ment of the eighth commandment upon the ground that it will "hurt business." 1

III

FROM the days when civilized man first began to strive for self-government and democracy, success in this effort has depended primarily upon the ability to steer clear of extremes. For almost its entire length the course lies between Scylla and Charybdis; and the heated extremists who insist upon avoiding only one gulf of destruction invariably land in the other and then take refuge in the meager consolation afforded by denouncing as "inconsistent" the pilot who strives to avoid both. Throughout past history Liberty has always walked between the twin terrors of Tyranny and Anarchy. They have stalked like wolves beside her, with murder in their red eyes, ever ready to tear each other's throats, but even more ready to rend in sunder Liberty herself. Always in the past there has been a monotonously recurrent cycle in the history of free states; Liberty has supplanted Tyranny, has gradually been supplanted by Anarchy, and has then seen the insupportable Anarchy finally overthrown and Tyranny reëstablished. Anarchy is always and everywhere the handmaiden of Tyranny and Liberty's deadliest foe. No people can permanently remain free unless it possesses the stern self-control and resolution necessary to put down anarchy. Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive; special privilege for the few and special privilege for the many are alike profoundly anti-social; the fact that un

1 From History as Literature. Copyright, 1913. Charles Scribner's Sons, publishers.

limited individualism is ruinous, in no way alters the fact that absolute state ownership and regimentation spells ruin of a different kind.1

IV

I HAVE come from the Atlantic across this continent to the Pacific. I have greeted many audiences. I see a little diversity, but, oh, my fellow citizens, what strikes me most and pleases me most is the fundamental unity, is the fact that wherever I go I speak to an audience of Americans, be they East or be they West. And I make the same appeal with the same confidence, here beside the Golden Gate, that I should make by the Great Lakes or in the upper Mississippi Valley or on the Atlantic Ocean. This is a government of freemen, who have achieved liberty under the law, who have, by force of arms as well as by legislation, established once for all, as the fundamental principle of our government, that there shall not in this country be license; that there shall not be in this country liberty to oppress without the law; that liberty and freedom shall come under and in pursuance of the law, of the law that is no respecter of persons, under a government that is a government neither for the rich man as such nor for the poor man as such, but for every man, rich or poor, if he is a decent man and does his duty to the State.2

1 From The Great Adventure. Copyright, 1918. Charles Scribner's Sons, publishers.

2 Address at Mechanics' Pavilion, San Francisco, California, May 11, 1903. From California Addresses by President Roosevelt. The California Promotion Committee, publishers.

II. PARTISANSHIP

I

PARTIES are good as instruments, and only as instruments. The thing that Americans should recollect is that what matters is not the opinions that divide them one from another so much as it is the great fundamentals upon which they are united. We must have our differences; and it would be a very unhealthy thing if all of us thought alike. We need the friction with people different from ourselves; and my experience with my fellow countrymen is that there will always be plenty of them who will think different ways. We need the intellectual differences that come from such friction, and we must resolutely, but with mutual respect and forbearance among ourselves, battle for our respective opinions. That is good and wholesome; but it is not merely good and wholesome, but vital, to remember that on the really great issues we must all unite.1

II

No man is a good American who is not, of course, an American first an American before he is a member of any section of the American people such as a party or a class. I hold that the only real service which a party man can render his party is to make that party more responsive to the needs of the American people.2

1 Speech at Sioux Falls, South Dakota, September 3, 1910. This and the succeeding excerpt are from The New Nationalism. Copyright, 1910. The Outlook Company, publishers.

2 Speech at Kansas City, Missouri, September 1, 1910.

III. RELIGION AND POLITICS

To discriminate against a thoroughly upright citizen because he belongs to some particular church, or because, like Abraham Lincoln, he has not avowed his allegiance to any church, is an outrage against that liberty of conscience which is one of the foundations of American life. You are entitled to know whether a man seeking your suffrages is a man of clean and upright life, honorable in all of his dealings with his fellows, and fit by qualification and purpose to do well in the great office for which he is a candidate; but you are not entitled to know matters which lie purely between himself and his Maker. If it is proper or legitimate to oppose a man for being a Unitarian, as was John Quincy Adams, for instance, as is the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, at the present moment Chaplain of the Senate, and an American of whose life all good Americans are proud then it would be equally proper to support or oppose a man because of his views on justification by faith, or the methods of administering the sacrament, or the gospel of salvation by works. If you once enter on such a career there is absolutely no limit at which you can legitimately stop.

So much for your objections to Mr. Taft because he is a Unitarian. Now, for your objections to him because you think his wife and brother to be Roman Catholics. As it happens, they are not; but if they were, or if he were a Roman Catholic himself, it ought not to affect in the slightest degree any man's supporting him for the

position of President. You say that "the mass of the voters that are not Catholics will not support a man for any office, especially for President of the United States, who is a Roman Catholic." I believe that when you say this you foully slander your fellow countrymen. I do not for one moment believe that the mass of our fellow citizens, or that any considerable number of our fellow citizens, can be influenced by such narrow bigotry as to refuse to vote for any thoroughly upright and fit man because he happens to have a particular religious creed. Such a consideration should never be treated as a reason for either supporting or opposing a candidate for a political office. Are you aware that there are several States in this Union where the majority of the people are now Catholics? I should reprobate in the severest terms the Catholics who in those States (or in any other States) refused to vote for the most fit man because he happened to be a Protestant; and my condemnation would be exactly as severe for Protestants who, under reversed circumstances, refused to vote for a Catholic. In public life I am happy to say that I have known many men who were elected, and constantly reëlected, to office in districts where the great majority of their constituents were of a different religious belief. I know Catholics who have for many years represented constituencies mainly Protestant, and Protestants who have for many years represented constituencies mainly Catholic; and among the Congressmen whom I knew particularly well was one man of Jewish faith who represented a district in which there were hardly any Jews at all. All of these men by their very existence in political life refute the slander you have uttered against your fellow Americans.