We are rather apt in England to over-estimate the power of the American President. That power is undoubtedly very great. The President is the head, to a large extent, the working head, of the army and navy; he has charge of the whole Federal administration and the appointment of ambassadors, consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, Cabinet Ministers-in fact of all the higher Federal officers -initiates in him; he may convene Congress in extraordinary session whenever he so pleases; his right of veto gives him the power to delay and at times to block any and every measure of which he disapproves; the conduct of foreign affairs, in all except its final phase, is under his immediate control: and virtually he is irremovable. It is with all this in their minds that Englishmen turn to Germany and the German Emperor for a parallel to the Presidential authority. But to all this there is another and less imposing side. The President selects officers and makes appointments, but it is the Senate that confirms or rejects them. The President concludes treaties, but, as we know only too well, a two-thirds majority in the Senate is required for their ratification. The President suggests legislation; it is for Congress to act on his suggestion or to disregard it,

as it wills. The President vetoes a measure, but it becomes law if both Houses by a two-thirds majority passit anew over his head. In fact the actual influence of the President on legislation is in many ways less than that of an English Prime Minister. Students of Constitutions will not need to be reminded of the cause of this. The "Sages of 1789" funked-there is no other word for it-a strong Executive. Whatever else the President might be, they took good care he should not be a George the Third. They were morbidly on the defensive against the evils of "one-man power," against anything that might give an opening to "monarchical ambitions." One consequence of this is that, in or. dinary times, the American form of administration is practically a conspiracy for doing nothing. The func tions and authority of each power in the State are so limited that no one person, no one body, is capable of leading either the nation or the Legislature, or framing and pursuing a continuous policy. Each organ of government, the Executive, the Legislature, the Judiciary, is made a jealous observer and restrainer of the others. The energy which under the English or Cabinet system is given up almost entirely to the work of legislation

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may also carry his point. Either way, the fact remains that his disabilities are as great as, if not greater than, his powers, and that the success of any Administration depends on the harmony that exists between Congress and the Executive. Mr. McKinley attained this harmony in a quite wonderful degree. He oiled the machinery of government with loving and imperturbable patience, and the wheels ran with an ease unknown since Washington's first term of office. His was a persuasive, accordant nature, far too much so, indeed, to admit of strong leadership. He hated to say No; it was a positive pain to him to disappoint anybody, to refuse a quest. Sooner than do so he allowed himself to be led occasionally into dubious paths. He was a man who outside Protection had few interests and fewer convictions; none, perhaps, that he would not have felt it a duty to sacrifice at the bidding of the people. He accepted fully and heartily the doctrine that the President should follow, and not attempt to lead, public opinion. The old tag, Vox populi, vox Dei, was more than an old tag to him; it was the guiding principle of his whole political life and policy, His ear was always to the ground because that was where he conceived it ought to be. The Presidential office he regarded as a sort of conduit-pipe between Congress and the electorate. Great things happened during his Presidency, but he can hardly be said to have presided over them. At best they flowed through him as through a funnel. His mind and temperament were altogether of the kind that asks for guidance and, when the oracles differ, strives hard to "solder close impossibilities and make them kiss," and is willing to wait in patience for the unmistakable cue. Once convinced of what the people wanted-and his instinct in such matters was all but in

fallible; he knew his countrymen as Palmerston knew Englishmen-Mr. McKinley would work overtime to see that they got it. But he had to know first; it was that that gave him confidence; he could not stand alone. His ways of dealing with Congress were such as sprang inevitably from his conception of the Presidential duties. They were those of adroit persuasion. He consulted everybody, humored everybody, put himself frankly in the hands of his friends, made the utmost use of his patronage as a gentle weapon of conciliation, and usually contrived to reach his goal. It was not done without some disturbance of the balance of power arranged by the Constitution. There were times when the Presidency as a controlling and directing authority seemed almost in abeyance, when one had to look in the Senate and among a favored group of "bosses" to find the real head of the United States. But as against this there were at least two compensations. Washington was at peace, and the wishes of the people got themselves translated into law with unexampled despatch.

Whatever else might be prophesied of President Roosevelt, it could at least be said with certainty that Mr. McKinley's methods would not be his. The two men stood at opposite poles, not of policy-rarely have a President and Vice-President been in such close political agreement-but of character and disposition. And in the White House it is personality rather than opinions that counts. The Presidency is a very human office, dependent for its influence at least as much on the man who occupies it as on its Constitutional prerogatives. No change could well be greater than that from the late to the present Chief Magistrate. All through his career Mr. Roosevelt has shown that the instinct for command is innate in him. Wher

is compact equally of positiveness and emotionalism. "Right thou feelest, rush to do," was the Emersonian formula for "freedom's secret." In a sense it is Mr. Roosevelt's too-less dangerous in him than in most men because of his background of solid Dutch caution and level-headedness. Mere feelings are never his guide; still less so are mere theories. There is no type that irritates him more, no type he has "scored" so mercilessly, as the men of impossible standards and extravagant ideals-a type more common than one would think in American and especially in New York politics. Himself as "practical" a politician, though in another way, as Mr. Croker, the intemperance that overshoots the mark is as intolerable to him as the indifference that does not even trouble to aim. Misguided effort is all but as abhorrent to his nature as no effort at all. Indeed, I am not sure that the over-civilized, hypercritical Mugwump does not rouse him more effectually than even the jeunesse dorée. He preaches "the strenuous life" in season and out of season, meaning by that not necessarily a life of bustle, hurly-burly, conflict, but simply honest, active endeavor in any sphere, Kant's life as much as Cromwell's, Darwin's equally with Lincoln's. But unless such life is regulated by judgment as well as labor, he has no use for it. His own temperament, though quickly and easily stirred, is essentially Whiggish, content to advance a step at a time, inexorable on vital points, but never tempted to extremes. One could hazard the man from his books or his books from the man. has a hard, confident, metallic texture, with little light or shade playing about it, yet strong in its rush and reso

His prose

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nance the prose of a man of action, blunt and utterly straightforward, clean-cut and sincere. Style and matter alike bespeak the man's mind. is, if I may say so, a bludgeon of a mind, healthily unoriginal and noncreative, of wide range and the closest of grips, and with a dogmatic turn for the common sense of things, a sane but hardly a deep mind, and used like a bludgeon for criticism, exhortation, attack. A man in many ways after Carlyle's own heart, who has "swallowed formulas," is transparently incapable of anything mean, underhand or equivocal, preaches and practices the gospel of work, and flinches before nothing. With all this, as Americans now realize, Mr. Roosevelt is far from impulsive. That he is a fighting, breezy type of man goes without saying; that now and then he will say the indiscreet thing, and sometimes even do it, that he has to keep constant watch over himself and his vivid emotions may also be taken for granted. But then he all but invariably succeeds in doing so. A year ago Americans felt uneasy about their new President. They feared his overplus of energy, the impact of his impetuous tingling personality. He had the same reputation for militant "rashness" that the Kaiser once enjoyed. It took William II. ten years to live down the nervousness his accession inspired. It has taken Theodore Roosevelt just one year. There was never any real reason why the people should not have had the same confidence in him as in Mr. McKinley. But they saw in the new President, first of all, youthwhich even Americans suspect in polltics; and secondly, a very vigorous and outspoken character, apt at times to launch out with ultra-Bismarckian bluntness; and from this they argued that his impulsiveness was a danger to the State. It is true that the President has nothing of the featureless cau

tion that commends itself to the politicians. He does things-such as asking Booker Washington to dinner and denouncing lynchings-that Mr. McKinley, the type of the "political" President, would never have dreamed of doing. But what Americans now realize, as the result of his first year of office, is that his impulsiveness is in no sense dangerous; that it is confined to little things and an occasional hasty word; and that in all essentials he is one of the most balanced and conservative of Americans.

So buoyant, virile and masterful a figure would win a following anywhere. In America the force of his attractiveness is peculiarly felt. They are an emotional people, always ready to exalt any man who rises even an inch above the undistinguished multitude, quick on the uptake, swiftly responsive to a touch of firmness. They will follow a leader, when they find one, farther than most nations, and forgive him, as they forgave Grant, almost anything. In politics, especially, the man who trusts to his own strength, and will fight to the last for his convictions, commends their instant homage; the more so as such a man is perhaps rarer in the United States than even in England. President Roosevelt has this quality of political courage, which is something higher than moral courage, personal courage, or the courage of one's opinions, because it embraces all three, to a degree that Cleveland did not equal and Lincoln did not surpass. Perhaps the readiest touchstone of any and every President's character is to be looked for in the appointments he makes. Patronage is the most engrossing and irksome of all calls upon his time. A weak President, a President who is "playing politics" with an eye to the next election, uses the offices at his disposal to reward party services, conciliate enemies, keep local wire

pullers loyal and in good humor, and above all to ingratiate himself with Senators and Congressmen by allowing them to nominate their own men. This was the policy which Mr. McKinley very largely pursued. One of the ablest and most careful of American publicists, Mr. Henry Loomis Nelson, declares that at the moment of Mr. Roosevelt's accession "the Civil Service of the country was in a state of demoralization such as had not been known since the days of Grant." "Predatory politicians had again captured many important places: the federal offices in the Southern States were filled, almost without exception, by social outcasts whose business in politics was not only to enjoy the emoluments of office, but to sell quadrennially to the highest bidder nearly one-third of the delegates to the National Convention of their party; and this corrupt organization was in close alliance with the Democratic rings of the Southern States, dividing the plunder between them, keeping down the Republican vote, and preventing decent whites from joining the Republican party." Mr. Roosevelt, a life-long advocate and practitioner of clean politics, and with a knowledge of the Civil Service and of the tricks of its enemies such as no President has ever possessed, was not the man to stand this sort of thing. He at once strengthened the Civil Service Commission, restored sixteen hundred offices to the merit system that his predecessor had exempted, brought sixty Indian agents within the scope of classified service, and armed the Commissioners with new and real powers over the officeholders. But it was in his attitude towards the vast and important class of posts that as yet are outside the merit system, and appointments to which are made by the President "with the advice and consent of the Senate," that Mr. Roosevelt showed