imperfectly raise an outcry against the President for consulting the Senators in matters of appointment, and even talk about the Senators "usurping" his functions. These men labor under a misapprehension. The Senate has no right to dictate to the President who shall be appointed, but they have an entire right to say who shall not be appointed, for under the Constitution this has been made their duty.

In practice, under our party system, it has come to be recognized that each Senator has a special right to be consulted about the appointments in his own State, if he is of the President's political party. Often the opponents of the Senator in his State do not agree with him in the matter of appointments, and sometimes the President, in the exercise of his judgment, finds it right and desirable to disregard the Senator. But the President and the Senators must work together, if they desire to secure the best results.

But although many men must share with the President the responsibility for different individual actions, and although Congress must of course also very largely condition his usefulness, yet the fact remains that in his hands is infinitely more power than in the hands of any other man in our country

during the time that he holds the office; that there is upon him always a heavy burden of responsibility; and that in certain crises this burden may become so great as to bear down any but the strongest and bravest man.

It is easy enough to give a bad administration; but to give a good administration demands the most anxious thought, the most wearing endeavor, no less than very unusual powers of mind. The chances for error are limitless, and in minor matters, where from the nature of the case it is absolutely inevitable that the President should rely upon the judgment of others, it is certain that under the best Presidents some errors will be committed. The severest critics of a President's policy are apt to be, not those who know most about what is to be done and of the limitations under which it must be done, but those who know least.

In the aggregate, quite as much wrong is committed by improper denunciation of public servants who do well as by failure to attack those who do ill. There is every reason why the President, whoever he may be and to whatever party he may belong, should be held to a sharp accountability alike for what he does and for what he leaves undone. But we injure ourselves and the nation

if we fail to treat with proper respect the man, whether he is politically opposed to us or not, who in the highest office in our land is striving to do his duty according to the strength that is in him.

We have had Presidents who have acted very weakly or unwisely in particular crises. We have had Presidents the sum of whose work has not been to the advantage of the Republic. But we have never had one concerning whose personal integrity there was so much as a shadow of a suspicion, or who has not been animated by an earnest desire to do the best possible work that he could for the people at large. Of course infirmity of purpose or wrong-headedness may mar this integrity and sincerity of intention; but the integrity and the good intentions have always existed. We have never had in the Presidential chair any man who did not sincerely desire to benefit the people and whose own personal ambitions were not entirely honorable, although as much cannot be said for certain aspirants for the place, such as Aaron Burr.

Corruption, in the gross sense in which the word is used in ordinary conversation, has been absolutely unknown among our Presidents, and it has been exceedingly rare in our Presidents' Cabinets. Inefficiency, whether due to lack of will-power,

sheer deficiency in wisdom, or improper yielding either to the pressure of politicians or to the other kinds of pressure which must often be found even in a free democracy, has been far less uncommon. Of deliberate moral obliquity there has been but very little indeed.

In the easiest, quietest, most peaceful times the President is sure to have great tasks before him. The simple question of revenue and expenditure is as important to the nation as it is to the average household, and the President is the man to whom the nation looks and whom it holds accountable in the matter both of expenditure and of revenue. It is an entirely mistaken belief that the expenditure of money is simply due to a taste for recklessness and extravagance on the part of the people's representatives.

The representatives in the long run are sure to try to do what the people effectively want. The trouble is that although each group has, and all the groups taken together still more strongly have, an interest in keeping the expenditures down, each group has also a direct interest in keeping some particular expenditure up. This expenditure is usually entirely proper and desirable, save only that the aggregate of all such expenditures may

be so great as to make it impossible for the nation to go into them.

It is a great deal the same thing in the nation as it is in a State. The demand may be for a consumptive hospital, or for pensions to veterans, or for a public building, or for an armory, or for cleaning out a harbor, or for starting irrigation. In each case the demand may be in itself entirely proper, and those interested in it, from whatever motives, may be both sincere and strenuous in their advocacy. But the President has to do on a large scale what every Governor of a State has to do on a small scale, that is, balance the demands on the Treasury with the capacities of the Treasury.

Whichever way he decides, some people are sure to think that he has tipped the scale the wrong way, and from their point of view they may conscientiously think it; whereas from his point of view he may know with equal conscientiousness that he has done his best to strike an average which would on the one hand not be niggardly toward worthy objects, and on the other would not lay too heavy a burden of taxation upon the people.

Inasmuch as these particular questions have to be met every year in connection with every session of Congress and with the work of every depart