political creed was a mockery if it did not square itself by his religion. Fortunately he convinced all those who cared to be convinced that the Sermon on the Mount, the Golden Rule and the Constitution of the United States were all legitimate guides for the politician. He overthrew the machine, but he took no more than was his right as a citizen, no more than, as a Christian, it was his duty to take.

When he reached the halls of legislation at Albany he found a thoroughly established doctrine that the Bible and the Bill of Rights were to be left in the anteroom. He found that corruption had come to be recognized as a necessary factor in the securing of even wise and needed legislation. Before he left the State capital he had established the principle that an honest man who has the courage of his convictions and the strength that should crown an American legislator can secure the passage of laws without the use of bribery, and defeat bad measures without employing violence.

When he assailed the spoils system he needed but the simple doctrines that he had learned from the New Testament and the catechism. Those to whom he talked confessed without reserve that

their policy and their practice were not in conformity with the doctrines of the Christian religion; and that, reduced to the last analysis, they were politically as well as religiously wrong. In their defense they may have insisted that practical government made it necessary to do some things which an exact construction of law and gospel would forbid; but he taught them that better government could be secured without wrong-doing; that every end toward which statesmen might justly strive was attainable along the paths of honesty, fidelity and truth. He had no use for principles which would not admit of realization in practice, and no faith in a practice which was not supported by manly and Christian principles.

In one of his essays he has declared that the two commandments that were particularly applicable in American public life were the eighth and the ninth: "Thou shalt not steal," and "Thou shalt not bear false witness." To take a thing which did not belong to him he regarded as stealing; and the fact that he was an elected official did not absolve him. The doctrine was a new one to the men whom he encountered in his earlier activity in public affairs. When he had

taught his associates a more stern and righteous code of morals, he had occasion to repel their charges of insincerity by telling them they should not violate the ninth commandment.

It must not be understood that Mr. Roosevelt was so strict a constructionist as to preclude the possibility of his securing practical results. Sometimes he found the best-the absolute right -not at the hour attainable; and he had as little patience with that band of irreconcilables who would have nothing unless they could have all, as he had for the graceless scamp who took without regard to title. "The weakling and the coward cannot be saved by honesty alone; but without honesty the brave and able man is simply a civic wild beast who should be hunted down by every lover of righteousness." He says in another place: "We need absolute honesty in public life; and we shall not get it until we remember that truth-telling must go hand in hand with it, and that it is quite as important not to tell an untruth about a decent man as it is to tell the truth about one who is not decent."

Yet, speaking of the extremists who would reject every tender of partial betterment as "a compromise with the Devil, a covenant with