. After man be- 
 came his own master, the next step in his progress 
 was the conception and establishment of the right 
 of private property. When he began to live in a 
 social state with his fellows, he recognized, dimly 
 at first, but subsequently with greater clearness, 
 that the laborer should have and enjoy that which 
 his labor produced. As his industry and self- 
 restraint grew, he made by his labor not only 
 enough for his immediate necessities, but also a 
 surplus which he was able to save for use in aid 
 of future labor. By use of this surplus, the 
 amount which each man's labor would produce
 
 16 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 was thereafter increased. As the advantage of 
 the principle that the laborer should enjoy his 
 own product came to be recognized, so it came 
 to be at a later time equally well recognized that 
 he whose savings from his own labor increased 
 the product of another's labor was entitled to 
 enjoy and share in the joint result; and the ad- 
 justment of their respective shares was the first 
 settlement of the ever-recurring controversy be- 
 tween labor and capital. What one had the full 
 right to enjoy he had the right to give to an- 
 other to enjoy; and so it happened that when a 
 man was about to die he assumed, and was ac- 
 corded, the privilege of giving to those whom he 
 wished to enjoy it that which was his. As the 
 natural parental instinct dictated provision for 
 those whom he had brought into the world, it first 
 became custom and then law that if he made no 
 express disposition of that which he had the right 
 to enjoy, it should become the property of those 
 for whose existence he was responsible. In this 
 way the capital saved in one generation was re- 
 ceived by succeeding generations, and its accumu- 
 lation for producing purposes was made much 
 more probable. The certainty that a man could
 
 A GRADUATE OF A UNIVERSITY 17 
 
 enjoy as his own that which he produced or saved, 
 and that it could be enjoyed after his death by 
 those to whom he was bound by ties of natural 
 affection, furnished the strongest motive for in- 
 dustry beyond what was merely adequate to obtain 
 the bare necessities of life, and was the chief 
 inducement to economy and self-control. The 
 institution of private property with all its inci- 
 dents is what has led to the accumulation of 
 capital in the world. Capital represents and 
 measures the difference between the present con- 
 dition of society and that which prevailed when 
 men lived by what their hands would produce 
 without implements or other means of increasing 
 the result of their labor; that is, between the 
 utter barbarism of prehistoric ages and modern 
 civilization. Without it the whole world would 
 still be groping in the darkness of the tribe or 
 commune stage of civilization, with alternating 
 periods of starvation and plenty, and no happiness 
 but that of gorging unrestrained appetite. Capi- 
 tal increased the amount of production. The 
 cheaper the cost of production, the less each one 
 had to work to earn the absolute necessities of 
 life, and the more time he had to earn its com-
 
 18 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 forts. As the material comforts increased, the 
 more possible became happiness, and the greater 
 the opportunity for the cultivation of the higher 
 instincts of the human mind and soul. This 
 material progress in the human race, covering 
 cycles of time in the slow process of evolving 
 as an essential principle in the development of 
 the race the right of private property,! was at- 
 tended by violence and fraud and cruelty and 
 oppression; but in the end it had a profound 
 educational effect upon the human race and estab- 
 lished in the human heart and soul the virtues 
 that have made man the superior being that he is. 
 The struggle implanted in the human breast the 
 virtue of providence, the restraint of the appetite 
 of the present, in order that there may be left 
 that with which the future can be enjoyed; the 
 lesson that the pains and thoroughness with which 
 a work is done increase the product and enlarge 
 the source of future supply ; and finally, the recog- 
 nition of the fact that the only peaceable way 
 by which a man can really enjoy the fruits of 
 his own labor is to recognize this as a right of 
 every other man. This struggle thus gave us the 
 virtues of providence, of industry, and of honesty,
 
 A GRADUATE OF A UNIVERSITY 19 
 
 and with these basic elements of character all 
 the other traits and virtues that we admire in man 
 have been developed. Of course, I would not 
 ignore or minimize the influence of religion on 
 the development and uplifting of human char- 
 acter ; but the industrial virtues I have described, 
 when instilled by hard experience, certainly offer 
 a greater opportunity for the effective working of 
 religious influences. | The whole human race has 
 had to fight its way upward to modern civilization 
 and its beneficent incidents by a struggle so 
 arduous and so long continued that we can no 
 more appreciate it than we can realize thejtime 
 taken to create the geological formations. This 
 operation of the natural laws, leading -to the won- 
 derful development of modern society out of the 
 prehistoric man, we are told that man must change 
 by law ; that we must abolish the right of property 
 and the motive for gain, divide up the wealth, 
 and distribute it according to the sense of justice 
 of the socialist committees of organization and 
 
 control. j 
 
 While we may find a few shining examples of 
 such dreamers and impracticable and morbid 
 thinkers among the graduates of universities of
 
 20 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 this country, we may be confident that substan- 
 tially all the sane graduates of our universities 
 will set their faces like flint against the spirit of 
 any such foolish doctrine ; and that they will find 
 their chief reasons for discrediting the premises 
 and the conclusions advanced in favor of socialism 
 in the wholesome principles of political economy 
 and sociology which they have imbibed at the most 
 formative period of their lives and characters in 
 the lecture and recitation rooms of their alma 
 mater. 
 
 But now, assuming the political and economic 
 sanity of the recent college graduate — not, I think, 
 a violent assumption — what should be expected of 
 him politically ? Well, in the first place he ought 
 to learn where the polling-place is in his ward 
 and precinct where he can cast a ballot. I think 
 it might be rather humiliating to some graduates 
 of several years' standing if a close examination 
 were made into their knowledge of this simple 
 fact; and if the investigation were to proceed 
 farther, to find out where the primaries and the 
 preliminary political meetings for organization 
 are held, the amount of ignorance in respect to 
 these details on their part would be still more
 
 A GRADUATE OF A UNIVERSITY 21 
 
 embarrassing. Perhaps, however, before they go 
 either to the polls or to the primaries they ought 
 to select a party. I know there is a disposition 
 on the part of the free-born American graduate 
 from an institution of learning, full of admira- 
 tion for independence of thought and a desire to 
 maintain his independence of action, to hold him- 
 self aloof from party regularity and vote for the 
 best men if he can find them, and thus teach 
 the party organization that it must beware of 
 the influence of the independent voter. I think 
 this tendency on the part of the recent college 
 graduate is much modified as he acquires ex- 
 perience and a knowledge of conditions. Whether 
 he will become a Republican or a Democrat or 
 a Mugwump will depend on many circumstances. 
 He may yield to the natural tendency to inherit 
 his politics, and so become a Democrat or a Re- 
 publican because his father was. lie may find that 
 his views upon the main issue between the parties 
 at the particular time when he comes first to 
 exercise his franchise and discharge his electoral 
 duty are such that on principle he selects one 
 of the parties and thereafter identifies himself 
 with it. He may find that his pecuniary interests
 
 22 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 are affected by the success or defeat of a particu- 
 lar party, and select the one or the other in 
 accordance with those interests. Whatever turns 
 him in the direction of one party or the other, 
 he will after a while learn that there is much 
 to he said in favor of party regularity if that be 
 not carried to an extreme. The modern govern- 
 ment of a people of 80,000,000, reaching from 
 the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada to 
 Mexico, is very complicated. It has long been a 
 principle, enunciated, but " honored more in the 
 breach than in the observance," that [the less gov- 
 ernment has to do, the less government there is, 
 the better for the people ; but in recent years there 
 have been so many functions which it is impossible 
 for private business to maintain and undertake 
 that even the most orthodox of the laissez-faire 
 school must admit that the legitimate functions of 
 the modern government constitute it a very com- 
 plex machine. The difficulties of its management 
 are greatly increased if, instead of leaving the 
 control to one man, as in Russia, or to a small 
 group of men, as in the ancient aristocracy, we 
 commit its control to all males over the age of 
 twenty-one, and call it a popular government. The
 
 A GRADUATE OF A UNIVERSITY 23 
 
 real advantage of a popular government, in se- 
 curing the greatest good to the greatest number, 
 is that experience has shown that individuals and 
 classes of men of reasonable intelligence are better 
 able to look after their own interests or those 
 of their class, and secure equality of opportunity 
 and equal protection for themselves or persons 
 similarly situated, if they are given a voice in the 
 government, than if this duty is left to some one 
 else, however altruistic. How is it possible so to 
 reduce the varying wishes and views of the entire 
 population of 80,000,000 people, or 14,000,000 
 adult males, to one resultant executive force, which 
 shall carry on this complex machine of government 
 effectively, as it should be carried on in the public 
 interest and for the public weal ? The problem has 
 been solved in the growth and the establishment of 
 popular government by the institution of parties 
 among the people. A useful party cannot be 
 formed unless those who are members of it, with a 
 sense of responsibility for the successful and unob- 
 structed continuance of the administration by that 
 party, yield their views on the less important and 
 less essential principles, and unite with respect 
 to the main policies for which the party is to
 
 24 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 become responsible. The resultant solidarity of 
 opinion is necessary to secure unity of action. 
 The sense of responsibility for the successful 
 operation of the Government must furnish a 
 power of cohesion which shall prevent the break- 
 ing off from the party of a sufficient number of 
 its members to make its arm nerveless and to 
 take away from it its power of initiative and 
 action. That party is the more efficient party, 
 therefore, in which the members are more nearly 
 united on the great principles of governmental 
 policy. I do not for a moment intend to de~ 
 preciate the good effect of having in the com- 
 munity persons not affiliated with parties, whose 
 unbiased judgment will lead them to vote some- 
 times for one party and sometimes for another; 
 for it may well be that the power of cohesion in a 
 party, growing out of its traditions or the desire 
 for office or some other motive not the highest, 
 shall lead it into apparent unanimity upon a course 
 detrimental to the Government and from which 
 nothing can save the Government but the with- 
 drawal of support by the independent voter. Be 
 this as it may, and however useful the inde- 
 pendent voter may be, the existence of parties,
 
 A GRADUATE OF A UNIVERSITY 25 
 
 their maintenance, and their discipline are essen- 
 tial to the carrying on of any popular government. 
 The difficulty with the politics of France has fre- 
 quently been the inability of the leaders to form 
 parties large enough to maintain a government. 
 There are too many small groups, and the ad- 
 ministration is thus likely continually to change. 
 It is difficult to classify parties in this country 
 as conservative and radical, because the facts do 
 not always justify such a classification; but gener- 
 ally it will be found that the more efficient party 
 in administration is the more progressive and 
 more affirmative — more radical, therefore, in its 
 policies. The opposing party is usually negative, 
 declining to initiate new reforms, looking back to 
 a probably non-existent condition of simplicity 
 and purity and honesty in public affairs, and 
 offering in effect, when successful, a conservative 
 and do-nothing administration. Now, young men 
 will select their parties, other things being equal, 
 according to the natural tendencies of their minds. 
 Some men are in favor of progress, affirmative 
 action, and radical reforms — a change of the exist- 
 ing arrangements for something better. Other 
 men naturally prefer the ills we have than to
 
 26 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 fly to those we know not of, and with their con- 
 servative tendencies they will find a home in the 
 more conservative party. The independent, re- 
 fusing to subordinate himself to the views of 
 either party, first votes for one ticket and then for 
 another, and thus seems to exercise a more de- 
 cisive influence than the regular members of 
 either party. Indeed, it is true that as a mass 
 the independent voters are generally of great im- 
 portance and influence for the betterment of po- 
 litical and governmental conditions. As indi- 
 viduals, in the exercise of individual influence and 
 to accomplish useful purposes, they do not play 
 so important a part. If a man goes into public 
 life and wishes to secure an influence for good, 
 he may properly be chary of breaking his political 
 ties with the party of his affiliation, because the 
 only real opportunity, the only real avenue that 
 he can follow to accomplish permanently useful re- 
 sults is by influencing the course and policy of his 
 party. As this is a party government, and as 
 measures are controlled by party decisions, the real 
 progress must be made along party lines ; and if a 
 man separates from his party he loses altogether 
 any influence he may exert in determining those
 
 A GRADUATE OF A UNIVERSITY 27 
 
 policies. I do not at all advocate that a man should 
 adhere to party against high principle and con- 
 viction, but this life is all a series of compromises 
 by which little by little, and step by step, progress 
 toward better things is made. All the good in 
 the world cannot be attained at one breath. We 
 must achieve what we can at the time we can, 
 and must let other aims and objects of the highest 
 good abide a different opportunity for their at- 
 tainment. While, therefore, we may not agree 
 with all the principles adopted into legislation or 
 into executive policy by a party with which we are 
 affiliated, we should ordinarily not destroy our 
 usefulness and power for good in influencing the 
 party in the right direction, by withdrawing from 
 it on issues not the most important, if, on the 
 whole, we believe that more good can come from 
 its success than from that of its opponent. 
 
 Having selected his party and found his poll- 
 ing-place and the place for the meeting of the 
 primaries, and having ascertained who are the 
 men in the precinct and the ward who exercise 
 influence over the people, the graduate of a uni- 
 versity who takes life as seriously as he should, 
 who appreciates his responsibility as a citizen, will
 
 28 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 spend as much time as he can in learning the local 
 situation; in becoming acquainted with the pre- 
 cinct and ward leaders, in consulting them as far 
 as he can, in making himself acquainted not only 
 with the well-to-do and well-educated persons in 
 his precinct and ward, but also with the laborers, 
 the artisans, the store-keepers, the saloon-keepers, 
 in order that he may understand what are the con- 
 trolling influences in the primaries and elections 
 of that precinct and ward. This will bring him, 
 doubtless, into contact with some people whom he 
 would not wish to have as permanent associates 
 and companions. It is not generally elevating 
 to associate with saloon-keepers, and yet there is 
 a word to be said upon this subject and with 
 respect to them. There are among them honest, 
 hard-working men, rising early in the morning 
 and staying up late; in the great cities they are 
 the proprietors of the social clubs of the neigh- 
 borhood for the poor people, and naturally they 
 exercise a very considerable influence in the dis- 
 cussion of public matters that go on among the 
 wage-earners and persons of small means. The 
 college graduate is not made of sugar, and he 
 ought to be sufficiently strong to resist any evil
 
 A GRADUATE OF A UNIVERSITY 29 
 
 influence which might some time arise from such 
 political associations if they were to become per- 
 manent. But if a college graduate is to exert 
 any influence at all for good among the people, 
 especially when as a young man he can exert his 
 influence only or chiefly through personal con- 
 tact, he must convince those whose votes he wishes 
 to control and use for good purposes that he does 
 not hold himself above them; that he is a real 
 democrat and recognizes that he has only one vote, 
 as they each have but one vote, and that he has 
 no right to exercise influence over them except 
 as his opportunities for information and his 
 knowledge of public affairs justify him in speak- 
 ing on such subjects. He must stand on an 
 exact equality with men of less education and less 
 advantages and must familiarize himself with the 
 exact conditions that prevail in local municipal 
 and broader politics. In many respects the col- 
 lege graduate has as much to learn from the 
 workingman and the business man who have not 
 enjoyed a college education as they have to learn 
 from him. It cannot but broaden his sympathies 
 and make him understand his country and its 
 needs with more certainty if he associates in po-
 
 30 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 litical and other ways with those who make up 
 the large body of our American citizens. He will 
 cease by such association to assume the attitude 
 of a dilettante closet critic, and will understand 
 the motives and the emotions and the real feel- 
 ings of the great mass of the American people. 
 As I have already suggested, there is a tendency 
 on the part of those having a college education, 
 of the class known as " the scholar in politics," 
 to ignore the element of sentiment, of patriotic 
 emotion, and to assume that everything ought to 
 be and will be ultimately determined by nicely 
 reasoned processes like those which are often 
 postulated in the class-room of the professor of 
 economics and political economy. Now, without 
 in the slightest minimizing the importance of 
 straight thinking in accordance with the great 
 principles of political economy and sociology, it 
 seems to me wise to emphasize the necessity for 
 college men who wish to be useful in political life 
 to go into the humblest political movements and 
 find out the views, the prejudices it may be, and 
 the real needs of their less fortunate fellow-citi- 
 zens. 
 
 The tendency of recent years toward reorgan-
 
 A GRADUATE OF A UNIVERSITY 31 
 
 ization and the economic use of means and in- 
 strumentalities to secure efficiency, shown in the 
 production of material things, has manifested 
 itself in politics also, and has led to much more 
 effective political machines, in municipal politics 
 particularly, than ever existed before. There are | 
 in the governments of many municipalities strik- 
 ing examples of the use of official patronage to 
 establish and maintain a machine from which it 
 is impossible for the voters of the party to wrest 
 its power, and which for a time seems to be able 
 by the thoroughness of its organization even to 
 defy the people at the polls. Every once in a 
 while the people rise and defeat the machine 
 ticket and then pat themselves upon the back and 
 retire again, while the machine in a short time 
 resumes its power. It is idle to hope that the 
 people may be roused at every political contest 
 and defeat machine slates unless there are counter 
 organizations made up of younger men actuated 
 by the disinterested patriotic desire to select only 
 good candidates for office. Such young men, and 
 among them certainly ought to be all university 
 graduates, should maintain an organization the 
 year round, so that they may keep in touch with
 
 32 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 the continually changing local situation and call 
 upon members for action when action is neces- 
 sary. Eternal vigilance is the price of good 
 government. The professional machine politician 
 is always at work, and he can be defeated and 
 discouraged only by an organization which can 
 be called together like the Minute Men, and may 
 know how and when to strike for good government. 
 Politics ought to be neither distasteful nor de- 
 grading, and men who enter them for the purpose 
 of keeping them pure and making them better 
 are engaged in the highest duty. "We must meet 
 the conditions as they exist. In this country, where 
 nearly every adult male has a vote and suffrage 
 is exercised by all sorts and conditions of men, 
 suitable and proper means must be used, adapted 
 to reach the better nature of the electors and 
 rouse them to their duty to secure good govern- 
 ment by the exercise of their suffrages at the 
 primary and at the polls. Organization by good 
 men is one of the suitable and proper means for 
 achieving this purpose. When the people know 
 that agencies exist through which they can secure 
 good government, they will be much more certain 
 to take an interest and support such agencies. I
 
 A GRADUATE OF A UNIVERSITY 33 
 
 would not, of course, exclude men of any age 
 from the burden of carrying on this work of or- 
 ganization, but young men must naturally be more 
 active in it. 
 
 It will be entirely natural, especially for those 
 who are well-to-do and do not need to earn a 
 livelihood, to become candidates for public office, 
 and the more that such men offer themselves for 
 office the better for good government. Of course, 
 in the ideal condition of things the office should 
 seek the man; but we do not have an ideal con- 
 dition of things, and we never will have. Politics 
 are practical, and while it may often occur that 
 in an organization of good men, for the purpose of 
 lifting politics out of the slough, a man may bo 
 drafted for office against his will, it is exceptional. 
 There is no real objection to a good man's seeking 
 office when he feels himself competent to discharge 
 its duties, has a high ideal as to how they ought 
 to be discharged, and a commendable ambition 
 to serve his country. Certainly, men less quali- 
 fied and with less high ideals will seek it, and 
 why should the public lose the benefit of a per- 
 sonal motive on his part to gratify his desire to 
 be of use?
 
 34 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 But I have talked longer than I ought. I close 
 by urging upon the men of Yale their duty, im- 
 mediately upon leaving college, to take a deep 
 interest in local politics, to learn what they are, 
 to study the actual conditions that prevail with 
 respect to the electorate, and to affiliate themselves 
 with local political movements in order that they 
 may find for themselves opportunities for useful- 
 ness. If the country is not to avail itself of the 
 intelligence, patriotism, and disinterestedness of 
 its educated men, and especially of those who can 
 devote a large part of their time to public matters, 
 it will lose the benefit of the progress that we hope 
 we are making by extended higher education.
 
 II 
 
 THE DUTIES OF CITIZENSHIP VIEWED PROM THE 
 STANDPOINT OF A JUDGE ON THE BENCH 
 
 Mr. President, and Gentlemen of Yale: 
 
 The subject for this evening is the second on 
 the list — The Duties of Citizenship from the 
 Standpoint of a Judge on the Bench. 
 
 I went on the State bench when I was twenty- 
 nine years old, and served three years; subse- 
 quently, at thirty-two, I went upon the Federal 
 bench, where I served for nine years. As I look 
 back, I am sure that my knowledge of law when 
 I went on the bench was very limited. I commend 
 to those who have an opportunity a term on the 
 bench as one of the best law schools I know. It 
 is true that in this way one gets his legal educa- 
 tion at the expense of the public, and tries his 
 " 'prentice hand " on the litigants as victims ; but 
 after a time, if he is at all apt and anxious and 
 earnest, the public makes a good judge of him. 
 If he can be kept on the bench after that, he 
 
 35
 
 36 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 sometimes makes a better judge than an older 
 man, with much more experience at the bar; for 
 there are men, and not a few, who succeed ad- 
 mirably at the bar as counsel and advocates, but 
 who, when elevated to the position of a judge, 
 cannot drop the habits of a lifetime or forget 
 that they are advocates. Still, I do not urge the 
 appointment of young men to judicial positions, 
 and do not favor a system by which judges are 
 given their judicial learning after they are called 
 to the bench. 
 
 The first duty of a citizen which is impressed 
 on the mind of the judge of first instance, who has 
 to try the usual class of cases, is his duty to sit 
 on the jury, and to spend the time necessary, 
 when properly drawn, to make up the tribunal 
 which the common law and the Constitution make 
 necessary for the determination of issues of fact 
 in common-law civil cases and criminal cases. 
 Service on the jury is, of course, just as much 
 a part of one's public duty as the obligation to 
 pay taxes under the law, or the obligation to re- 
 spond to the call of the Government to act in the 
 posse of the sheriff, or to testify as a witness when 
 duly summoned, or to shoulder a gun when drafted
 
 A JUDGE ON THE BENCH 37 
 
 into the military service in an emergency. The 
 success of a jury system is utterly impossible 
 among a people who are not, on the average, intel- 
 ligent and above undue influences. Hence a jury 
 system must tend to failure if the intelligent and 
 honest men of the community regard the service 
 as such a burden that they evade it by excuses, 
 and leave for selection only the unintelligent and 
 those subject to venal motives. 
 
 On a pure question of fact, controverted by wit- 
 nesses on both sides and presented to the jury with 
 full argument and the comment of the court, a jury 
 of intelligent, conscientious men is a most satisfac- 
 tory tribunal. Taken from different walks of life, 
 containing within the panel men of experience in 
 many directions, united they make up a tribunal 
 of men of force, who are quite as well able as the 
 judge to make their inferences from the evidence 
 as it has been drawn out by examination and 
 cross-examination, and reach a conclusion of fact, 
 not necessarily unerring, but of very consider- 
 able accuracy and certainty. But I beg to impress 
 upon you the fact which seems frequently to have 
 been lost sight of, especially in legislation with 
 respect to the procedure of State courts, that the
 
 38 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 tribunal contemplated by the common law was not 
 the jury alone, but it was the court and jury, 
 and that the ultimate decisions rested not on the 
 verdict of the jury only, but on the verdict as 
 approved by the judge holding the court. The 
 method of reaching a conclusion at common law 
 was after the hearing of the evidence and argu- 
 ment of counsel, and after a charge by the court; 
 in which the court did not hesitate to assist the 
 jury in commenting on the evidence, even to the 
 point of intimating an opinion as to the proper 
 conclusion to be drawn from the evidence. Thus 
 constituted, the jury and the court do make an 
 admirable tribunal, if the intelligence of the jury 
 is equal to the average intelligence of the com- 
 munity at large. There has been a dangerous 
 tendency in the legislation in the Southern and 
 Western States in regard to the control which the 
 judge in the court may exercise over the jury. 
 His instructions to the jury are frequently lim- 
 ited to a written charge, made before the argu- 
 ment of counsel on the facts, in which he is not 
 permitted to comment in any way on the facts or 
 to assist the jury, except by laying down abstract 
 and hypothetical questions of law. In other words,
 
 A JUDGE ON THE BENCH 39 
 
 the legislation has tended to eliminate the judge 
 as far as possible from the influence he was wont 
 to exercise in the decision of the tribunal as it 
 was when the Constitution made it an essential 
 part of our judicial system. With this change 
 from the old common-law use of a jury, much 
 greater power is vested in the panel than ever 
 before, and in many instances the power is abused, 
 because the jury takes it into its head that it is 
 not only a tribunal to arrive at a decision upon 
 a sharp issue of facts presented by the evidence, 
 but that it is, in a sense, a legislator to reach 
 natural justice without much regard to the law; 
 and in suits against corporations, and in many 
 instances in spite of the absence of legal liability 
 by the corporation, it will act as an almoner of 
 its charity, and mulct it in a large sum to meet 
 an alleged liability, which in fact and in law does 
 not exist. Under such circumstances the obliga- 
 tion of the good citizen to discharge his duty as a 
 juror is even of higher importance than when the 
 power of the jury was more subject to the con- 
 trol of the experienced judge who presided over 
 the trial of which it is a part. The truth is that 
 the law is not so carefully followed, and property
 
 40 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 rights and other rights are not so well safeguarded, 
 and criminals are not punished with the same cer- 
 tainty as formerly in communities in which the 
 jury has had the reins thrown on its back, and 
 practically been given a discretionary power in 
 its decisions that was wholly wanting under the 
 common-law system. 
 
 The common-law system is preserved in its 
 purity in the Federal courts. There the judge still 
 maintains the power which he had at common law, 
 and which he exercises in English courts to-day, 
 not of controlling or directing the verdict, but of 
 aiding and instructing the jury in respect to the 
 decision which it should reach, in commenting on 
 the evidence, and in taking much more complete 
 control of the trial than a judge in a Western 
 State is now permitted to exercise. And what is 
 the result? It is seen that everybody in the 
 South and West who is anxious to have a law 
 enforced, and is anxious to have the guilty pun- 
 ished under it, devises ways and means by which 
 the offence can be denounced under a Federal 
 statute and brought for trial into the Federal 
 courts. There it is known that if a man is guilty 
 he probably will be convicted. There it is under-
 
 A JUDGE ON THE BENCH 41 
 
 stood that the wiles of the criminal lawyer, his 
 dramatic resources, and the obstructing policy of 
 delays can ordinarily not prevent the law from 
 overtaking the offender. Of course this distinc- 
 tion between State and Federal courts in the gen- 
 eral estimation does not obtain in the older and 
 more conservative States of the East, where there 
 is usually less departure from the common-law 
 system of trial than in the newer and more radical 
 jurisdictions. The jury system ought never to be 
 abolished in an Anglo-Saxon country in criminal 
 cases or, indeed, in sharp and simple issues of 
 fact in civil cases, though there are many compli- 
 cated issues of fact involved in accounts and other 
 matters (as, for instance, the question of inven- 
 tion in a patent) with respect to which a jury trial 
 is not at all useful. The great advantage of a 
 jury trial in a popular government is that it gives 
 the public confidence that in criminal cases which 
 involve the liberty or life of a citizen and the 
 public, he can be assured that there will intervene 
 in the consideration of his cause twelve impartial 
 and indifferent persons, selected by lot, as a tribu- 
 nal to decide upon his guilt ; and that danger from 
 prejudice against the accused whom the Govern-
 
 42 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 ment is prosecuting, which might be suspected in 
 a judiciary appointed by the Executive of the 
 Government, will be eliminated. The jury sys- 
 tem popularizes the court, and gives the people to 
 understand that they have not only an interest, but 
 also a part in the administration of justice. 
 
 A jury system requires a panel of individuals 
 who are able to assume a judicial attitude on the 
 issue between two litigants, and to banish from 
 their minds all influence of prejudice of any char- 
 acter with respect to the parties or the subject 
 matter. This judicial quality, this sense of fair 
 play, has been developed in the Anglo-Saxon mind, 
 more than in any other race perhaps, by long 
 training in jury trials. Among the Latin people 
 the power of suppressing one's prejudices and 
 one's preconceived notions in sitting as judges to 
 determine an issue of fact, even under the sanc- 
 tion of an oath, seems not natural, and is hard to 
 develop. This quality is, of course, better devel- 
 oped, other things being equal, in a man of edu- 
 cation than in one who has not enjoyed that ad- 
 vantage ; and this suggests another reason why the 
 obligation on the educated man is greater than it 
 is in the case of his less fortunate fellow-citizens.
 
 A JUDGE ON THE BENCH 43 
 
 One of the great reasons why jury duty is 
 evaded by good men is because of the delay, and 
 unnecessary delay, that arises in the disposition 
 of causes in jury trials in our courts. In trying 
 to understand what the common-law trial was, we 
 may well look to the English method of disposing 
 of cases. Under that system the lawyers are so 
 well trained and the judge so skilled in pushing 
 the trial that cases which take in this country three 
 and four weeks are disposed of there in a day or 
 a day and a half. Lawyers are not there per- 
 mitted to introduce myriads of witnesses on the 
 same point and to be guilty of great prolixity in 
 their examinations or in their discussions before 
 the jury. The main and substantial points are 
 dwelt upon, both in the evidence of witnesses 
 and in the argument of counsel, and the counsel 
 are not permitted to divert the attention of the 
 jury to irrelevant circumstances and to absurd 
 theories. The judge retains control and pushes 
 the trial, both because it usually results in a 
 juster judgment and also because neither the time 
 of the court nor the time of the jury ought to be 
 taken up with the histrionic exhibitions of coun- 
 sel for either side, or with the dragging, tedious,
 
 44 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 and often irrelevant and unnecessary cross-exam- 
 inations of supposedly important witnesses. A 
 juryman sitting in a panel and listening to such 
 drawn-out controversy, which as a business man 
 he thinks ought to he settled in the course of a day 
 or a day and a half, will, the next time he is called 
 upon, naturally seek to avoid a duty which is not 
 a pleasure, but a mere bore by reason of the pro- 
 lixity of the hearing. 
 
 A most important principle in the success of a 
 judicial system and procedure is that the adminis- 
 tration of justice should seem to the public and the 
 litigants to be impartial and righteous, as well as 
 that it should actually be so. Continued lack of 
 public confidence in the courts will sap their foun- 
 dations. A careful and conscientious judge will, 
 therefore, strive to avoid every appearance from 
 which the always suspicious litigants may suspect 
 an undue leaning toward the other side. He will 
 give patient hearing to counsel for each party, and 
 however clear the case may be to him when stated, 
 he will not betray his conclusion until he has heard 
 in full from the party whose position cannot be 
 supported. More than this, it not infrequently 
 happens, however clear his mind in the outset,
 
 A JUDGE ON THE BENCH 45 
 
 that argument, if he has not a pride of first opin- 
 ion that is unjudicial, may lead him to change 
 his view. 
 
 This same principle is one that should lead 
 judges not to accept courtesies like railroad passes 
 from persons or companies frequently litigants in 
 their courts. It is not that such courtesies would 
 really influence them to decide a case in favor of 
 such litigants when justice required a different 
 result ; hut the possible evil is that if the defeated 
 litigant learns of the extension of such courtesy to 
 the judge or the court by his opponent he cannot 
 be convinced that his cause was heard by an in- 
 different tribunal, and it weakens the authority 
 and the general standing of the court. 
 
 I knew of one judge who indignantly declared 
 that of course he accepted passes, because he would 
 not admit, by declining them, that such a little 
 consideration or favor would influence his de- 
 cision. But in the view I have given above a 
 different ground for declining them can be found 
 than the suggestion that such a courtesy would 
 really influence his judgment in a case in which 
 the railroad company giving the courtesy was a 
 party.
 
 46 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 Another duty of citizenship which impresses 
 itself on the mind of the judge is that of main- 
 taining the supremacy of the law. Ours is a 
 government by law; not by rule of thumb, but 
 by rules of conduct which have equal applica- 
 tion to all. Any exception to the equal operations 
 of the law upon individuals is necessarily most 
 injurious to the future operation of that law for 
 the public good, because one exemption from its 
 operation is certain to lead to others. The public 
 detriment arising from violations of law, followed 
 by immunity from prosecution or punishment, can 
 hardly be overstated. It is ; of course, the duty of 
 the legislator in the enactment of laws to con- 
 sider the ease or difficulty with which, by rea- 
 son of popular feeling or popular prejudice, laws 
 after being enacted can be enforced. Nothing 
 is more foolish, nothing more utterly at vari- 
 ance with sound public policy than to enact a 
 law which, by reason of the conditions surround- 
 ing the community in which it is declared to be 
 law, is incapable of enforcement. Such an in- 
 stance is sometimes presented by sumptuary laws, 
 by which the sale of intoxicating liquors is pro- 
 hibited under penalty in localities where the
 
 A JUDGE ON THE BENCH 47 
 
 public sentiment of the immediate community 
 does not and will not sustain the enforcement of 
 the law. In such cases the legislation is usually 
 the result of agitation by people in the country 
 who are determined to make their fellow-citizens 
 in the city better. The enactment of the law 
 comes through the country representatives, who 
 form a majority of the legislature; but the en- 
 forcement of the law is among the people who are 
 generally opposed to its enactment, and under such 
 circumstances the law is a dead letter. This re- 
 sult is the great argument in favor of so-called 
 local option, which is really an instrumentality 
 for determining whether a law can be enforced 
 before it is made operative. In cases where the 
 sale of liquor cannot be prohibited in fact, it i9 
 far better to regulate and diminish the evil than 
 to attempt to stamp it out. By the enactment of 
 a drastic law and the failure to enforce it there 
 is injected into the public mind the idea that laws 
 are to be observed or violated according to the will 
 of those affected. I need not say how altogether 
 pernicious such a loose theory is. General Grant 
 said that the way to secure the repeal of a bad 
 law was to enforce it. But when the part of the
 
 48 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 community which enacts the law is not the part 
 affected by its enforcement, this is not a prac- 
 ticable method. The constant violation or neglect 
 of any law leads to a demoralized view of all laws, 
 and the choice of the laws to be enforced then 
 becomes as uncertain as the guess of a political 
 executive in respect to public opinion is likely to 
 make it. Such a policy constantly enlarges in the 
 community the class of men with whom the sacred- 
 ness of law does not exist. 
 
 Last June, in this very hall, I delivered an 
 address on the administration of the criminal law, 
 and attempted to point out its present inadequacy 
 and to explain the reasons why there was such a 
 discouraging failure to bring violators of the law 
 to justice by reason of the defects of our criminal 
 procedure. 
 
 I observe in the public prints a report that a 
 distinguished graduate of this university, in his 
 well-founded indignation at the present malad- 
 ministration or non-administration of the criminal 
 law in this country, is represented as justifying, 
 or at least as palliating, lynch law. I confess this 
 seems to me to be a most dangerous doctrine. It 
 is doubtless true that the instances of lynch law
 
 A JUDGE ON THE BENCH 49 
 
 have been prompted and greatly increased by the 
 defects and failures to punish malefactors under 
 the lawful procedure in courts. But it is far bet- 
 ter that violators of the law go free than that we 
 should introduce such a barbarous and altogether 
 demoralizing and uncontrollable practice; first, 
 because it too often results in the punishment of 
 innocent persons, and, second, because it makes 
 chaos of our government by law. ^Nothing can be 
 more detrimental to the public interest than for 
 any part of the people to take the law into their 
 own hands. Assembled in a mob, they soon lose 
 their conscience; the spirit of the mob, different 
 from that of any individual, enters the crowd ; 
 and the desire for vengeance prompts it to acts 
 of violence and of the most fiendish cruelty. 
 
 The only way to remedy the evil in which lynch 
 law is supposed to find a justification is by 
 strengthening the hands of the court by repealing 
 the absurd laws that give to every defendant too 
 much chance to escape just punishment and make 
 it as difficult as possible for the State to secure a 
 conviction. It should be provided, as has been 
 recommended a number of times, that no error in 
 the record of a criminal case carried to the Court
 
 50 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 of Appeals should lead to the reversal of the judg- 
 ment, unless it affirmatively appears that but for 
 the error a different verdict would have been 
 reached. In the United States courts and in the 
 courts of England for many years there never 
 was an appeal allowed in a criminal case. In the 
 trials in the Federal court and in England there 
 is little opportunity for playing a game, pursued 
 by counsel for the defence in all courts where the 
 judge retains but little control of the trial. He 
 is not permitted to befuddle the jury and defeat 
 a verdict of conviction by a dramatic diversion of 
 the minds of the jury from the real points at 
 issue; nor is he permitted, after an adverse ver- 
 dict, to reverse the judgment of the trial court by 
 fine and technical points which it was impossible, 
 in the hurry of the trial, for the court below to 
 consider or properly to decide. The emotional 
 r and untrue doctrine that it is better that ninety- 
 nine guilty men should escape than that one inno- 
 ^ cent man should be punished has done much to 
 make our criminal trials a farce. This has come 
 about through popular demand, without a full 
 understanding on the part of the legislatures and 
 the people as to its logical effect. And now that
 
 A JUDGE ON THE BENCH 51 
 
 the result has come, we find a popular tumult 
 on the other side in favor of lynch law because 
 the present criminal procedure is inadequate to 
 punish men who should be punished. 
 
 It is possible that a remedy for this evil may 
 be worked out through a development of the pres- 
 ent accumulation of wealth and the abuses which 
 have followed the concentration of much wealth in 
 comparatively few hands and corporations. The 
 arrogance that this has produced on the part of 
 some successful men has led them to a willingness 
 to evade and escape the laws of the country in 
 their pursuit of wealth. In what I had to say 
 last night in regard to the right of property and 
 the benefit to the world from the accumulation of 
 capital, I hope I will not be thought to be blind 
 to the abuses that grow out of the possession of 
 great wealth by unscrupulous men. Such men are 
 quite apt to think that laws are not made for the 
 purpose of restraining them ; that they are, in a 
 sense, above the law; that they can, by the em- 
 ployment of able and acute counsel, who shall ad- 
 vise just what the law is and just how its effects 
 can be evaded, find some way to be exempt from 
 its restrictions.
 
 52 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 The Sherman anti-trust law was a law enacted 
 for the purpose of preventing agreements in re- 
 straint of interstate trade and preventing monop- 
 oly of trade. It was directed to the restraint of 
 the so-called trusts — associations of men who, by 
 use of various instrumentalities, constituted a sys- 
 tem of unfair and oppressive trade, and induced 
 and finally compelled the public to deal with them 
 rather than with their helpless competitors. The 
 definition of the offences described in the statute, 
 and the proof of the circumstances tending to 
 make out the offence, are both difficult; and in 
 meeting prosecutions against wealthy corporations 
 and their managers under this law, as well as 
 under the law with reference to interstate com- 
 merce forbidding discriminations and secret re- 
 bates in favor of certain shippers, the protection 
 which has long been afforded to the ordinary 
 criminal, and the leniency with which the law 
 treats an accused, have inured greatly to the bene- 
 fit of these wealthy and powerful violators of the 
 law. With the immense fund at their disposal 
 for the purpose of defence they are able to secure 
 the most acute counsel and make every possible 
 point that the looseness of the present criminal
 
 A JUDGE ON THE BENCH 53 
 
 procedure affords. When this occurred in the 
 prosecution of the ordinary criminal the public 
 seemed incapable of being roused to the necessity 
 for a change. But now that the defects in the 
 procedure and administration of the criminal la-w- 
 are becoming apparent in the case of the arrogant 
 and wealthy violators of the law who seem to defy 
 the public, we may hope that a full examination 
 will be made into the reason why it is that, if a 
 man has money enough to employ counsel, it is so 
 difficult to bring him to justice under the system 
 now in force. 
 
 May the day be speeded in the reform of our 
 administration of the criminal law ! If the escape 
 of the ordinary criminal leads to lynch law, what 
 may we expect from the escape of the wealthy 
 malefactor in these days of unrest, when the com- 
 plaints against accumulated wealth and its abuses 
 are so many, if the administration of the criminal 
 law fails as to them? 
 
 I do not for a moment sympathize in the view 
 that everything is corruption and that all the 
 picture should be dark and black. I think that 
 we have had during our last ten years a decade 
 of prosperity never before known in the history
 
 54 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 of the country; and in the immense sums which 
 have been made for the benefit of all of us in the 
 prosperity that we all have enjoyed, there are 
 some who have taken a larger and an ill-gotten 
 share, and who are attempting to maintain and 
 increase this share by methods that should be 
 reprobated and punished. It is impossible that 
 such abuses should not have occurred in prosperity 
 so unprecedented. But the abuses furnish but lit- 
 tle reason for condemnation of the system unless 
 it can be first shown that the prosperity has not 
 been general, and unless it can be further shown 
 that the abuses of the concentration of much 
 wealth in a few hands are a greater detriment 
 than the general prosperity is an advantage. 
 
 Just at present we have been passing through 
 a siege of attacks upon our social and political 
 system by gentlemen whom President Koosevelt 
 has properly denominated "the men with the 
 muck-rake." Either in order that they may sell 
 their articles, or in order that for political pur- 
 poses they may stir a spirit of unrest, they ex- 
 aggerate the abuses thought to exist in political 
 and business life, and give a distorted and there- 
 fore a false view of actual conditions. They
 
 A JUDGE ON THE BENCH 55 
 
 attribute corrupt motives without proof; and by 
 dwelling only on instances of evil they destroy, or 
 they seek to destroy, the sense of proportion of 
 their hearers and readers in a general condemna- 
 tion of society at large. There never was a time 
 in the history of the world when there was more 
 virtue, more charity, more sense of brotherly affec- 
 tion, than there is to-day. Could anything be 
 more inspiring than the bounteous outgiving of 
 money, provisions, and labor for the benefit of 
 our fellow-men which was evoked by the dis- 
 aster in California? The truth is that the de- 
 nunciations of these muck-rakers have reached 
 such a point that a reaction has set in, and they 
 find that their wares are not as salable as they 
 were. They have overdone the picture. Their 
 eyes have become so dulled that they have not 
 realized that everything they say now is dis- 
 counted by the public, as born not of a desire to 
 present a just picture but of a desire to be sensa- 
 tional at the expense of fact and the expense of 
 justice. It is true that there is corruption in 
 many of our munipical corporations. It is true 
 also that there are on foot substantial and most 
 encouraging movements to stamp out the evils
 
 56 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 that we find in municipal government. It is not 
 true that there is great corruption in the national 
 Government. Nearly every one who has been at 
 all familiar with the national capital for the last 
 twenty-five years will admit that there has been a 
 very decided improvement in the disinterestedness 
 of legislators and the freedom from venality and 
 corruption in Congress and the executive depart- 
 ments. But let us concede that there have been 
 abuses, as undoubtedly there have been, both in 
 the violations of law by great corporations, rail- 
 way and others, and in the evasion of the anti- 
 monopoly and trust laws. What is the remedy? 
 Is it not in taking measures to secure the main- 
 tenance and supremacy of the law? Is it not in 
 looking to those instrumentalities by which such 
 violations can be properly suppressed and pun- 
 ished ? And that is what so emphasizes the im- 
 portance of an improvement in our judicial pro- 
 cedure in this respect. Any suggestion that there 
 is any other remedy possible for preventing the 
 violation of law and these abuses than in the train- 
 ing and character of the individual on the one 
 hand, and in the strengthening of the arm of the 
 law by judicial procedure on the other, is vicious.
 
 A JUDGE ON THE BENCH 57 
 
 It may be that the enormous accumulation of 
 money in the hands of individuals has reached 
 such a point that it would be wiser to discourage 
 its continuance in the next generation by heavy 
 inheritance tax or other methods. Neither at the 
 common law nor under the Constitution is the 
 right of descent of property or of devising it an 
 inalienable right. It depends wholly upon the 
 legislature; and, therefore, if the legislature sees 
 fit to give a tendency to the division of fortunes, 
 and prevent their greater accumulation in the sec- 
 ond and third generations, there are ample means 
 under our present system, and without revolution- 
 ary methods, to bring this about. 
 
 But the point which I wish most to emphasize 
 at present is the duty of every one to discoun- 
 tenance at every point the suggestion that the 
 people at large are to take the law into their own 
 hands, and accomplish something by violent and 
 radical illegal action against the evils of present 
 society. This would be to substitute chaos for 
 a government of law. Law must be enforced 
 through the lawful executive and through the 
 lawfully constituted courts. 
 
 I fear that we must admit that there is not so
 
 58 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 strongly developed among our people the reverence 
 for law and the demand for its enforcement as 
 there is among our Anglo-Saxon brethren across 
 the sea. Personal liberty and the rights of prop- 
 erty are rather more protected under the English 
 system than under ours. Newspaper libel is much 
 rarer in England than here, for Englishmen seem 
 to regard it as their duty to carry such a case into 
 court, and the newspaper is usually mulcted if any 
 license is taken with their reputations. In this 
 country the abuse of the privileges of the press, 
 in holding up to unjust criticism and sensational 
 condemnation many respectable members of the 
 community, has reached such a point that the in- 
 jured pass it over, accept it as a burden they must 
 bear, and decline to go into court. The delays 
 that the courts permit in working out the rights 
 of a litigant, and the length of time and the worry 
 that are taken up in litigation, all tend to frighten 
 the man out of court who has a just cause, and to 
 make him feel that it is better to abandon his 
 cause than to subject himself to the nervous strain 
 and the bitter disappointment of trying to secure 
 a prompt hearing and decision. 
 
 The remedy for these defects is both legislative
 
 A JUDGE ON THE BENCH 59 
 
 and executive. The defects exist less in the Fed- 
 eral courts, as I have explained, than in the State 
 courts; and that is sufficient to indicate that the 
 nearer our State courts approximate to the Federal 
 courts in procedure and in the power of the judge, 
 the more certainty is there of an improvement in 
 the judicial administration in this country. The 
 courts are the background of our civilization. The 
 Supreme Court of the United States is the whole 
 background of the Government. It is the body 
 to determine whether Congress is acting within 
 its constitutional limitations; to determine wheth- 
 er the Executive has exceeded his legal authority. 
 It is the last resort and the final tribunal. Its 
 power rests not upon its marshals or its con- 
 stables, not upon an army under its control or 
 a navy whose battleships it may summon; but 
 its power and precedent rest upon the suprem- 
 acy of the fundamental law which it is its duty 
 to declare and to preserve, and whicli it is the 
 duty of every citizen to maintain at all hazards. 
 It is possible for the intelligent members of the 
 community to bring to bear their influence upon 
 legislatures to reduce, by a few well-drawn amend- 
 ments to the existing procedure, the chances of
 
 60 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 escape of criminals through the technical meshes 
 of the law. It is possible for intelligent members 
 of the community to exert, at all times and every- 
 where, an influence against the frequently ad- 
 vanced proposition that lynch law is justifiable. 
 It is possible to create among the good men of the 
 community a public sentiment, expressing itself 
 through the ballot-box and in other ways, in favor 
 of the supremacy of the law and in favor of the 
 punishment of wrong-doers. The exercise of such 
 an influence is one of the highest duties of citi- 
 zenship.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE DUTIES OF CITIZENSHIP VIEWED FROM 
 THE STANDPOINT OF COLONIAL ADMINIS- 
 TRATION 
 
 Me. President, and Gentlemen of Yale: 
 
 My subject to-night is, " The Duties of Citizen- 
 ship from the Standpoint of Colonial Administra- 
 tion." I shall treat this subject by reference to 
 the Philippine Islands, with which I am familiar, 
 which form the most important dependency we 
 have, and present the most difficult problems for 
 solution. 
 
 The first Americans to land in the Philippines 
 were the army and navy, together with those 
 venturesome business spirits that thrive best in 
 times of trouble and excitement, when the oppor- 
 tunities for making money quickly are good. The 
 experiences of our army and navy with Aguinal- 
 do's forces, the contempt which the Filipino army 
 manifested toward the American troops before the 
 beginning of hostilities between them, and the sub- 
 
 61
 
 62 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 sequent guerrilla warfare, all tended to create a 
 bitterness of feeling on the part of our soldiers 
 toward their Filipino opponents that could not but 
 be shared by the Americans who were on the is- 
 lands at that time. It was natural that every 
 defect and every weakness of the Filipino char- 
 acter should be dilated upon by the American 
 soldiers and by those who accompanied them. 
 The exigencies presented by the guerrilla war- 
 fare required an increase in the American forces, 
 until in July, 1900, there were upward of 
 65,000 American soldiers on the islands, and they 
 were stationed at 500 different posts. Their pres- 
 ence in the islands created so large a demand 
 for American supplies of food and drink and 
 other things, that the few American merchants, 
 the only ones familiar with the needs and demands 
 of the American soldiers, found themselves with 
 a business on their hands that they could hardly 
 take care of. Their profits were large. They had 
 no need, therefore, to look for other trade or 
 patronage. The necessity for cultivating the good- 
 will of the Filipinos for business purposes was 
 wholly absent, and the fact that their profitable 
 patrons were deeply imbued with hostility and
 
 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 63 
 
 contempt toward the native population put the 
 American merchants in the same frame of mind. 
 It was natural that the American newspapers, 
 whose editorial staffs were composed of men re- 
 cently in the battlefield, whose subscribers were 
 chiefly the soldiers, and whose advertisers were 
 the American merchants, should in their atti- 
 tude toward the Filipinos reflect the opinions of 
 their readers and patrons. The American soldier 
 knew little of the Spanish language, and still less 
 of the dialects of the country — the Tagalog, the 
 Visayan, and the Ilocano. His opportunity for 
 communication with the native was exceedingly 
 restricted. He said what he meant and meant 
 what he said. His manners were those of the 
 Anglo-Saxon, abrupt and blunt. The Filipino, on 
 the other hand, with a timidity born of years of 
 subordination under the Spanish regime, with 
 the Oriental tendency to speak that which his 
 auditor wishes to hear, and with the courtesy 
 which is innate in the race and has been increased 
 by the Spanish influence, used expressions which, 
 interpreted by Anglo-Saxon standards, were false 
 and deceitful, but which, interpreted by men 
 who understood the race, were nothing more than
 
 64 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 courteous commonplace. And so it was that the 
 American enlisted man, together with many 
 American officers and merchants, looked upon 
 every effort to cultivate the good-will of the na- 
 tives as love's labor lost; and, if pursued by the 
 Government, as likely to result in weakness and 
 to invite treachery. 
 
 The progress of the army in subduing the insur- 
 rection and establishing civil government enabled 
 us in two years to reduce the American soldiers 
 on the islands from 65,000 to about 15,000. The 
 Americans on the islands, outside of the army and 
 the civil servants, have not increased much in 
 number since 1900. The demand for American 
 goods and supplies from merchants on the islands 
 has therefore been much reduced with the with- 
 drawal of the army. The opportunity for large 
 profit on the part of the American merchants, so 
 long content with American trade only, has passed. 
 The only possible source of real business and real 
 trade which our merchants living on the islands 
 can now have is with the Filipino people. The 
 promotion of their material and intellectual wel- 
 fare will necessarily develop wants on their part 
 for things which in times of poverty they regard
 
 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 65 
 
 as luxuries, but which as they grow more educated 
 and wealthier become necessities. 
 
 The cultivation of the good-will of the Filipinos, 
 who thus may be made good customers, is the one 
 course which can create any market among the 
 people on the islands for American goods and 
 American supplies ; and, if this be true, a policy 
 which embitters and renders a whole people hos- 
 tile to the American merchants must necessarily 
 defeat all hopes of increasing the American busi- 
 ness. A merchant who sneers at his customer, who 
 calls him names, who turns his back upon him, 
 is not likely to keep him long as a customer. It 
 hardly needs a business man to see this ; a layman 
 may predict it with the utmost confidence. Under 
 these conditions in the Philippines it is not strange 
 that right under the noses of the American mer- 
 chants Spanish merchants, English merchants, 
 German merchants, and Swiss merchants do busi- 
 ness with the Filipinos. They are engaged in sell- 
 ing goods to the Filipino peoples and in exporting 
 their agricultural products from the islands. The 
 American merchants, feeling the pinch of a loss 
 of business, have been disposed to charge it to the 
 policy of the Government in declaring in favor of
 
 66 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 the policy of " the Philippines for the Filipinos." 
 They have heen looking for a scapegoat for their 
 lack of success in business, and they have selected 
 the Government and its policy as the chief object 
 of criticism. 
 
 This condition of affairs has been held up by 
 anti-imperialists as evidence of the utter unfit- 
 ness of the American to attempt colonial admin- 
 istration. With the engendering of this spirit, it 
 is urged that we cannot hope to create the belief 
 among the Filipinos that we are attempting to do 
 them good, and that we ought to give up the experi- 
 ment. But while such temporary manifestations 
 are not encouraging, it is full of consolation to read 
 in the lives of Lord Macaulay and Lord John Law- 
 rence and Lord Canning of the very great bitter- 
 ness with which all their policies for the ameliora- 
 tion of the native Indian were attacked by the 
 Englishmen who had settled in Calcutta; who in 
 their supreme self-satisfaction regarded the inter- 
 est of their class, numbering not more than 4,000 
 or 5,000, as of much greater importance than the 
 interest of the 300,000,000 East Indians. 
 
 I am not, however, discouraged by this first at- 
 titude of the American merchants in Manila and
 
 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 67 
 
 elsewhere on the islands toward the Filipinos, be- 
 cause a change to a more sensible view is already 
 at hand. There is now the strongest motive for 
 the American merchant to seek the good-will of 
 the Filipinos, in order to secure their business. It 
 is colossal egotism on the part of the American 
 who goes to the Philippines to suppose that the 
 Government of those islands must have its policy 
 affected solely by his interests. The United States 
 is attempting a solution of a most complex and 
 difficult problem. It has been forced into the 
 position of becoming a guardian of the archi- 
 pelago for the benefit of seven or eight millions of 
 people. It has felt it necessary in the discharge of 
 this trust to take charge of the islands and create 
 a government and maintain it. Its only pos- 
 sible justification for this course, according to its 
 own traditions and the principles upon which its 
 own structure rests, is that the people of the islands 
 are not now fit for self-government; that it owes 
 a duty to them of maintaining a government until 
 the time when they as a people, by actual sharing 
 in the government and by education, shall become 
 completely fitted to run their own political affairs. 
 In other words, the chief characteristic of the trust
 
 68 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 which we involuntarily assumed is that we must 
 conduct affairs in the Philippines with a view 
 solely to the interest of the Filipinos. 
 
 This is as far as possible from saying that 
 Americans may not go to the islands, may not en- 
 gage in industry of any kind, may not be induced 
 by hope of good profits to invest as much capital 
 as possible in enterprises tending to develop their 
 resources. Such a course is in the interest of the 
 islands, and should be encouraged by the Filipinos 
 themselves; and if the American on the islands 
 will only see his own real interest, he will unite 
 with the Government in an attempt to conciliate 
 the Filipinos as far as possible. It of course inter- 
 feres with the success of the Government in con- 
 vincing the Filipinos that the United States is 
 really not moved by selfish motives, but anxious to 
 promote the interest of the Filipino in every way, 
 to have the resident representatives of that country 
 occupy a position of hostility and contempt toward 
 the natives. I should say, therefore, that the first 
 duty of the American citizen who goes to the 
 Philippine Islands and lives there is to make him- 
 self as well acquainted with the Filipinos as he 
 can; to cultivate their good-will; to have them
 
 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 69 
 
 understand that the interests of the Filipinos are 
 paramount in determining the policy of the United 
 States toward the islands. 
 
 The next class of citizens whose duties we may 
 consider are the Filipinos themselves. By the 
 fundamental act of the Philippine Islands they 
 are made citizens of the Philippines. This is to 
 distinguish them from citizens of the United 
 States, who are entitled to certain constitutional 
 privileges for the exercise of which the Filipino 
 is not ready. With reference to his treatment by 
 every foreign government, the Filipino occupies 
 exactly the same position and is entitled to exactly 
 the same protection from our Government as an 
 American. 
 
 What is the duty of the Filipino citizen of the 
 Philippine Islands toward the insular Govern- 
 ment? He owes allegiance to the Government, 
 and is subject to the duties that citizens ordinarily 
 owe to the government that gives them protection 
 and looks after their governmental needs. It may 
 be admitted that there are many Filipinos who 
 would be very glad to have the rule of the Ameri- 
 can Government end, and a period of absolute 
 independence ensue. The people of the islands
 
 70 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 have no disposition to come under Japanese rule, 
 as has sometimes been suggested. The truth is, 
 the unfounded report that the United States ex- 
 pected to sell the islands to Japan aroused such 
 indignation as to show that the people much pre- 
 ferred the United States to Japan as a guardian. 
 The poor and ignorant among the Filipinos, who 
 number in all about ninety per cent, are not par- 
 ticularly interested as to what kind of a govern- 
 ment they have, provided they be let alone. They 
 are easily influenced by the educated of their own 
 race and easily aroused to follow the teachings of 
 any Filipino of influence and standing. But taken 
 as a class, if some one does not seek to excite them 
 they are quiet, peaceable, law-abiding, and not 
 interested in politics or government. 
 
 In the other ten per cent, however, there are 
 to be found educated persons who deem themselves 
 entirely fitted to carry on a government and to rule 
 the ninety per cent which I have described. What 
 ought a citizen of the Philippine Islands, with 
 these views, to do in respect to the Government? 
 Legally, of course, there is no doubt that he ought 
 to support the Government, or at least not attempt 
 to overthrow it; but in the interest of his people,
 
 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 71 
 
 and released from the obligations that the law 
 imposes upon him, how ought he to act? Is it 
 necessarily patriotism for him to plan to arouse 
 his people to an insurrection and destroy or make 
 as difficult as possible the government of the 
 islands by the United States, or is it his duty 
 to uphold the hands of the representatives of the 
 United States in doing the work which they are 
 sent there to do, to wit, that of guiding the islands 
 to peace and prosperity ? Of course it is difficult 
 for an Occidental to put himself in the place of 
 the Oriental, but I have had a good deal of 
 opportunity to study the Filipino people and to 
 understand in a dim but still somewhat compre- 
 hensive way the characteristics of the race. I 
 do not hesitate to say that the strong man among 
 them believes that the worst thing that could 
 happen to his country would be to have the United 
 States abandon it; that it is far better to go on 
 as proposed by us, under the sovereignty of the 
 Ignited States, with a gradual extension of the 
 electorate to the people who show themselves quali- 
 fied, and of the governing power to the electorate. 
 It cannot be hoped that a purely Filipino govern- 
 ment by the educated ten per cent would pursue
 
 72 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 a policy to lift the other ninety per cent into the 
 ruling class and share with them the political power 
 which the educated ten per cent expect to wield. 
 Indeed, that is exactly what many of the educated 
 ten per cent wish to avoid. They are in favor of 
 an oligarchy. 
 
 In an examination of the committee of the 
 so-called Independence party, conducted by the 
 Senators and Congressmen who took the Philip- 
 pine trip last summer, the leaders did not hesitate 
 to say that in their judgment the Philippine 
 people were quite ready for self-government, 
 because the ninety per cent were an obedient 
 serving class, while the ten per cent were a direct- 
 ing or governing class, in every way competent 
 to act as such, and thus were able to carry on an 
 excellent government. I need hardly say that 
 such a government would not meet the views that 
 we have as to what a government ought to be. 
 The ninety per cent would not be educated or 
 trained to become self-governing citizens, but 
 would remain in the status which they now oc- 
 cupy. It is absolutely true that most of those 
 who advocate independence, most of those whose 
 voices we hear echoed in Boston and elsewhere
 
 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 73 
 
 in the demand for freedom for the Philippines, 
 are persons who have not the slightest idea of 
 maintaining in the islands a popular government. 
 But it is said the oligarchical government is the 
 only kind of government for which the people 
 of the islands can ever be adapted. Even suppos- 
 ing this to be a plausible view, it is likewise true 
 that we could not depend on any stability in such 
 a government. The difficulty is that the govern- 
 ing class fall out so easily among themselves that 
 were we to permit the ten per cent to take charge 
 of the Government, we should find that there was 
 no cohesion in the governing class; that it would 
 divide up into factions; and that almost before 
 the Americans had left the islands there would be 
 internecine warfare and chaos that would require 
 the Americans to return. This is the reason why 
 the conservative members of the community are 
 satisfied with the fact that the American Govern- 
 ment has control over the islands, for they realize 
 that no other government in the world could be 
 as generous and as disinterested in its manage- 
 ment of the archipelago. Under such circum- 
 stances it seems to me to be the duty of a lover 
 of his race — a citizen of the Philippine Islands —
 
 74 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 to hold up the hands of the Americans engaged in 
 attempting to prepare all the people for the exer- 
 cise of gradually increasing political control. 
 
 The truth is that even the ten per cent of the 
 Filipinos who long for an oligarchy are in many 
 respects wholly unfitted to assume the great respon- 
 sibilities of government. They have had very lit- 
 tle experience; their views are expressed in ab- 
 stract principles. One witness of this class, 
 whom I summoned early in the days of our stay 
 on the islands, I asked to assist us in the mat- 
 ter of the tax laws and to say from what par- 
 ticular class and out of what particular prop- 
 erty taxes ought to be raised. He said he had 
 never given any consideration to that subject, 
 because he considered it a mere detail. Another 
 body of men of the Independence party, some 
 of whom appeared before the Congressmen, had 
 at an earlier day come to see me to secure per- 
 mission to organize a party for the obtaining of 
 independence by peaceable means. I attempted 
 to dissuade them from the task at that time be- 
 cause there were still guerrillas and robbers in 
 the field. I was afraid that in the organization 
 of such a party a great many physical-force men
 
 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 75 
 
 would become incorporated as members, and that 
 ultimately these very good gentlemen who made 
 the proposition to me might be brought under sus- 
 picion of the Department of Justice. They said 
 to me that they desired to present an argument 
 in favor of their plan of independence. They said, 
 in writing, that they were fit for self-government 
 because they had counted over the number of 
 offices — central, provincial, and municipal — and 
 had found that while the number was great, they 
 were able to select from the people of the islands 
 enough educated men to fill every office twice; 
 in other words, that if one shift failed for any 
 reasons to meet the requirements of office, then 
 there was another shift that could take their 
 places ; and with these two shifts they regarded it 
 as entirely practicable to carry on any sort of a 
 complicated government. The force of a sound, 
 safe public opinion they regarded as of slight 
 importance. 
 
 The men who are in favor of independence 
 are not the practical Filipinos. Ordinarily, men 
 of property, men of business, men who by the 
 virtues of providence and self-restraint and fore- 
 sight have succeeded in laying up fortunes, are
 
 76 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 convinced, as I have said, that it would be the 
 worst blow possible to the islands to have the 
 Americans leave them now. But the uncertainty 
 in this country as to what course the Government 
 intends to pursue — the impression in the islands 
 that the opposition party intends, when it gets 
 into control of this Government, to let the islands 
 go — has the effect of making every native in the 
 islands, who would otherwise speak out in favor 
 of a continuance of the present arrangement, anx- 
 ious lest a change may occur, and fearful of tak- 
 ing such a position that he may suffer when 
 independence is granted. 
 
 Finally I come to the question, What is the 
 duty toward the Philippine Islands of the Ameri- 
 can citizens making up the American electorate? 
 I have heard it stated that our people are get- 
 ting tired of the burden of governing those isl- 
 ands ; that the business which has come from them 
 has not been sufficient to justify the outlay that 
 we have made; and that any method of rid- 
 ding us of the responsibility for their govern- 
 ment will be adopted by the people. I differ 
 from this view. I think the American people 
 know that they did not seek the burden of carry-
 
 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 77 
 
 ing on the government of the Philippine Islands, 
 but that circumstances were such that they 
 could not escape it, and that their honor as a 
 people requires that they discharge the duties that 
 it involves. We are a great and a prosperous 
 nation. Here are eight millions of people in the 
 tropics, differing very much from our own, yet 
 with a capacity for development that justifies our 
 making the experiment of educating them — of 
 leading them on in governmental practice to see 
 if they cannot at length safely walk alone. 
 
 We have already done a great deal for the 
 Filipinos. We have organized a good government 
 there ; we have given them partial representation 
 in it, and we expect to give them a larger repre- 
 sentation next year by the election of a popular 
 assembly which shall be one branch of the gov- 
 erning legislature; we have been educating and 
 are now educating in the English language a half 
 million of the youth of the islands; we have 
 introduced health laws and enforced them; we 
 have suppressed ladronism, which was the bane 
 of the islands in Spanish days; we have elimi- 
 nated the question of the friars' lands. Owing 
 to causes beyond our control, we have not been
 
 78 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 able to bring about a period of great prosperity- 
 there; and of course in hard times it is difficult 
 to convince the people that the Government is 
 not in some way responsible for this. But we have 
 given the islands a good sound gold-standard cur- 
 rency; we have given them extended telegraph 
 and mail communications; and we are just now 
 about to begin, with Government encouragement, 
 the construction of some seven or eight hundred 
 miles of railway. 
 
 It is the duty of the citizen to look at this 
 experiment from the right standpoint; to under- 
 stand that we are not in the Philippines for the 
 purpose of making trade, but that we are there 
 to discharge the highest duty that one nation 
 can toward another people. It is very probable 
 that the trade between the Philippines and the 
 United States will increase to such proportions 
 as to make that particular trade useful to both 
 countries. But we cannot base our conduct or 
 action on such a motive. What we do in the 
 Philippines must rest on our national duty — a 
 duty which is the greater because of our pros- 
 perity and ability to discharge it. 
 
 This policy has been sustained in two national
 
 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 79 
 
 elections, and the question therefore arises, "What 
 is the duty of the other citizens of the United 
 States who have heretofore held aloof from such a 
 policy and denounced it ? Ought they not now to 
 hold up the hands of the Government and assist in 
 every way to make the experiment which, against 
 their will and against their express vote, the Gov- 
 ernment entered upon? Why should the anti- 
 imperialists, so called, now attempt to make what 
 we do in the Philippines a failure? Is it not 
 a small policy and an unpatriotic one? In the 
 beginning the attitude of the anti-imperialists and 
 their extreme statements and their apparent re- 
 joicing at American defeats undoubtedly con- 
 tinued the war of the insurrection a number of 
 months and probably a year beyond what it would 
 have been had the insurgents thought the whole 
 people was behind the Government. 
 
 It is frequently said that Congress cannot give 
 the time necessary for governing the Philippines ; 
 that it cannot consider their many needs; and 
 therefore that our government is not one adapted 
 to governing dependencies. I differ from this 
 view; and certainly the conduct of Congress 
 toward the Philippines does not justify the criti-
 
 SO FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 cism. A number of important acts have been 
 passed which have conferred power to govern the 
 islands on the Philippine Commission, subject 
 only to supervision by the Secretary of War. Con- 
 gress has been generally wise to put the power 
 where it ought to be — in Manila. 
 
 The truth is, considering the many obstructions 
 which we have had to overcome in building up 
 the Philippine Government and the Philippine 
 people, considering the dreadful agricultural de- 
 pression in the islands and the consequent finan- 
 cial depression, the present condition of the 
 islands is remarkable. One cannot hope to be 
 successful in government unless there comes every 
 little while a period of prosperity. We have not 
 had such a period since we have been in the 
 islands. One must feed a man's belly before he 
 develops his mind or gives him political rights. 
 The pendulum must swing in favor of the islands 
 and prosperity of some kind must come. It will 
 be greatly aided if free trade between the United 
 States and the islands should be established. 
 Whether this will happen in the present Con- 
 gress, I do not know. That it will come ulti- 
 mately, I am confident. That it ought to come
 
 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 81 
 
 at once, I am sure. When it does come, the 
 people of the islands will realize how much 
 America has done for them. Until that time we 
 must expect to be blamed for everything in the 
 shape of ill that comes to the islands and we 
 must expect to encounter complaints and criti- 
 cism from the Filipinos. But their attitude ought 
 not in the slightest degree to affect ours or to take 
 from us the sense of obligation that we should 
 put them on their feet. 
 
 The great principle to guide us is that we are 
 to govern the Philippine Islands in accordance 
 with the maxim " the Philippines for the Fili- 
 pinos." If in the course of a decade or a quarter 
 of a century an examination of all the legislation 
 of Congress shall reveal, as I hope it may, that 
 this was the motive which governed substantially 
 every act passed by that body, then it will form 
 a great exception in the history of the control of 
 dependent possessions by great nations. No one 
 has more admiration than I have for the thorough 
 and effective method of government pursued by 
 England with respect to her colonies, both those 
 which are quasi-independent and those which are 
 crown colonies absolutely under the control of an
 
 82 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 appointed government. But generally it will be 
 found that in those governments England has pur- 
 sued a policy of enlightened selfishness; has, so 
 far as she could, recouped herself for any expendi- 
 tures by the home Government; and has held 
 them primarily with a view to the improvement 
 of English trade. Her opium policy with respect 
 to Oriental colonies has not been controlled by 
 the highest and purest motives; and a large 
 part of the income which has done so much to im- 
 prove their material conditions, to build roads and 
 construct public works, can be traced directly to 
 this source. The spread of the use of opium 
 among her Oriental subjects is quite discourag- 
 ing, and a change in that part of her policy 
 ought to made. I do not mean to say that Eng- 
 land has not generally looked well after the ma- 
 terial comfort and growth and prosperity of her 
 subjects in tropical colonies, or that her govern- 
 ments have not always made for better civili- 
 zation, justice, and security of life and property. 
 She has established and conducted excellent gov- 
 ernments, maintained fine order, built magnificent 
 roads, and in every way made her countries fair 
 to look upon. I think it can hardly be said,
 
 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 83 
 
 however, that she has given great time to the 
 improvement of the individual among her tropical 
 peoples. She has not devoted as much money 
 or as much time as she should have devoted to 
 the education of her subjects and their prepara- 
 tion to take part in governmental matters. In 
 this respect her policy is exactly the opposite of 
 that which we have pursued in the Philippines; 
 and it is supported by the argument, drawn 
 from the experiences of men long accustomed to 
 deal with tropical races, that it is much wiser to 
 keep them in ignorance, to keep them subject to 
 control, than to give them by education ideas of 
 taking part in the government, which will merely 
 foment discussion and agitation which do not 
 work for the good of the whole number. 
 
 The most altruistic experiment which England 
 has attempted in the management of tropical races 
 is what she has done in Egypt, under Lord Cromer ; 
 and there she has worked wonders for the people 
 of Egypt. She has improved marvellously the 
 prosperity of the fellaheen by public works; she 
 has encouraged agriculture; she has introduced 
 schools and made some attempt at the education 
 of the Egyptians. The admiration of people who
 
 84 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 have visited Egypt for Lord Cromer's policy and 
 methods is certainly no greater than has been 
 justly deserved; but in the Philippines the prin- 
 ciple of our policy is far more advanced than that 
 of Lord Cromer's or of England's anywhere. It 
 may be that it is too far advanced ; it may be that 
 it is an experiment that is doomed to failure ; but 
 at any rate it is an experiment that it is wise for 
 us to make. We can afford to make it ; and if it 
 be a failure, we can afford to accept the responsi- 
 bility for the failure. That experiment is the 
 preparation, by education and by the gradual ex- 
 tension of practice in governmental matters, of a 
 tropical people who heretofore have not had any 
 practical experience in saying how they shall 
 themselves be governed. In beginning this experi- 
 ment and carrying it on, it must be understood 
 that there are certain things very much in our 
 favor, and that there are others which constitute 
 very serious obstacles to our success. 
 
 In the first place, we have a people, a tropical 
 people, to deal with, who as a people are the only 
 Christians in the Orient. That is, there are 
 seven millions out of eight millions who are Chris- 
 tians, and have been Christians under the influ-
 
 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 85 
 
 ence of Spain and the Roman Catholic Church 
 for upward of 250 years. This fact turns them 
 naturally to Europe and to America for their 
 ideals of virtue and of thought, and for their aims 
 and ambitions. This makes them far more sub- 
 ject to Western influence than the Mohammedans 
 or the Buddhists, both of whom regard the Chris- 
 tian religion with contempt and are to that ex- 
 tent proof against the civilizing ideas of modern 
 Europe and America. 
 
 Secondly, though the people are in a state of 
 Christian pupilage, of almost total ignorance, they 
 have an ambition, that it is easy to cultivate, to 
 take advantage of education. Nothing is more 
 inspiring, nothing gives more hope of the success 
 of what we are doing, than the interest which the 
 poor Filipinos, the " taos " as they are called, 
 manifest in having their children receive an edu- 
 cation in English. We have not now funds en- 
 abling us to educate more than twenty-five per 
 cent of the youth of school age in the islands; 
 but I am hoping that prosperity will increase the 
 funds available for education, and that Congress, 
 out of the abundance of this country, will be will- 
 ing to contribute as much as the Philippine Gov-
 
 86 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 ernment itself contributes, thus doubling the edu- 
 cational facilities. The great needs are primary 
 education and industrial education. Industrial 
 education is of greater importance there than in 
 this country, because it has a tendency to correct 
 a feeling which was left by the civilization of 
 Spain, and which is the greatest obstacle that has 
 to be overcome — the idea that labor is degrading 
 and an evidence of slavery. Industrial education 
 dignifies labor. 
 
 The parts of the earth which have been re- 
 tarded, the places where there is the greatest field 
 for progressive work, both material, intellectual, 
 and moral, are in the tropical countries. The 
 discoveries of medical science, the knowledge of 
 conditions that promote health, have improved to 
 such a point that it is much more practicable now 
 for people of the temperate zone to live an ex- 
 tended period in the tropics without injury to 
 health than it was a decade or two decades ago. 
 The land of the temperate zones is rapidly being 
 absorbed. Profit lies in the improvement of the 
 tropical countries; agriculture, mines, and other 
 sources of revenue are there; and it is inevitable 
 that in the next century the great progress of
 
 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 87 
 
 the world is to be made among tropical peoples 
 and in tropical countries. Therefore what we are 
 doing in the Philippines is merely a precursor 
 of what will be done in other lands near the 
 equator ; and if we demonstrate that it is possible 
 for people purely tropical to be educated and 
 lifted above the temptations to idleness and sav- 
 agery and cruelty and torpor that have thus far 
 retarded the races born under the equatorial sun, 
 we shall be pointing another important way to 
 improve the civilization of the world. 
 
 Hence it is that the value of the work we are 
 doing in the Philippines rises far above the mere 
 question of what the total of our exports and im- 
 ports may be for this year or for next year or 
 hereafter, or whether they are at present a burden. 
 The Philippine question is, Can the dominion of 
 a great and prosperous civilized nation in the tem- 
 perate zone exercise a healthful and positively 
 beneficial influence upon the growth and develop- 
 ment of a tropical people? What we have to do 
 is in a sense to change their nature ; it is to fur- 
 nish, by developing their physical and intellectual 
 wants, a motive for doing work which does not 
 exist under their present conditions. That this
 
 88 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 can be done I have no doubt, from what has al- 
 ready been done in the islands. But it is a ques- 
 tion of time and patience. The tropical peoples 
 cannot lift themselves as the Anglo-Saxons and 
 other peoples of the cold and temperate zones, 
 where the inclemency and rigors of the climate 
 demand effort and require labor, have lifted them- 
 selves. The struggle that these tropical peoples 
 must go through in reaching better things is far 
 more difficult; and its outcome must depend, in 
 my judgment, on the outside aid of friendly and 
 guiding nations. The principle which our anti- 
 imperialists seek to apply, that people must acquire 
 knowledge of self-government by independence, is 
 not applicable to a tropical people. We cannot 
 set them going in a decade and look to their future 
 progress as certain. We must have them for a 
 generation or two generations, or perhaps even 
 three, in order that our experiment with reference 
 to education, primary and industrial, shall have 
 its effect, and that our guiding hand, in teaching 
 them commonsense views of government, shall give 
 them the needed direction. It is supposed that if 
 the Democratic party comes into power it will give 
 up the islands and turn them over to the control
 
 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 89 
 
 of the people who inhabit them. I venture to pre- 
 dict — although prediction is dangerous — that the 
 Democratic party, should it come into power, 
 would not assume this responsibility, but would 
 proceed on practically the same lines as have been 
 followed hitherto. Such a result would be de- 
 sirable, because then it would be shown that both 
 political parties were in favor of the policy which 
 has been instituted, and that the people of our 
 country would unite in a great and successful 
 effort for the benefit of humanity.
 
 IV 
 
 THE DUTIES OP CITIZENSHIP VIEWED FROM 
 THE STANDPOINT OP THE NATIONAL 
 EXECUTIVE 
 
 Mk. Peesident, and Gentlemen of Yaee : 
 
 The subject of my remarks this evening is, 
 " The Duties of Citizenship from the Standpoint 
 of the National Executive." 
 
 The administration — the President and his 
 cabinet officers and others who are part of it — 
 naturally thinks that the first duty of a citizen 
 with reference to the national Executive is to hold 
 up its hands and support all of its policies, and 
 be properly tender and gentle in dealing with its 
 defects, suspected or proven. It is easy for the 
 administration to fall into the view that criti- 
 cisms of its policy and misrepresentations with re- 
 spect to what it has done, or has not done, seri- 
 ously affect the work of the Government and 
 interfere with doing it well. When a man has 
 great executive responsibility, and finds that his 
 
 90
 
 THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE 91 
 
 plans are more or less interfered with by "what ho 
 regards as the extravagances and injustices of the 
 press, there is an unconscious disposition on his 
 part to believe that a restriction of the license 
 of the press would be a very excellent thing, and 
 that it would prevent the driving away from his 
 moral support of the sympathy and assistance of 
 the public, which are essential to the ultimate 
 success of the plans that he has made for the pub- 
 lic good. These demands for restriction of the 
 press are likely to be more unreasonable and ex- 
 treme in such a place as the Philippines or Porto 
 Rico, where misrepresentations and criticisms are 
 of vastly more importance, because in those places 
 the views of the native population of particular 
 matters affect the success of governmental meas- 
 ures more directly than they can in this country. 
 We are anxious, of course, to impress the Filipinos 
 with our disinterestedness and desire for their 
 good. The American press of Manila has fre- 
 quently been bitter in its denunciation of the en- 
 tire Philippine people, and has stirred up among 
 them a feeling that we are hypocrites, and that 
 there is no real friendliness on our part toward 
 them. Yet every effort to secure by legal proceed-
 
 92 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 ings a restraint of the license of the press, or the 
 extravagances and misrepresentations of an ir- 
 responsible editor or newspaper proprietor in 
 Manila, is a great deal worse than the evil from 
 which the complaint arises; because it dignifies 
 the issue at once into that of freedom of the press, 
 and makes the man who is prosecuted or in any 
 way brought into court a martyr for the cause of 
 free speech. It is vastly better, if the Executive 
 only realizes the truth, that the injustice, com- 
 ment, and unjust criticism, and the deliberate 
 misrepresentations that sometimes do characterize 
 articles in the newspapers, should be left to lose 
 their effect by the gradual discovery of the ac- 
 tual facts, and of the injustice of the criticism, 
 in the events which follow. This duty of citi- 
 zenship not to criticise public servants unjustly 
 and not to misrepresent the character of their 
 commissions and omissions is of course an im- 
 portant one; a violation of it is frequently a 
 serious hindrance to the accomplishment of valu- 
 able results from a patriotic and governmental 
 standpoint; but while headlines seem outrageous, 
 and while articles seem to be fraught with great 
 and vicious results, because they are untruthful
 
 THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE 93 
 
 and exaggerated and sensational, the evil neutral- 
 izes itself. Our people are intelligent and keen. 
 They are ahle after experience to gauge the impor- 
 tance to be attached and the confidence to be ac- 
 corded to statements so extreme that they bear 
 between their lines the refutation of what they 
 express. The press is essential to our civilization 
 and plays an unofficial but vital role in the affairs 
 of government. The discipline of a fear of pub- 
 licity, the restraining and correcting influence of 
 the prospect of fearless criticism, are of much 
 value in securing a proper administration of pub- 
 lic affairs. The exercise of power without danger 
 of criticism produces an irresponsibility in a pub- 
 lic officer which, even if his motives are pure, 
 tends to negligence in some cases and arbitrary 
 action in others. 
 
 Speaking from a Washington standpoint, the 
 standard of newspaper correspondents at the na- 
 tional capital, representing all the great dailies 
 and all the press associations, is on the whole a 
 high one ; higher, I think, than that of any other 
 newspaper men, as a class, that I know. Such 
 men, when they have established the right to have 
 it, as most of them have, share the confidence of
 
 94 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 Senators, of the leading members of Congress, of 
 the Cabinet, and even of the President himself; 
 and they are most careful to observe the lines 
 which are laid down in these confidences, re- 
 straining the extent of their publication. The 
 amount of information that the Washington cor- 
 respondents have which they do not give to the 
 public would surprise most men not familiar with 
 affairs in the nation's capital. The truth is that 
 the partisan character of despatches that are seen 
 in some newspapers is determined rather by in- 
 structions from headquarters that by any dis- 
 position of the correspondents themselves to give 
 a colored account of the facts. 
 
 Another topic that perhaps deserves considera- 
 tion here, in discussing the duty of the citizen 
 toward the national administration, is the suppres- 
 sion of personal feelings in questions of foreign 
 policy. How far, when this nation is dealing with 
 other nations, either in making treaties, or in mat- 
 ters likely to lead to a war, or in actual war, ought 
 a citizen, disregarding all party considerations, to 
 stand by his own government and hold up its hands 
 in achieving a successful result? It would be 
 going very far to say that no matter how unjust
 
 THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE 95 
 
 a war there ought to be no criticism by American 
 people of the conduct of the administration in 
 such a crisis. In a free government the right 
 and duty to criticise that which is plainly wrong 
 obtain and ought to obtain, no matter how critical 
 the situation with respect to an international 
 controversy. But I submit that the natural atti- 
 tude of the partisan toward the administration, at 
 times when the country's welfare in war or in 
 approaching war is at stake, should be laid aside ; 
 that the presumption should be indulged that 
 our country is right in its contentions and that 
 its opponent is wrong, unless the attitude of our 
 country is so indefensible that it is impossible 
 to avoid condemnation of those who are respon- 
 sible for it. Nothing so interferes with the suc- 
 cess of a nation in carrying out international 
 matters as a fire in the rear by part of its own 
 people. Everything that is said of that char- 
 acter is at once repeated in the newspapers and 
 public prints of the opposing nation, and strength- 
 ens it in its unyielding attitude toward our con- 
 tentions. I remember that in an article on this 
 subject Secretary Olney deprecated the spirit of 
 partisanship that was developed in many of the
 
 96 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 newspapers and magazines of this country in in- 
 ternational matters as compared with the conduct 
 of opposition newspapers in such crises in Eng- 
 land. Of a similar character is the position taken 
 by some with respect to our attempt to set up and 
 maintain a government for the benefit of the 
 Filipinos in the Philippines. This I mentioned 
 last night. If our policy there is to be unsuc- 
 cessful — as I hope and believe it will not be — 
 this result can be charged largely to the agita- 
 tion, unreasonable, bitter, partisan, altogether un- 
 just, of the so-called anti-imperialists; who seek 
 not merely to criticise and bring to the public 
 mind most unfair statements of the defects of 
 our policy and its failure, but deliberately to 
 embarrass us with the people of the Philippine 
 Islands in everything that we attempt to do. 
 There are instances in which the spirit of op- 
 position to the policy of the Government was 
 originally roused by entirely sincere and proper 
 motives, but in which there has been developed 
 a bitterness of feeling until all fair judgment has 
 disappeared and there is substituted an intense 
 desire that the arguments in opposition to the 
 policy shall be vindicated by the proof of abuses
 
 THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE 97 
 
 and by failure of the policy. This attitude, which 
 I may call unjudicial and unpatriotic, interferes 
 materially with our success in conciliating the 
 Filipino people, because they are very responsive 
 to any report and have no sense of proportion in 
 judging of the credibility and weight to be given 
 to such partisan statements. In this country any 
 such attitude or course of conduct is unpopular, 
 and is generally rebuked at the polls. 
 
 One of the chief reasons for the misjudging 
 of the characters of rulers of nations is the 
 failure of the critics, the historians, and the peo- 
 ple themselves fully to appreciate the actual limi- 
 tations and restrictions upon the exercise of a sup- 
 posedly unlimited governing power. The most 
 absolute monarch has limitations upon his freedom 
 of action that are little understood except by those 
 who are on the ground and close enough to him 
 and his daily walks of life to understand how 
 the circumstances hem in the exercise of his 
 discretion, limit him in that which he would like 
 to do, and prevent absolutely his carrying out 
 the ideals which as a free man he would be 
 glad to follow. The same thing is in a much 
 greater degree true of the power of the Presi-
 
 98 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 dent and of the members of the administration. 
 Take for instance the appointing power. A mem- 
 ber of a community remote from the capital, 
 studying politics from the standpoint of entire 
 indifference, with the critical faculty well de- 
 veloped, wonders that a president, with high 
 ideals and professions of a desire to keep the 
 government pure and have efficient public ser- 
 vants, can appoint to an important local office 
 a man of mediocre talent and of no particular 
 prominence or standing or character in the com- 
 munity. Of course the President cannot make 
 himself aware of just what standing the official 
 appointed has. He cannot visit the district; he 
 cannot determine by personal examination the 
 fitness of the appointee. He must depend upon 
 the recommendations of others ; and in matters of 
 recommendations as indeed of obtaining office, 
 frequently it is leg muscle and lack of modesty 
 which win, rather than fitness and character. The 
 President has assistance in making his selection, 
 furnished by the Congressmen and the Senators 
 from the locality in which the office is to be filled ; 
 and he is naturally quite dependent on such 
 advice and recommendation. He is made the
 
 THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE 99 
 
 more dependent on this because the Senate, by 
 the Constitution, shares with him the appointing 
 power. It is true that strictly and technically 
 speaking he has the initiative and the Senate only 
 the ratifying or confirming power ; but practically, 
 because of the knowledge of the Senators of the 
 locality, the appointing power is in effect in 
 their hands subject only to a veto by the Presi- 
 dent; and the Senators in turn are hampered, 
 first, by the fact that many competent and prom- 
 inent men will not accept the places, and again 
 by the fact that under our political system there 
 is much pressure on them to recognize the party 
 services of men who are more active as politicians 
 than they are successful as business men. On 
 the whole, I think the character of the Federal 
 employees the country over is excellent; but of 
 course there are exceptions, and it is the ex- 
 ceptions upon which the criticism of an admin- 
 istration is based, and properly based, because the 
 number of the exceptions determines the care 
 with which all such appointments are made. 
 
 This naturally leads to the consideration of 
 a limitation upon the policies which the President 
 may favor or undertake. Under our system of
 
 100 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 politics the President is the head of the party 
 which elected him, and cannot escape responsi- 
 bility either for his own executive work or for 
 the legislative policy of his party in both Houses. 
 He is, under the Constitution, himself a part 
 of the legislature in so far as he is called upon 
 to approve or disapprove acts of Congress. A 
 president who took no interest in legislation, 
 who sought to exercise no influence to formulate 
 measures, who altogether ignored his responsi- 
 bility as the head of the party for carrying out 
 ante-election promises in the matter of new laws, 
 would not be doing what is expected of him by 
 the people. In the discharge of all his duties, 
 executive or otherwise, he is bound to a certain 
 extent to consult the wishes and even the preju- 
 dices of the members of his party in both Houses, 
 in order that there shall be secured a unity of 
 action by which necessary progress may be made 
 and needed measures adopted. I need hardly 
 point out, for I have already referred to it in my 
 first lecture, the absolute necessity of parties in 
 a popular government, and the fact that efficiency 
 of government, other things being equal, is greatly 
 promoted by party uniformity and solidarity of
 
 THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE 101 
 
 opinion. In order to attain this unity of party 
 action, in order to make any progress for the 
 better, the administration is obliged to give up or 
 hold in abeyance measures that it would, other 
 things being equal, heartily approve; and, in a 
 series of compromises, it is bound to sacrifice some 
 of its aims in order to accomplish others more 
 important. Now it by no means follows that 
 this is on the whole not a useful condition in 
 government. \ Popular government must be a 
 series of compromises. I The resultant mean is 
 often better than the extreme which would be 
 reached if an administration were able to carry 
 out all its views. A conservative course is the 
 result of the very limitation imposed on the pro- 
 jected policies of the administration by the neces- 
 sity for conciliating the many different people 
 and interests that constitute controlling factors in 
 a party. It is doubtless true that under our gov- 
 ernment of the people things are not done that 
 ought to be done ; but on the other hand, if these 
 restraining influences were absent, we might be 
 led into extreme measures which would be disas- 
 trous in their results.l 
 
 The policy of those responsible for the national
 
 102 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 administration in any respect must be judged as 
 a whole, after sufficient time has elapsed to meas- 
 ure properly what has been done. It is a very 
 unsafe and unfair thing to judge a single act and 
 its probable bearing on the rest of a policy of the 
 administration; and fortunately the people under- 
 stand this fact. In the end, the judgment of the 
 people is probably as safe and fair as any judg- 
 ment could be, for they take the administration 
 of public affairs by and large; and while they do 
 not always credit men with the highest and purest 
 motives, and recognize that there is much human 
 nature in man, they are not searching for reasons 
 for distrusting the good faith and the desire for 
 good government in their public servants. 
 
 One of the encouraging experiences of men who 
 live in Washington and are close to the main- 
 springs of national policy, both in Congress and 
 in the Executive, is to find how much less in- 
 fluential are private interests in the matter of 
 legislation and executive action than is generally 
 held by critics who are not familiar with the 
 situation. The hard work that is done by men 
 whose bugles are not blown, the effort that there 
 is on the part of legislators and executive officials
 
 THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE 103 
 
 to subserve the public interest, cannot be known 
 except by intimacy with public affairs. I do not 
 mean to deny that at times private and special 
 interests do, in fact, exercise an influence to the 
 extent of defeating needed legislation; but in the 
 end, though it may take one or two or three Con- 
 gresses, the sense of public duty and the clearness 
 of vision that discussion and deliberation give 
 ultimately bring about the kind of legislation 
 which the people want, formulated by those whose 
 interest in the public welfare is sincere. 
 
 Of course there is a kind of influence at Wash- 
 ington that disfigures legislation and retards exec- 
 utive action of general importance and interest; 
 an influence exercised by those who prefer what 
 they suppose to be the interest of a locality or dis- 
 trict to the interest of the nation at large. The 
 people of congressional districts and of States 
 compete with each other through their representa- 
 tives in Congress and in the Senate to shape na- 
 tional legislation for local advantage; to secure 
 the investment of national funds in public works 
 and the construction of military posts and other 
 great governmental institutions in one part of the 
 country instead of another. It is impossible that
 
 104 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 these influences should not be exerted, and they 
 do more or less affect the efficacy of measures 
 adopted for a national purpose. But these are 
 incidents inevitable in the character of the gov- 
 ernment that we have; they are inherent in our 
 system; and with the great benefits that proceed 
 from the popular basis of our government, we may 
 well put up with some inconveniences and minor 
 obstacles to the most efficient national administra- 
 tion. 
 
 One of the facts that is not often made prom- 
 inent is that in our Government at Washington 
 there is an entity distinct in many ways from 
 the President and Cabinet officers charged with 
 the responsibility of the executive policies, and 
 distinct from Congress charged with the respon- 
 sibility of the legislative policies. For one hun- 
 dred and thirty years, since the beginning of the 
 Constitution, we have been perfecting the admin- 
 istrative departments of the Government. Most 
 of the positions in these departments now are 
 filled by selection under the civil-service law or 
 by promotions from positions thus filled. We have 
 a complicated structure, which has grown with 
 the needs of the Government; it is an enor-
 
 THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE 105 
 
 mous machine, so officered and adjusted that it 
 would run itself with great efficiency without a 
 President and without a Cabinet and without 
 Congress, except for the lack of the appropriation 
 of the money necessary to pay the cost. It is an 
 organization whose members have been trained by 
 long experience, and now, under the civil-service 
 law which prevents their being made the foot- 
 ball of politics and secures to them a permanent 
 tenure of office, are put in a position of im- 
 partiality and indifference to other considerations 
 than those of the efficiency of governmental work. 
 They are, it is true, affected more perhaps than 
 they need be by the traditions as to how govern- 
 mental work has been done from the beginning, 
 but my experience with this machine in two de- 
 partments is that generally this routine part of 
 the life of the Government (and it makes up 
 > ninety-five hundredths of that life) is carried on 
 by men who have an eye single to the interests 
 of the Government and to the conduct of its 
 affairs according to law and according to the pub- 
 lic interests. The civil-service law has now been 
 in operation more than a quarter of a century, 
 and, although violated at first, it has come to be
 
 106 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 more and more regarded as essential to the life 
 of the Government; and it has finally made the 
 organization to which I refer indifferent to party- 
 changes and unaffected by them, and has greatly 
 increased the certainty of proper administra- 
 tion. 
 
 I do not mean by what I have said to mini- 
 mize the importance of the position of the Presi- 
 dent or of the heads of the departments in the 
 administration of public affairs. The heads have 
 to determine in many instances important ques- 
 tions of broad policy; but the aggregate of these 
 questions is quite small in proportion to those 
 which arise every day and have to be decided by 
 men who from long training are even better able 
 to decide them than their superiors who control 
 the administration. Of course the influence that 
 the heads of an administration may have upon 
 the whole civil service is very great, if the de- 
 termination of the heads of the Government that 
 the administration shall be pure and shall not 
 be affected injuriously by partisan or other undue 
 influence is well understood. It strengthens the 
 body of permanent civil servants in their good 
 work and secures from them a closer adherence to
 
 THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE 107 
 
 the public interests and to the best traditions of 
 the service. 
 
 This Government, as you know, is divided into 
 
 three departments — the executive, the legislative, 
 
 and the judicial. It is frequently charged that 
 
 the tendency of the modern Executive is to usurp 
 
 the functions of Congress by seeking to control 
 
 and influence legislation in violation of the spirit 
 
 of the Constitution. I have already pointed out 
 
 the constitutional participation in legislation by 
 
 communications to Congress and by the exercise 
 
 of the veto power, with which the Executive is 
 
 expressly vested; and I have also attempted to 
 
 show what, under our system of politics, are 
 
 the position and obligation of the President as 
 
 head of the party through whose instrumentality 
 
 he must accomplish any progress dependent on 
 
 affirmative legislation. The party traditions not 
 
 only justify but require him to take an active 
 
 interest in it, and so to unify the members of his 
 
 party as to secure that solidarity without which 
 
 initiative for good is quite impracticable. 
 
 History does not bear out the charge that there 
 is any usurpation by the Executive of legislative 
 functions. On the contrary the tendency is ex-
 
 108 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 actly the other way. Congress in its legislation 
 has frequently failed to recognize a thing which 
 the Constitution certainly intended, to wit: free- 
 dom of discretion in executive matters for the 
 Chief Magistrate and his subordinates. I need 
 not go back of the Tenure of Office Act, passed 
 by Congress in the administration of President 
 'Johnson, by which it was attempted to limit ma- 
 terially the power of appointment that the Presi- 
 dent certainly has under the Constitution. The 
 act was repealed after Mr. Johnson went out of 
 office, and I think it is generally recognized now 
 that it was an undue stretch of legislative power. 
 I do not mean to deny that the line between 
 proper legislative limitation upon the mode of 
 exercise of executive power and unconstitutional 
 restriction is sometimes very difficult to draw; 
 but the danger that the Executive will ever exceed 
 his authority is much less than the danger that 
 the Legislature will exceed its jurisdiction. The 
 Commons of England won freedom and brought 
 about a popular government through its insist- 
 ence upon holding the purse-strings ; and the Con- 
 gress of the United States has exactly that con- 
 trol over the Executive which enables it at all
 
 THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE 109 
 
 times to restrain the exercise of executive power 
 by withholding the appropriations absolutely nec- 
 essary to the exercise of executive power at all. 
 With that dependence upon Congress, the execu- 
 tive branch can never be untrammelled in the 
 conduct of public affairs. It is always respon- 
 sible to Congress to explain what it has done with 
 the money already appropriated, and it must al- 
 ways make a showing of the money needed for 
 executive work during the next ensuing year. In 
 other words, the Executive is always a petitioner 
 at the door of Congress for the money necessary 
 to carry on public affairs; and as long as that 
 relation exists the frequently expressed fear that 
 the Executive is overshadowing the Legislature is 
 merely imaginative — useful for glowing periods 
 and party platforms, but for nothing else. 
 
 Life in Washington leads most men who are 
 impartial and who take broad views of affairs 
 to a condition of reasonable optimism as to the 
 progress toward better things. The account that 
 one receives of the defects of earlier administra- 
 tions and the corruption that at times prevailed 
 shows that we have made great improvement ; and 
 it is not unfair to say that there is a high standard
 
 110 FOUR ASPECTS OF CIVIC DUTY 
 
 of morality and public conduct throughout all the 
 departments and the executive and legislative 
 branches of the Government. I do not mean to 
 deny that there are individual instances of neglect 
 of public duty and possibly of corrupt methods; 
 but, on the whole, one who is familiar with the 
 workings of the Government at Washington may 
 well take heart and courage at the general level of 
 good and honest legislation. Efficiency of adminis- 
 tration has been greatly promoted by the widening 
 of the application of the civil-service law; which 
 has so reduced the calls upon the time of the heads 
 of the departments and the President that they are 
 able to give to matters of public interest a great 
 deal of time which before the enactment of this 
 law was taken up in discussing the merest details 
 as to the selection of clerks. 
 
 There has been a question mooted whether it 
 would not be wiser to allow Cabinet officers to take 
 part in the debates of Congress, as do the Eng- 
 lish parliamentary executive leaders, who are 
 really elected as legislators to begin with and are 
 selected as executives afterward. I am inclined 
 to think that it might aid much the deliberations 
 of Congress if such a policy were adopted, but
 
 THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE 111 
 
 there are inconveniences connected with it that 
 perhaps will forever prevent a change of this 
 character. 
 
 The disposition of the Legislature to investi- 
 gate and criticise executive action is one of the 
 most important influences toward a better gov- 
 ernment that exists in our system. Investiga- 
 ting committees of Congress are always at work; 
 and the fear of such investigations, the fear of 
 just criticisms on the floor of either House, has 
 a most salutary and restraining effect upon the 
 naturally wasteful and somewhat arbitrary dis- 
 position of human nature in the exercise of power. 
 On the whole, when one looks into the system of 
 government at Washington and regards it from 
 the standpoint of an impartial, tolerant citizen and 
 critic, taking into consideration all the limitations 
 of structure and constitution which prevent any 
 government from becoming a perfect machine, he 
 cannot but reach the conclusion that we are a for- 
 tunate people, who have progressed far in the 
 development of an efficient public service and 
 in vindicating the theory of popular sovereignty.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 1Q72 
 
 MAR 1 9 1972 
 
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